
Finland's homeless crisis nearly solved. How? By giving homes to all who need - cmurf
https://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/amphtml/World/Europe/2018/0321/Finland-s-homeless-crisis-nearly-solved.-How-By-giving-homes-to-all-who-need
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just_steve_h
For reasons I've never understood, many Americans seem fixated on viewing
poverty and homelessness as MORAL failures, which deserve punishment.

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dragonwriter
> For reasons I've never understood, many Americans seem fixated on viewing
> poverty and homelessness as MORAL failures, which deserve punishment.

I think you slightly misstate it: they view poverty and homelessness as an
outward evidence of moral failures (particularly, an insufficient work ethic)
and (often, though this view is sometimes found divorced from religious
judgement today) divine disfavor, not as moral failures in themselves.

This has been traced back (both by people who view this attitude positively
and by those who view it negatively) to various elements of theology of
various strains of Protestantism that shaped American culture, particularly
the Puritan concept of “visible saints” whose outward signs were wholesome
living and material success.

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cmurf
The book of Job really should have never allowed prosperity theology to
prosper, and should be a lesson why it's absurd.

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timonoko
Worth mentioning that Finland does this much better than Sweden. If you google
"hemlösa" in Swedish, you will see pictures blond ethnic swedes living in the
streets. If you google "kodittomat" in Finnish, youll see mostly dogs.

This is because in Swedens housing projects are foremostly aimed for
foreigners. Even the web-page helping the "hemlösa" seems to be mostly aimed
for EU-citizens, meaning beggars from Romania.

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cuchoi
Googled "hemlösa" and, not surprisingly, got many pictures from the US.

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eecsninja
In case anyone missed the obvious: places in the USA with many homeless e.g.
SF or NYC also have some of the highest housing costs in the world. Much more
so than the Finnish capital: [https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-
living/comparison/new-yor...](https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-
living/comparison/new-york-city/helsinki/breakdown)

Still, according to this thread, spending on SF homeless comes out to $40k per
year. You could in theory house and feed a person for that much. So where's
all that money going?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16645258](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16645258)

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exabrial
To be clear, where did the money come from to build such things? If it came
from a free giving choice from nearby residents, that is incredible, and I'm
blown away by their generosity and we should study how they raised the funds.
If it came from a tax that you cannot opt out of, it is wrong, regardless of
the end result.

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invincing
I suppose you don't live in Finland, because I've never heard opinions like
that from a fellow Finn.

Last night the outdoor temperature here was -20 C (-4 F). In conditions like
this, it's basic human behaviour to give shelter to those in need. I gladly
pay taxes so that the government can solve the problem in the most efficient
way for the society. It would be much more expensive to let the ER and health
care system handle these people when they get severely frostbitten outside.

~~~
Sileni
That's our jam here in the US. Can't afford $1k/month rent? Sleep in the
streets, or get assaulted in an overcrowded shelter. If you're lucky once you
freeze off a couple of toes you'll be taken to a hospital, where they'll load
you up with debt. Then, we'll pass you off to one of our for-profit prisons
for failing to pay off the debt, who will also charge you for the time you
spend in the prison.

This is an actual worst case scenario in our country. If you think we're a
little psychotic, it's because if we've experienced poverty in our lives at
all, that daily lottery draw has been in the back of our minds since. That
sort of insecurity just does not go away.

