
Helsinki's solution to homelessness - r0n0j0y
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle-helsinkis-radical-solution-to-homelessness
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1290cc
I don't agree that every solution Finland or Iceland comes up with can be
replicated to the rest of the world. These are ethnically homogenous countries
with a small population and the majority of which is centered in a small area.
Swedens perfect approach to education in the 2000's has now been debunked and
even the swedes are telling everyone not to do what they did! I think the same
would be true of Finlands "solution".

The US by contrast is a continent in its own right with a vastly diverse set
of people and cultures. My own experience of the bay area is people are
extremely giving and donate a lot of money and time towards homeless efforts.
However I feel the latest backlash is born from fatigue towards no solution in
sight. If homeless refuse to accept help or seek alternative options to
sleeping on the street why would you want to keep helping? I am still stunned
that the tiny city of San Francisco had a $300m annual budget to help less
than 5000 people. Thats $60k/homeless person, this is greater than the per
capita GDP of every single country on earth except the US.

Anecdotally I have a guy living in his car on my street that is filled to the
ceiling with trash, he refuses to move or get into a shelter despite us trying
to help him. Sadly the neighbors on the street are starting to sour towards
him after 6 months of having social workers reach out to help and various
charities try to assist.

~~~
rndmize
Man am I tired of hearing "the US is too big, too different, too whatever"
when it comes to social policies. Social policies don't have to be implemented
at a federal level.

SF is doing it wrong? Fine. No one has to do things like SF. But there's no
reason not to try a Finnish policy at a city, county or state level if it'd
been demonstrated to work.

~~~
9HZZRfNlpR
The fact that you can just move to SF from Alaska does make difference. Here
in Europe we have sort same problem and the poor Romanians and also the people
taking advantage of anothers countries social system was definitely one factor
for Brexit. A lot of countries that are in the EU are slowly being even
allowed to work in different countries, the integration didn't happen
overnight. So I'm sure similar problems apply.

People here say a lot of homeless like to move to SF because of climate too?

~~~
gambiting
There's nothing that California can legally do to stop someone from Alaska
coming over and staying. But there's plenty that EU countries can do to stop
exactly what you described - free movement does come with a range of
limitations, like the fact that after 3 months you either have to be employed
or have private health insurance to continue "exercising your EU free movement
rights". If you don't then you can be kicked out. It's just that no EU country
is actually enforcing this law - but it could have done if it wanted to.

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luckydata
It's unfortunate that the culture in the US is so deprived of compassion and
so focused on the "punish first" reaction to anything outside of the ordinary
that it will be difficult if not impossible to get anything like this solution
adopted.

It's plan to see, even in the comments in this forum so many are really quick
to jump to "but mental illness..." "but drugs..." etc...

It makes me sad to realize this is unlikely to change during my lifetime.

~~~
adammichaelc
The data disagrees. It can happen in the US. It _did_ happen in the US.

“Utah reduced chronic homelessness by 91%. Here’s how”

[https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-
chroni...](https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-
homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how)

~~~
luckydata
I'm glad to learn that. It's also not a surprise it's been tried in Utah of
all places.

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0898
The article's "solution to homelessness" is giving homeless people homes.

The article says they have to pay rent or they get kicked out, but doesn't
explain how these homeless people can suddenly afford rent.

~~~
TallGuyShort
It's a classic problem of mistaking the symptom of homelessness for the
problem. If a person simply has a life event that wipes out their finances and
they get evicted, okay sure - providing cheap housing just for people in their
situation is great. But as much as we don't like stereotypes, a lot of
homeless people do actually end up in that situation because of behavioral
cycles that still need to be broken. What makes it worse is that homelessness
changes a person - and sometimes they are unable to be a part of society right
away for more reasons than money (and sometimes they don't even want to). My
family operates a hotel that will sell off excess hotel rooms to various
homeless groups in the winter - and many times the homeless don't _want_ to be
complete inside, so they open windows, etc. and only be as "inside" as they
absolutely need to be to survive. That _does_ cause problems if you share
infrastructure with other people.

~~~
zackmorris
No, what you're saying is a fallacy. After the housing bubble popped around
2008, millions of people around the world found themselves homeless. It can
happen to anyone at any time for almost any reason, but often for things like
healthcare costs or work accidents leading to unemployment and even
bankruptcy. And it will happen again, and still nobody will remember, because
of this mantra that homelessness is a lack of personal responsibility.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that your labelling of homelessness as a
behavioral problem is the cause of homelessness. Repeated all around the world
by countless people and politicians.

If we really want to solve poverty and homelessness, we need to start by
separating the financial aspect from the behavioral aspect.

The financial aspect involves everything from vast wealth inequality, to lack
of urban planning, to the divergence of wealth and automation, to regressive
taxation and extortive healthcare programs. This is basically represented by
40 years of trickle down economics and complete disregard for externalities
like environmental damage or displaced populations.

The behavior aspect centers mostly around mental health issues like anxiety,
depression, schizophrenia and yes addiction. Things which are all present in
the wealthy but properly managed by therapy, medication and a large support
network made possibly by the possession of money. There's absolutely no reason
we can't offer treatment to the poor. And indeed we used to, before Ronald
Reagan began defunding mental health programs in the US:

[https://sites.psu.edu/psy533wheeler/2017/02/08/u01-ronald-
re...](https://sites.psu.edu/psy533wheeler/2017/02/08/u01-ronald-reagan-and-
the-federal-deinstitutionalization-of-mentally-ill-patients/comment-page-1/)

Personally, I vote to maintain the separation of church and state in the US,
which means that the government shouldn't have a say in what appropriate
personal behavior is. Which means as a culture, we have a responsibility to
pay into a system which is concerned with the care of people who need it.

Churches can still feed and house the homeless, but they shouldn't be the only
ones tasked with that responsibility.

For anyone reading this, if you haven't thought about how your personal moral
and religious beliefs play into the problem of homelessness, now is the time.

~~~
refurb
_And indeed we used to, before Ronald Reagan began defunding mental health
programs in the US_

This is such a worn out trope.

No, Reagan did not single handily defund mental health.

Institutionalization became a dirty word - people held against their will. The
thought was that these people could be more integrated in the community, hence
institutions were defunded.

Reagan was just doing what everyone else was.

------
jeffreyrogers
I live in Salt Lake City and we were doing a pretty good job with this
approach. Unfortunately, a change in the police chain of command and in the
local government led to scaling back of the housing program and a switch to a
more traditional model (arrest, choice between jail or rehab, various support
programs, housing at the end if you make it through all that).

This new system (which is really the old system come full circle) is much less
effective as is clear to anyone who walks around the city. We have a beautiful
public library downtown, which is completely unpleasant to visit because it
has turned into the place where the homeless stay during the day. About half
the times I go I see someone either being arrested or in active withdrawal.

Like most social problems, the solutions are simple, but politically hard to
sell, and even harder to maintain once they've been put in place.

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petrikapu
Cold and harsh winter is actually what makes homelessness not an option around
here

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Homeless people die every winter in San Jose CA, so I guess this program could
have wide appeal.

~~~
virgilp
Yeah, but the weather is mild enough that I bet many don't fully realize the
risk. In Helsinki, spending the winter sleeping outside is obviously not an
option.

~~~
AstralStorm
You'd be surprised what homeless in Poland pull to just sleep inside during
harsher winter.

Forging keys, breaking and entering into garbage disposal or basements and of
course trespassing and squatting are some of the things I've personally
witnessed and that's not the end.

Yes, there are some facilities but apparently not enough and with conditions
not acceptable to some of them.

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com2kid
One problem of applying this to the American cities that have a homeless
problem is that housing in those cities is prohibitively expensive.

Go to a city like Seattle and a 1 bed 1 bath is going to cost 300k+ to
construct at density. (The city doesn't have enough land to build enough tiny
houses at 30k or so a pop, so fixing the entire housing problem that way isn't
doable.)

~~~
kazinator
The other problem of applying this to American cities is that these homes will
be used for criminal activity and trashed.

~~~
kurthr
While I agree with you, in most cases that's only because they won't be
policed... which also makes it a terrible place for all the other folks who
need housing, when bullies move in. There are real on going labor/maintenance
costs with providing housing to many homeless... even beyond the standard
social services that are required.

~~~
AstralStorm
I suspect these homes would be more policed even than any general "rough
area".

In fact, this might cut on crime in general, much like honeypot stings.

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TaylorAlexander
Does anyone here think markets alone could solve this problem? Or do you see
that coordinated group action is necessary to practically solve problems
markets can’t fix?

~~~
Qwertystop
Markets clearly haven't solved the problem. They've certainly had the time.

~~~
DuskStar
Markets partially solved this problem a more than a century ago - the solution
was "really shitty, cheap, shared housing". As a society we decided that such
housing was unacceptable and banned it without providing a replacement.

"This enormously regulated industry doesn't yield outcomes we like for the
poor! Obviously markets cannot solve this problem!" is a disturbingly common
argument.

~~~
ars
They were called "Rooming Houses" and we should bring them back.

~~~
devereaux
The beautiful thing with democracy is that these housing solutions that
provided an actual solution to homelessness where banned, are still illegal,
and thus won't be "brought back" even if they make perfect sense, were
preferred by the people who used them, are a free market solution, and much
cheaper than the alternatives.

See San Francisco as an example of what happens when more money is poured in
the "modern" solutions - very little reduction of the problem, if any.

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gnode
On the surface this kind of solution is easy to dismiss as an expensive
socialist extreme; a cost to the taxpayer that there is no political appetite
for in other countries. Yet counter-intuitively this is likely a saving for
the taxpayer, as hospitals and prisons often end up filling this role, at a
much larger cost than simply housing people.

~~~
luckydata
Said bluntly, who gives a shit about the taxpayers. Some things are to be done
because they are right, not because they save money, even if they end up
saving money.

The ROI-first perspective when talking about social policies has created the
monstrous society the US is now.

~~~
gnode
For better or worse, taxpayers give a shit about taxpayers, so it's important
to recognise when arguments made in their name, and against people who are
suffering, are actually a false economy.

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dgzl
Comparing other countries'policies to our own is like saying "but it works on
_my_ computer". There are too many differences in culture, rights and laws to
just pretend that if something works over there, then it should work here too.

~~~
OldSchoolJohnny
This annoys me to no end; so is this intended to make sure no one does
anything about a serious problem with this Whataboutism? Or is it intended to
make us care less?

What exactly is the purpose of this kind of comment? Why on earth wouldn't it
work?

~~~
dgzl
The literal foundations and functions of government are different between the
countries, as are the rights that the residents have. It's like trying to copy
a Windows program into OSX. You can't just use the .exe, the best you can do
is rewrite the entire thing and hope the new OS will even support needs of the
software. Personally, I'm really against the idea of just giving folks free
stuff as a benefit. I grew up poor and my parents are on all the social
programs you can think of, and none of them help in the way they're intended
to. The government turns everything into an expensive cluster-f and doesn't
ever fix the root problem. No, simple band-aids are not the answer.

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Bodhisattya
The solution to homelessness is {drum rolls} giving people homes.

Who knew? I am not partial to 'handout' economy, but one wonders where did
capitalism go wrong.

