from Hacker News

Finland has slashed homelessness; the rest of Europe is failing

by ashergill on 1/25/21, 2:13 PM with 352 comments

  • by WarOnPrivacy on 1/25/21, 9:44 PM

    I'm in the US. I was homeless as a teenager (not by choice). I live adjacent to a major homeless community (not by design). My ex left our family to join the homeless community (she struggles with mh issues). I have some observations.

    We could sharply reduce homeless numbers here if we had in-patient mental health facilities (for non-wealthy), comprehensive housing aid and politically powerful job placement programs.

    I just looked up our jail budget and inmate population; we pay ~$25k/inmate/year (excluding court & police costs). That money gets us a pretty solid guarantee that arrested mentally ill people will reoffend, given how many entrenched systems there are to make sure that convicted people are locked out of most jobs and housing.

  • by nabla9 on 1/25/21, 2:36 PM

    Related news: European Court of Human Rights just made important ruling that decriminalizes begging. Making it criminal to be poor is against human rights.

    -----

    ECHR 021 (2021)

    19.01.2021

    (Judgment Lacatus v. Switzerland)

    The penalty imposed on the applicant for begging in public breached the Convention

    In today’s Chamber judgment 1 in the case of Lăcătuşv. Switzerland (application no. 14065/15) the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been:

    a violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life)of the European Convention on Human Rights.

    The case concerned an order for the applicant to pay a fine of 500 Swiss francs (CHF) (approximately 464 euros (EUR)) for begging in public in Geneva, and her detention in a remand prison for five days for failure to pay the fine.

    The Court observed that the applicant, who was illiterate and came from an extremely poor family, had no work and was not in receipt of social benefits. Begging constituted a means of survival for her. Being in a clearly vulnerable situation, the applicant had had the right, inherent in human dignity, to be able to convey her plight and attempt to meet her basic needs by begging.

    The Court considered that the penalty imposed on the applicant had not been proportionate either to the aim of combating organised crime or to the aim of protecting the rights of passers-by, residents and shopkeepers.

    The Court did not subscribe to the Federal Court’s argument that less restrictive measures would not have achieved a comparable result.In the Court’s view, the penalty imposed had infringed the applicant’s human dignity and impaired the very essence of the rights protected by Article 8 of the Convention, and the State had thus overstepped its margin of appreciation in the present case.

  • by austincheney on 1/25/21, 2:26 PM

    The city of Austin, TX could be a case study of what not to do. I was remotely employed to company with offices in Austin in 2014-2015 and it was awesome to visit and walk around down town. I always had a blast.

    I visited Austin in 2019 and there were homeless people EVERYWHERE. Every green space and nearly every street corner seemed to be littered with homeless people. The difference crystal clear. Something in the handling of the homeless problem had failed in that city.

  • by reedf1 on 1/25/21, 2:35 PM

    It all comes back to a concept as freshman as it gets - Maslow's hierarchy of needs. How are you supposed to get out of any societal freefall without shelter?

  • by asdff on 1/25/21, 6:56 PM

    Finland has 5.5M people and about 5 thousand homeless. Los Angeles county has 10.5M people and estimates are nearing 100,000 homeless. The situation is an order of magnitude different in Los Angeles, even by West Coast standards, and what works in Findland is unlikely to scale anywhere else, much less a place like the U.S. which has the bare minimum of a social safety net compared to the rest of the developed world.

  • by w_t_payne on 1/26/21, 12:49 AM

    The truth is that human beings need a huge amount of investment - time, money and love - to get us to the point where we can function effectively - and once we fall off the train, it can be nearly impossible to climb back on again.

    Human misery is a systems problem.

    Perhaps the most productive way of tackling it will be to bolster and expand the mechanisms which enable people to avoid poverty and homelessness. E.g. helping a recently-redundant person quickly find another job, or giving someone at risk of becoming homeless another three or four months of breathing room so they have a chance to turn things around.

    It's not just about financial support, either. Social, emotional and psychological support is essential, as it's so incredibly hard to keep a clear head when you are in distress.

  • by Cloudef on 1/25/21, 2:25 PM

    Note that the "homeless" people in Finland are mainly people who refuse to accept support from the social welfare, this is because they prefer to get drunk instead of spending it on food and rent. The social welfare eventually suggests a different system for such people: pay the rent for them and give a special card that can be used for anything except alcohol and cigarette. If the people keep refusing that other option, then they went homeless on their own accord and keep spending the welfare on alcohol and living on the streets. Such people are very rare in Finland in reality however, but they do exist.

    There is also one woman [1] who for whatever reason chooses to live homeless with bunch of luggage. She doesn't drink at all, and keeps moving from town to town with all her luggage, by walking.

    Here's also a discussion about the Roma beggars you see in Helsinki streets. [2]

    1: https://shl.fi/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/IMG_2935.jpg

    2: https://www.reddit.com/r/Finland/comments/79mqjs/question_ab...

    While giving people who can't afford the food or housing, the food and housing mainly has upsides. It also has problem of artificially inflating housing and rent prices. Especially in the capital where most career opportunities are. (Helsinki is very expensive place to live)

  • by usr1106 on 1/25/21, 3:03 PM

    Well, there are fewer homeless in Finnish cities than in many other European big cities. Note that there are only 5 cities in Finland that are big enough for homeless people. I don't think homeless people live in small towns anywhere in Europe.

    On the other hand a Finnish newspaper wrote just yesterday[1] that the amount of street children (teenagers mostly) is increasing all the time and nobody really cares. The phenomenon goes mostly unreported, because according to the law it's impossible to happen. Authorities would be obliged to take care, in reality they are incapable. Mostly understaffed and to some degree also incompetent.

    [1] Don't remember which one, read 3 of them.

  • by gfxgirl on 1/26/21, 5:17 AM

    Lots of random thoughts but no conclusions

    * How much does the government have to spend per person?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen...

    * What are the government's expenses?

    From that wikipedia article the USA has 80% of what Finland has per person. But I'm only guessing 50% of that 80% goes to the military (we can argue if that's good or bad. I'm just guessing that most countries get to use more of their $ per person for other things?)

    * How much does weather play a role?

    Being homeless in Los Angeles is probably much more doable than Finland? Does this influence the number of people who are homeless?

    * Does Oil play a role?

    I think for Finland no? But Norway and Denmark apparently get lots of their budgets from oil. What happens to their social programs as we switch to renewables? (not sure it's relevant to a story about Finland but also not sure if there is some similar way government gets money or not. It does seem relevant to the general stereotype of countries in that area doing well for their citizens. If they've got a free money supply. Of course I'm totally uninformed about any of this.

  • by thepasswordis on 1/26/21, 1:29 AM

    1) Drugs are bad. The mushrooms you do at burning man every summer do not make you an expert on the effects of meth and heroin on people who are living under a bridge.

    2) Placation will make it worse. Living under a bridge near other homeless people is the problem. Efforts to decriminalize "the unhoused" make the problem worse. Look at Portland, SF, Austin, and ever other city that tries this. It gets worse EVERY TIME. STOP DOING THIS.

    To solve the problem:

    1) Hold humans to a high standard. No, you can't live in the park. That isn't an option. No you can't do drugs. No you can't rob the walgreens. No you can't stand in my front yard at 2:00am screaming. Doing these things will result in your spending your time locked in jail.

    2) Get a job. Places like Albuquerque have program where anybody can show up in the morning and get work doing things like cleaning the parks, cleaning the sidewalks, picking up trash, etc. This is good. More of this.

    3) Our understanding of human psychology does not need "disruption". People who spend their time depressed and doing drugs while living in a ditch are going to develop serious stress related mental health issues. People with structured 9-5 jobs which result in them having a house and food, and something to work towards are universally more mentally healthy. And it isn't the house and the food making them more stable, it's the structure.

    The efforts to fix this stuff: closing the mental health facilities, letting people sleep in their own filth, letting people commit petty crimes: these things make the problem WORSE. Stop it. This stuff might make you feel good, but it is at the expense of the people you are exploiting for your good feelings. Stop being so selfish and accept that the solution to this problem isn'g going to be happy and fun and worthy of instagram posts.

  • by ur-whale on 1/25/21, 2:40 PM

  • by RcouF1uZ4gsC on 1/25/21, 3:11 PM

    It is probably much harder being homeless in Finland than in San Francisco just from the weather. San Francisco is relatively mild, even in winter. Finland in winter gets pretty cold, and people are in severe danger of death or loss of body parts from frostbite.

  • by neonate on 1/25/21, 8:15 PM

  • by wombatpm on 1/26/21, 4:30 AM

    There is also the matter of weather. Finland is cold. When I lived in Minneapolis the number of homeless people was staggeringly small compared to Chicago which was nothing compared to San Francisco. All the jokes about the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco aside, -20 degree temperatures at night (no windchill bs) will force even the craziest of homeless to seek shelter. Eventually they get help of somesort

  • by Joeri on 1/25/21, 2:46 PM

    Housing first is an approach conceived in the U.S. but for political reasons not as widely adopted as it should be. 99pi did a fascinating podcast series about the homelessness problem in oakland and how housing first fits into the picture. My preconceived notions of why people are homeless were definitely upended.

    https://99percentinvisible.org/need/

  • by agumonkey on 1/25/21, 3:06 PM

    Anybody know about initiatives to build cabins instead of letting people sleep in the cold ?

  • by chrisgd on 1/26/21, 1:16 AM

    It’s too cold so everyone figured out another solution?

  • by swebs on 1/26/21, 10:21 AM

    >Still, in a small, wealthy country to which few poor people move, it appears that homelessness is solvable.

    I think this is the main takeaway of this story.

  • by sevenf0ur on 1/25/21, 2:41 PM

    Why is France taking in more migrants than it can support? It seems cruel to have your migrants homeless and living on the streets.

  • by ashergill on 1/25/21, 2:13 PM

    paywall link: https://outline.com/JV4xXe

    edit: no longer working, apologies.

  • by jswizzy on 1/25/21, 2:23 PM

    Anyone who thinks that just giving the homeless shelter fixes the problem doesn't understand the problem to begin with.

  • by adaisadais on 1/25/21, 2:32 PM

    Homelessness does not beget homelessness. It is most important to note that. Our society is so focused at solving the primary symptoms without ever diving deeper into the root cause of things like this (looking at you Sf).

    To experience homelessness one must have first experienced a reason to now be homeless. In modern western society we have many failsafes that prevent people from becoming totally dislodged from a place of shelter. But more and more people are losing such shelter and are ending up on our streets. Why?

    The answer is often rooted in the human condition. Solving that is almost impossible... but it’s worth trying.

  • by u678u on 1/25/21, 2:35 PM

    In areas of the USA with the population density of Finland there isn't much (any?) homelessness either.

  • by crazypython on 1/25/21, 2:34 PM

    As soon as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903259 was posted, two posts in /new, it helped bring this one, got to the front page:

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