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The UK doesn't yet have "housing first" programmes beyond pilots (not sure about Scotland in that): https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/housing-first-pil...

I used to work in housing homeless people around 4 years ago, so things may have changes since then, if you're volunteering now you can probably tell me if any of these practices have changed:

- Own accomodation was only possible after a proven track record in hostels

- Many hostel accomodation places only possible after being "counted" homeless (need to be verified as sleeping rough)

- Housing benefit paid directly to the tenant, and if they fail to manage finances (including if there benefits are paused due to missing a form or not filling in a letter in time) they are liable to be evicted from social housing

- use of drugs is normally evictable in hostel situations causing a vicious cycle

(I don't want to imply the UK is the worst country for social housing, there's some great work, but also some really sad realities that often go unadressed)

> because some shelters are so chaotic it is better to be out on the streets.

This is an important bit that people will usually fail to consider. I've read so many stories where living on the street can be the safer option for both your bodily health and general well being. I don't know how it is in the UK, but in the US, shelters will often require people to allow the shelter to hold their belongings for safe keeping.

What often happens is the shelter staff will throw away, lose, or downright steal those belongings. I've read stories of IDs, phones, and notebooks that have been held onto for years going missing under the watch of the shelter.

In shelters that don't require this, your things are now at the mercy of your fellow shelter borders. And things can go missing just as easily.

It makes sense people would want to avoid shelters and sleep outside if this is what happens when they choose the shelter.

These kinds of losses are extremely demoralizing and damaging. Same deal with Homeless encampment cleanups. People will lose their medicine, documents, cell phones, etc and have to start back from square one, often destroying any progress they could have made. It basically makes the homeless "problem" even worse and pushes people down worse paths. This kind of stress causes all sorts of mental illness in return, creating a cycle of poverty-> homelessness -> stress -> mental illness.

> This is an important bit that people will usually fail to consider.

This is explicitly covered by Housing First, which does not involve shared shelter accommodation. Instead, the point is that every homeless person gets their own apartment, without preconditions.

Which is actually great for a huge number of people driven to homelessness. If it's implemented in a way where it can act fast without years of waiting lists, it'd be hugely beneficial to people recently knocked off their feet being able to recover without falling deeper.

This is also why the UK is very, very far away from housing first. The war on affordable housing is alive and well there.

Pretending that guaranteeing shelter where you are at significant risk of being raped and robbed is almost the same thing as guaranteeing an apartment of your own is dishonest. There isn't really another way to describe it.

Are the budgets so small that they can't afford to provide each tenant with their own lockbox? I feel like being able to secure a small amount of personal property is the sort of thing which would pay for itself in terms of enabling people to get back on their feet and get out of the shelter faster

Sometimes a small lockbox isn't enough when you carry everything you have to your name on your back everywhere you go.

> One alternative would be to prescribe heroin which I think could work

We generally accept the principal that making something cheaper and easier results in more of this behavior. Few examples

- subsidize corn results in more corn products like corn syrup in our food

- make school loans cheaper and more available to students results in more people going to school

- make guns more available and easier to get results in more guns on the street

But when it comes to making it easier for people to fuel their addiction and live a more comfortable life centered around a dangerous chemical, some question that this relationship exists. I've watched videos where someone interviews people on the streets in Philadelphia which provides a lot of services around facilitating drug use and they're just living their life as addicts and pretty much okay with their status quo.

Doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to make the lives of addicts more comfortable. But we should accept the proposition that subsidizing a behavior or lifestyle makes it more common on the margin.

>We generally accept the principal that making something cheaper and easier results in more of this behavior.... But when it comes to making it easier for people to fuel their addiction and live a more comfortable life centered around a dangerous chemical, some question that this relationship exists.

The fundamental principals of supply and demand assume that the agents participating the market are acting rationally (or approximately close to rational). Those assumptions are strained to their limit when analysing black markets and addictive substances.

I don't think people that are obese (partly due to corn subsidies) or commit gun violence are acting rationally.

Do you still believe that relationships I originally mentioned are strained?

There is no such presumption. I can assure you supply and demand works the same way, even when behaving randomly.

Perhaps you mean that people don't behave in a way you deem "rational" and that therefore the outcomes are different from what you expect.

That is an issue with your model of reality not being accurate, not with the concept of supply and demand.

The prescribed heroin doesn't need to be cheap or plentiful. It could be the same price as the street stuff.

The point is to remove the activity from the criminal underworld. A pharmacist dispensing a medication is much less likely to sexually assault their client than a street level heroin dealer.

Making criminal activity legal doesn't solve any of their problems except for the only problem that is entirely on them and disincentivizes their destructive behavior.

Hey buddy!

Your account is pretty new and seems to be mostly arguing with people.

I don't really want to interact with that, so I'm writing this to politely tell you that I'll pass on this discussion with you.

Have a good one!

Very strange reply but it's up to you whether or not you'll defend your position, I can't make you.

Anyways, just as an aside, I went through your account too and it's mostly just you arguing with people and litigating whether or not you've insulted them.

Forums like this largely exist for debate and discussion. It's all encouraged so long as you don't insult people, which some people seem to feel is a line you cross.

I also wish you well, though I am a bit weirded out just generally as I'm not used to certain interactions.

>It's all encouraged so long as you don't insult people, which some people seem to feel is a line you cross.

Someone got upset on someone else's behalf when I told them the difference between rogue and rouge. I wasn't insulting anyone, lol.

I hope you learn and grow beyond this petty lifestyle.

<3

I haven't looked at the other posters comment history (and I rarely would look at anyones), but this is a weird reply to what they said.

I can feel when people are arguing in bad faith. When I get that feeling, I usually check their account age / history to see if they have a history of arguing in bad faith.

It saves me from engaging in energy-draining time-wasting arguments.

Canada tried "safe supply" giving clean and free drugs to users. It was a mess, this is an example of a "progressive" idea that in practice is terrible for the community.

"Free drugs" is not what I'm talking about, where did you get that idea?

Also get to ensure safety and purity of the drugs and instruments. Safe injections sites for example are more about preventing the spread of AIDs, other blood borne infections and reducing/treating overdose than they are about getting people off the drugs. Yes, they form as a space to push towards sobriety, but that is not their actual job (because it literally cannot be).

Purdue tried this strategy with oxycodone in the US, and it really did not work out well. Removing the activity from the criminal underworld provides massive incentives for unscrupulous doctors to become pill pushers.

That would be utterly insane. A large part of the problem with heroin is that it consumes addicts lives to get hold of money for it, and to get hold of the drug itself.

Last I heard, a typical daily dose of medical grade heroin/diamorphine costs 10-20 pounds from the NHS's existing suppliers (yes, the NHS has suppliers - heroin is used in NHS hospitals for pain management; if you've ever been prescribed diamorphine, it's heroin).

All but the very worst affected heroin addicts can lead relatively normal lives if they don't need to worry where their dose will come from.

There are significant societal benefits to prescribing heroin as cheaply as possible.

I think there's a reasonable argument that getting yourself into a safe and stable situation even while addicted is a good first step to kicking an addiction.

I've heard the opposite, that you have to hit rock bottom and want to change. If your life is sustainable and you get some pleasure from the substance, why quit?

Some drugs forever mess with your mind. You will never hit rock bottom because your mind doesn't have power anymore. Some drugs are much worse than others for this.

Which drugs? Just curious. No judgement.

Wanting to change is a prerequisite for quitting an addictive substance, for sure. But hitting rock bottom is definitely not a prerequisite. For some people, rock bottom might be a bit of a catalyst, triggering them to want to change. But for others, rock bottom can just make things worse and lead to giving up, overdosing, suicide, etc.

Unsurprisingly, addiction is a complex issue where the motivations (to start, and to stop) change from person to person.

I'm sure that works for some, but others use drugs to escape their outward situation. If their outward situation improves, there's less impetus for escape. There's maybe no one-size-fits-all.

But the other extreme of your examples are also bad. No crop subsidies you get farm failures and unreliable food production. Get rid of student loans and many intelligent people end up trapped doing brainless jobs because they lack better qualifications. End gun sales and you can end up with mostly criminal organizations having all the guns and power and leave law abiding people vulnerable like much of Central and South American and large chunks of Africa.

There is a good balance point in the middle in most cases, but in the case of homelessness and drug addiction one sides cause usually amounts to not helping anyone and in many times criminalizes their existence making their situation worse and more costly upon them and society as a whole than it already was.

> one sides

This is no one side. (one sides is grammatically incorrect so if you meant plural you need to explain yourself better).

People are complex and most people not helping are more centrist or populist, not on some extreme. You can find examples at all extremes of people who help the down and out in significant ways, and others who are doing things that (either directly or indirectly) harm the down and out.

> One alternative would be to prescribe heroin which I think could work

Yes, didn't they do just that and cause the recent opioid epidemic with prescriptions? (I know it wasn't Heroin)

Actually, denying prescriptions is part of what caused the opioids epidemic deaths. People went to the street and overdosed on fentanyl.

This could have been prevented by Prescribing to addicts while being more selective about new patients.

> The UK also has the same policy.

This is the opposite to the policy in most councils in the UK, which generally only offer temporary shelter and only with preconditions. The Finnish housing-first policy was implemented as UK-style policies were failing, as they are failing now in the UK.

> However, the number of people begging on the streets is still rising sharply, so I don't think it is the silver bullet everyone thinks it is.

A Housing-first policy has only been trialled by ~15 councils in the UK, and it has been shown to work in all of them. It's much more expensive that the UK's traditional shelter approach, which is partly why it's not national policy.

Thanks for this clarification. The parent made a lot of interesting points but this very wrong statement at the start made it harder to trust the rest of it.

You write “You can give these people houses but without treatment they will still be begging on the street.”

Your choice of words makes me wonder whether you would agree that an addict who sleeps in an apartment is better off than an addict who freezes their ass off in an alley at night.

Maybe solving for housing first is a way to eliminate some of the suffering in the world. By demanding that their life “is in order” before providing housing, I think we are demanding the impossible from someone who clearly is not capable of making perfect choices.

You are both missing something important: no all homeless are addicts! There are lots of different reasons someone could be homeless. As such there is no one side fits all. This article says their policy is only about 80% effective. They are extremely good by world standards, but it is far away from perfect. The question remains what to do about that other 20% - and if you find an answer would that be better for some of the other 80%? (note that I said if - I have no ideas. Also I didn't specify all of the other 80% being helped and so we have to figure out what that means to the overall policy)

Most homelessness is also temporary, with around the same range of 80% moving on within a year.

That being the case, the value-added of free housing appears marginal compared to the cost. It would best target those who are a) chronically homeless, but b) neither addicted or mentally unfit to be employed, which sounds like a vanishingly small demographic. Mind you I take "effective" and desired outcome here to mean that they won't continue to roam out in the streets, either to be close to dealers or from being mentally unwell.

There is a bunch of it depends there. California has more homelessness than other states. Part of this is in some areas housing is so expensive middle class people cannot afford to live there, but they can get jobs there and so being homeless is often the only option if you don't/can't leave. Part of this is California has a fairly mild climate (well in the places people live): you won't be comfortable some nights, but the weather won't kill you.

States with lower housing costs do appear to have lower homelessness rates.

That's right, it scales most closely with housing cost. That tracks with homelessness generally being temporary, being priced out. California is also infamous for rent control policies in NIMBY cities that have been an abject failure. The supply of rental units was low because they are artificially risky and promise too little in return.

Zoning and regulatory reform spurs more building including smaller, dense units, which lowers prices. There's a fantasy among leftists that developers are snubbing mixed-density and dense mid-rises because condos pay more. No one leaves money on the table. Everything is built on credit, and banks deem these builds riskier in large part owing to the impact of zoning and regs. Condos have a lot of overhead, which checks a lot of boxes, while this would be unaffordable for other units. They also ignore that there are small developers in cities that try to compete, but can't get loans, because of these regulations.

FWIW I didn't read that as an argument against providing housing, I read it as an argument in favour of providing housing and treatment.

>> Maybe solving for housing first is a way to eliminate some of the suffering in the world.

That's probably true, but the ability to do it strongly depends (I'm thinking US centric here) on keeping the borders closed to illegal immigration. The last thing you want is a flood of people coming for the free/cheap housing. BTW I believe the US currently has a housing shortage, particularly at the lower end of the market.

Why do we need to close the borders at all? Most people crossing the border are looking for a good life including a good job, not handouts. Let those people in and get a job and they will provide more than enough economic gain to offset the homeless. (the above is a bit too simple and thus wrong, but not nearly as simple are your analysis)

>> Why do we need to close the borders at all?

Because those people need a place to live and they don't bring a home with them. It's added stress on the market. I will also be costly for any program that subsidizes housing in any way.

I don’t know of any place (including Finland) that would consider people without a residence permit to be eligible for “housing first”. It is a fairly simple filter to implement, and should solve your problem.

"Here I am, working my ass off, true-believing in the eventual payoff of all that delayed gratification, stressing myself sick over making the Right Choices in this unwinnable game - and someone who is clearly not capable of making Right Choices gets their problems solved for free? The sheer audacity!"

I feel like the cognitive dissonance between the above line of thought and the social expectation to demonstrate "kindness", "generosity", "compassion" is at the root of many people's rejection of an universal social safety net. Can't let themselves realize that a homeless beggar on crack might not only be just as human, but in some ways even a more genuine human being than your garden-variety obedient nine-to-fiver with a bullshit job and toxic family in 4 kinds of debt to cokehead bankerbros.

Unfortunately, not getting one's fundamental assumptions challenged is very often a much more powerful motivator than any desire to actually reduce the actual suffering of actual beings.

The fundamental contradiction is here: "someone who is clearly not capable of making Right Choices" yet is "even a more genuine human being than your garden-variety obedient nine-to-fiver with a bullshit job and toxic family in 4 kinds of debt to cokehead bankerbros."

Many people can accept that someone is so incapable of making the right decisions that left on their own they might die. That since they're a danger to themselves and others, the state has to step in and take care of them.

The issue is that many of these people then turn around and argue that these people are capable of making their own decisions. Housing first in the U.S. gives these people apartment with no conditions attached. In a lot of cases, the people, since they are "clearly not capable of making Right Choices," make life hell for the other residents of the building, and usually aren't able to escape their problems.

There's a similar disconnect when people say "the shelters are extremely dangerous places, of course homeless people won't stay there" and then turn around and say "how could anyone think that putting a homeless person near them could increase their danger." Apparently, the homeless are the only ones who are allowed to consider the danger of being around homeless people.

Empathy is great. It would be nice if homeless advocates occasionally had empathy for other citizens as well.

A great many people who would be generally accepted as Successfully Schooled in the art of making Right Choices, when left truly on their own - and not out in the woods somewhere, but out here, in the very bowels of this right here civilization - would also rather quickly encounter misery and death.

Do you believe that what I noncoincidentally capitalize as "Right Choices" are actual right choices in some absolute, or at least universally shared, or at least non-self-contradictory frame of reference? I see them more like unilaterally mandated moves in some arbitrary social game that we all have, voluntarily or not, been recruited into (and which persists not in spite of, but because it is fundamentally nonsensical).

Of course, my viewpoint is incorrigibly biased by having witnessed manifestations of empathy significantly more often among the "dregs of society" than in what one would call "polite company".

Anyway, empathy is only the first step. Effecting systemic change takes significantly more right thought and right action than is generally permitted. And those aren't really things one can delegate. (I've found the lack of those things among the "down and out" vs. the "better off" to be about equal, the comparison I was making was along another axis.)

In other words, if the social safety net that you have experienced leads to the outcomes you describe, that means it's a bad implementation of a social safety net - not that we shouldn't have an actual one. Outside of Kafka, people don't just randomly wake up one day to find out they've somehow transformed into helpless monsters. It's a gradual process, and there are people at every step of the way, who are making the choice to allow others to slide into poverty and insanity, for the sake of not disrupting some comfort zone which may not even be particularly comfortable.

This is probably the fundamental attribution error in play -- "my situation is a twist of circumstance but their situation is a reflection of poor character and choices that need to be policed."

The Golden Rule is an ages-old part of this conversation because it helps people confront this common bias. Imagine your situations are reversed, how would you want things done? Do that.

Yeah, believing the mantra "If you work hard you'll succeed" also means believing "If you're a failure that means you're lazy".

There seems to be a class of decent mantras / heuristics like this:

* Good at a first approximation for directing your own agency (conscientious effort definitely improves chances of success, there are few reasons not to engage it other than "your ladder is on the wrong wall" situations).

* Much poorer as a general model of the world, especially one that should be socialized.

This doesn't mean the attribution error is wrong in the direction you're implying it is.

It does not mean that your assessment of others' situations is wrong, it may mean your assessment of your situation is wrong (and your assessment that others made bad choices is right).

Past a certain point (which a lot of people encounter quite early in life) I'd rather liken it to sunk cost fallacy, than to fundamental attribution error.

Otherwise, the Golden Rule is great, except for FAE being a good example of how it isn't particularly applicable in practice.

The social safety net relies on both altruism and self-interest. We trust that getting people into housing will improve their lives, but we are also looking to improve their interactions with us.

I don't care whether the guy who smells like piss and lies beside the supermarket door has earned a room. I would, however, like him to use the shower and laundry attached to the building. If he isn't doing those things even though he has a home now, then we're down to altruism rather than altruism + self-interest.

Generally the rant is not about those who are not capable of making the "right choices", but about those who are capable but are not. I know a someone who was getting straight A's in school until they decided to drop out and have a few kids - I feel robbed when she is getting help because she always was able to make "good choices" and instead I'm supposed to forego some luxury I want to support her as well. I know many more people who are unable to make "right choices" and I want to help them.

That's not what cognitive dissonance is. That's a dissonance between what people truly think and what they want/need to display.

Nice closing joke, though, got a laugh out of me!

No, I think the poster's notion of cognitive dissonance is more correct than yours. Cognitive dissonance refers to the anxiety caused by attempting to embrace two different convictions or beliefs that are incompatible with each other.

Back in the shitpiles, we used to call that a "false consciousness". We are required to authentically participate in being each other's jailers, wholeheartedly and without losing our minds; even the Scrivener's hopeless "I would prefer not to" is beyond the capabilities of a great many. Hence, yes, enforced cognitive dissonance, and all the "fun" things that are causally downstream from that.

Upvote for the Bartleby reference.

Who are you quoting?

Someone who is obviously Not Capable of formulating the quoted sentence. Not to worry though, I used my psi training to read their mind for them.

Oh, so a strawman.

Certainly someone with important organs replaced by piles of rotting straw.

> the number of people begging on the streets is still rising sharply,

There is a lot of money to be made putting on raggedly clothing and standing on a street corner with a sign. Some of the people doing that really are in a bad place unable to support themselves any other way, but many of them are normal people with normal houses who have decided to make begging their job. (I was going to write full time job, but in a good location they are working part time and pulling in a full time income).

I support someone busking on the street. I'm paying for the entertainment value there, if they provide me a smile or other enjoyment that is worth some money.

For those who are in trouble I donate to local shelters which take care of people who need help and also have people who can determine if help other than shelter is needed. I'm not against someone in need begging on the streets, but if you could support yourself with a "normal job" then you are scamming me by begging. Local shelters are an easy work around for that. While there are also scams in the shelters, they get audited once in a while.

How does the UK have the "same policy".

"Provide shelter" here does not mean a shelter in the UK sense. In Finland, the "Housing First" approach means giving them a private flat.

>However, the number of people begging on the streets is still rising sharply, so I don't think it is the silver bullet everyone thinks it is.

The silver bullet for what? Stop letting people die of cold in the street while there are plenty of empty building out there?

I live in France and here we happily let kids which are attending school go sleep in a tent for the whole winter, more than 2000 according to the (probably minoring) official stats. Meanwhile we have MILLIONS of empty shelters.

Kudo Finland and all countries that won’t let whatever fear and bullshit metrics make look elsewhere when political decisions lead to unbearable human conditions.

https://www.publicsenat.fr/actualites/societe/2043-enfants-a...

https://www.federationsolidarite.org/wp-content/uploads/2024...

https://www.ecoreseau.fr/expressions/tribune-libre/la-traged...

https://www.statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/editi...