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The UK also has the same policy. There are very very few people that are completely unhoused, instead they beg on the streets and then go back to a flat/shelter. The ones that are completely unhoused are either their by "choice" or are so chaotic they have ran out of options. In UK cities you will see a lot of people on the streets during the day but not at night.

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.

NB: some people are there by "choice" because some shelters are so chaotic it is better to be out on the streets. Some have lived outside for so long that they do not like living inside. I'm not saying that the situation couldn't be improved, but the core issue is addiction IMO to get rid of 'visible' "homelessness".

There is also a huge problem that so many people are living in "temporary" accommodation for years waiting for social housing.

The key point I'd say is the problem with homelessness is addiction treatment (and the lack of it). You can give these people houses but without treatment they will still be begging on the street. One alternative would be to prescribe heroin which I think could work, but crack/meth is different - very hard to keep people on any sort of maintenance dose of those drugs and most of the "chaotic people" are addicted to an opiate and a stimulant.

I've started doing volunteer work in this space for the past few years and it really has opened my eyes to the real problems with it. Housing is a prerequisite to the solution but it is not a solution itself, unfortunately. I didn't realise this before volunteering.

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.

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?

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

>> 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)

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.

> 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...

Yesterday (March 5, 2025) there was a headline in the top Finnish newspaper: Shopping malls in Helsinki become a hive of homelessness <https://www.hs.fi/helsinki/art-2000011068519.html>

When it gets cold, the homeless congregate in the warm interiors of malls. The guards on duty won’t let them sleep there, but they prefer it over being out in the cold.

Yeah, it's definitely not a perfect solution. Portland, OR has tried a housing first policy. However, there weren't enough available houses, so that requires to build them. That's lead to years of people still being homeless and underserved while resources went into building homes.

I think it can help a lot under the right circumstances, but if the system is already overwhelmed then funding less permanent solutions for a while may actually be more effective and kind

Building homes does not take very long if the regulations allow it. Most of the US needs to take a hard look at regulations. Often the problem is regulations won't allow a small house and so the homeless are forced on the street because they can't afford anything.

Often the regulations are the start of the problem.

I remember reading an article in Portland that the city was expecting N new people to move there in the next 10 years. So they approved construction of housing for N-200k people.

They intentionally set things up to push the poorest and most vulnerable 200k people into homelessness.

YLE's English section also covered it. Homelessness has risen in the past year.

https://yle.fi/a/74-20147497

"With 4 out of 5 people keeping their flats, “Housing First” is effective in the long run. In 20 percent of the cases, people move out because they prefer to stay with friends or relatives – or because they don’t manage to pay the rent. But even in this case they are not dropped. They can apply again for an apartment and are supported again if they wish."

There are no preconditions, but there are conditions to maintain. In this case, rent being required apparently. This is the recipe for success that I've seen. And if they don't maintain the conditions they get kicked out with the opportunity to come back and try again.

Finland has a population similar to the US metro I live in. The rates were about the same a few years ago, 4,000 people, it would be interesting to apply similar methods here. The city and famous people bought real estate in a former open air drug market and housed people there with great results over a decade or so.

Even if the scale is the same, I'm not sure what works for a nation-state will work for a metro area, because a metro area has to deal with migratory homelessness as a result of any services or benefits provided, in a way that a nation with a strong border does not.

Finland, part of the EU's Schengen zone, doesn't precisely have strong borders.

It does lack the climate which might appeal to border-crossers, however, unlike, say, Southern California which has a long-standing homeless situation.

Finland doesn't have much in the way of open land borders, but it is part of Schengen.

Sounds a lot better than building benches with handles that stick up your rear end.

In Vancouver the issue of homelessness and drug use deaths has been in the state of permanent crisis for years and years with governments of all types vacillating between various actions, taking a bold step forward here, experiencing a set back, then taking a step back to the status quo and so forth.

All the while the simple reality remains that at no point has there ever actually been enough homes for everyone who needs one, and in fact, despite whatever homes have been built in the last decade, the city experienced a net loss of affordable housing in total, and the net amount of people experiencing homelessness has only increased.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here watching this because I don't understand how anyone expects anyone to get any traction whatsoever on resolving more difficult personal problems like drug use disorders or mental health when they don't actually have anywhere to live.

Whether it's "housing first" or "housing last" the insane thing that I see in Vancouver is that it seems to be neither!

Solving a big complex problem you gotta start with a good foundation here and the basics. Ok step one: ensure you actually have housing for literally everyone in your society. Ok if you've done that now work on the more challenging complex stuff.

Effective US policy is that people must serve whatever corporation wants their labor or else they will be left to die without healthcare, shelter or food

Other countries do not have this policy

Needs (2020). I find a recent report [0] that shows that the trend has continued, though interestingly only Helsinki has actually shown significant improvements:

> Of the large cities, Helsinki is the only one where homelessness has systematically decreased in the past five years. In other large cities, the pattern has been more irregular (Figures 4 and 5). The reduction in homelessness in Helsinki covers more than half of the reduction in homelessness in the whole country.

Also worth noting from that report is that it has data going back to 1986 in an appendix (page 25) and the downward trend in homelessness dates back at least that far. The homeless rate had already cut in more than half by 2008 when this program started.

[0] https://www.varke.fi/en/media/101

Utah did the same thing two decades ago: https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chroni...

This domain immediately triggered my AV (Bitdefender). I don't know if they were recently hacked or something, but it's got positive hits from multiple vendors. I don't have time to do a deep dive analysis, but be careful.

2 positives https://www.urlvoid.com/scan/thebetter.news/

3 positives https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/755f26bd9ebff3179dab3ed68...

https://trafficlight.bitdefender.com/info/?url=http://thebet...

Well I clicked on your bitdefender link and they just list every possible harm a web site can do to you. Sounds to me like an "AI" hallucinating.

It's possible, I have no idea how Bitdefender rates websites. But when I first checked urlvoid, the site had been scanned months ago and had more than 3 or 4 positive hits. It's a WordPress site, so it isn't out of the realm of possibility it was hacked and something malicious was dropped in that was later cleaned up.

Wonder how they force the homeless who don't want the shelter. Maybe it's just cold enough that it doesn't happen much.

Finnish mental health legislation takes a medical approach to compulsory measures, emphasizing the need for treatment of psychiatric patients over civil liberties concerns... Finland has the highest rates of detention per 100 000 inhabitants, about 214 compared with 93 in the UK and 11 in Italy.

If at the end of the 3-month period it is considered likely that detention criteria are still fulfilled, new recommendations MII and MIII are filed and the renewed detention is then valid for 6 months. However, this second period of detention has to be immediately confirmed by a local administrative court.

That's one part of the solution; whether it works is left as an exercise to the reader ..

> Finland has the highest rates of detention per 100 000 inhabitants, about 214 compared with 93 in the UK and 11 in Italy.

Wow, now that is something I have not heard at all despite how frequently I've heard about the Finland housing first approach to drug addiction/homelessness. Thank you for the reading topic!

EDIT: Where did you get these numbers and what kind of detention do they refer to? I am not finding this 214/100k number anywhere. The prisoner population in Finland seems to be about 50/100k and the pre-trial detention rate is similar (unlike where I live where pre-trial accounts for 80% of detainees due to slow courts)

EDIT 2: Nevermind, I did find psychiatric holds, which I see to be reported as 150/100k which is certainly much much higher than other countries.

Psychiatric hold is a very, very different category from prison.

This is enlightening. Thank you.

[dead]

No one can force them to live in the housing they are provided. Well police might drop them off there. But can't nail the door shut.

They can and they do force them into mental institutions. In other countries the right of individual freedom is considered to be above the right of the government, so these people are homeless on the streets instead.

If you're concerned about abuses of this kind of arrangement, look for example to the Soviet Union, where a person who was against the government was of course mentally ill and put away – because how can you be against the wonderful government?

> They can and they do force them into mental institutions.

Okay, but this thread is about homeless housing.

Forcing someone into a mental institution means they are housed. Many (numbers wise, I have no idea what %) of the homeless in the US refuse all government help. In the US if you refuse help and have not committed a serious crime the government cannot force you to get help.

I have known a few paranoid schizophrenic people in my life. They needed help, but refused all attempts to get it to them. One eventually did get help - but only because he committed a felony and his condition was obvious enough that the court forced an insanity plea on him.

While the above sounds awful, it could be worse. The US used to have a lot of institutions and force people into them all the time. Abuse was common - it is debatable if freezing to death on the streets is worse than the institutions of old - most homeless don't freeze to death (though it happens). The right answer is reform the institutions, but I don't know how you do that.

How can you not understand?

Homeless who are mentally ill -> Forcefully put into institutions

Homeless who are drug addicts -> Forcefully put into institutions

Homeless who are criminals -> Forcefully put into jail or prison

How many homeless do you have left after that? The majority of homeless people in any place in the world has one or more of the above problems. Why would anybody be homeless if they didn't? Except for a short time during a crisis.

The point is that this is a big piece of the puzzle of why “Housing First” does not seem to fully solve homelessness in other places that try it. Often people speculate that it’s because the policy is being applied incorrectly. But if there’s some people with mental illnesses that make it impossible to house them normally, and Finland helps them through an entirely different program, that could explain the gap.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say "they don't force them".

you mean like in the US’ west coast cities? favelas aren’t normal or a baseline for societal cooperation

Buried in the last time we discussed this phenomenom [1][2] is the reality of the Finnish policy towards homelessness.

Like in the US, "homelessness" as in "poor or unlucky people who find themselves without a residence" is practically a nonexistent problem. The real problem is the mentally ill or drug addicted people frankly being a public nuisance.

Finland has tried to sell their strategy as one of providing housing, but that masks the actual reality. Finland is engaging in large-scale involuntary confinement of mentally ill individuals, and that is responsible for the entirety of their solution.

The current Finnish mental health regime was enabled by a law passed in 1990. Since that point, given the 5.6M population times the 214/100,000 rate [3], we get a total of ~12,000 people committed. The graph in the linked article [4] shows a reduction in homelessness from about 17,000 to about 4,000, a reduction of approximately 13,000 people.

So all but a tiny fraction of the homeless population was not miraculously housed; they were put involuntarily into mental hospitals. While I hope that Finnish mental health facilities are humane and the inmates are well cared for, historically this has almost never been the case -- other agencies claim credit for reducing homelessness and eventually funding dries up and the conditions worsen in the facilities because the problem doesn't seem urgent.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42656711

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42683898

[3] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychiatric-bulletin...

[4] https://oecdecoscope.blog/2021/12/13/finlands-zero-homeless-...

Perhaps it is time for K-12 education to include modules on how to avoid homelessness in your future. Western democracies tend to be rather laissez-faire about drug use, for example, but surely there is a strong correlation between drug use and future homelessness. In California, where I live, the state spends large sums of money to discourage smoking, but little is done to discourage the use of recreational drugs.

The American Enterprise Institute published a notecard-sized piece they call the "success sequence", which I think would fit your bill. [1]

1. Finish high school.

2. Get (and keep) a full-time job once you finish school.

3. Get married before you have children (if you have children).

Their analysis concluded that 97% of millennials in the US who follow this three step sequence are not poor by the time they reach 31 or so.

There isn't anything specific in that sequence about drugs, but I imagine the subgroups for whom drug use would be problematic would also find it hard to follow that sequence while using them.

[1]: https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/IFS-Millennia...

It seems more descriptive than prescriptive. I am sure it is true, but it seems hardly useful.

It's like saying "we finally found the success sequence for breaking into upper middle class in three easy steps: 1) get a high paying job, 2) get raises every year matching or exceeding inflation , 3) avoid layoffs". Or the good old-fashioned advice for becoming rich: "buy low, sell high".

These are all 100% true, but also 100% useless.

To say it is 100% useless would be to say that the moral training of children is useless. You're not really that cynical, are you?

Maybe they are confusing cause and effect there.

Many of the current homeless within, say, the U.S. would have come of age following "Just Say No", the War on (some) Drugs, and DARE programmes. Casual survey would say effectiveness was limited.

If you're looking for a policy angle, I'd suggest one more conducive to providing more housing and stable incomes.

Most people that use drugs do not suffer homelessness. They experience no social problems at all.

Even if there was a correlation, why do you assume there is a causation?

Well, let A be the conditional probability that one becomes homeless given that he uses recreational drugs. Let B be the conditional probability that one becomes homeless if he doesn't use recreational drugs. If A does not turn out to be significantly larger than B, then my understanding is incorrect.

Can anyone in Finland confirm? I'm curious about

A) number of homeless today vs 10 years ago

B) waiting time for one of these apartments

c) acceptance and integration of these people in the local community

The title should mention this is from 2020

Here is last-ever homeless abode from 2005 Helsinki. Totally habitable, warm and dry, whatever the weather. Beats any government shelter, especially those where sobriety is enforced. https://photos.app.goo.gl/MqwRWdgkN0oynyTw1

>Those affected by homelessness receive a small apartment and counselling – without any preconditions.

That photo doesn't look like it would beat a small apartment to me.

>The policy applied in Finland is called “HousingFirst”. It reverses conventional homeless aid. More commonly, those affected are expected to look for a job and free themselves from their psychological problems or addictions.

That quote seems to me to say that people are given housing without a sobriety requirement.

I mean, New York, including NYC, has a right to shelter law that anyone is allowed to get a free bed if they want. There is still rampant homelessness or vagrancies or whatever you want to call it.

A lot of shelters have don't allow drugs or alcohol in them. Many or single sex shelters so people with a partner are excluded. Many don't allow pets and for many people their dog is very important.

If you compare to the west coast, it is not rampant. I just moved from Seattle to NYC and the difference is striking to put it mildly.

Fair. I was checking out jobs in LA and was blown away. Was the primary reason I passed on my offers there. Also I didn’t want to give up my public transit

It seems like this is free housing, but near the end it says that some people don't manage to pay the rent? Does anyone know if this is free or not?

Basically most of the cases end up so that municipal entities are those providing social housing. And on other side they are also last resort welfare. Generally welfare payments for housing and cost of living is paid directly to accounts of those receiving benefits, but in small number of cases who can not manage their own money it is paid directly from welfare to municipal(more rarely private was these people have really screwed up credit) social housing.

If it's similar to the UK they will get the money for the rent paid to them from the govt, but they have to pay it to the "landlord". In the UK some people can be eligible for direct rent payments to landlords.

Hmm, the article says the landlord is the NGO (unless I've misunderstood). Maybe it's as you say, though.

You pay rent. You get the money to pay the rent from social security benefits.

There's a token rent linked to income.

I genuinely think that the anti-Europe sentiment in the current US government and libertarian spaces is because European countries manage to do this and more, and remain competitive in the global economy, while the US tells its citizens it "can't afford" public healthcare or student loan relief.

Of course it is. It’s the same reason the media touts the horror stories of lengthy wait times for public healthcare, while ignoring the fact that having the theoretical choice without the means is worse.

Economic growth in Europe has stalled since the 2008 financial crisis and the EU is falling behind the US in terms of GDP. Public healthcare systems are under pressure because of aging population and increasing difficulty to finance them because of those economic issues.

But apart from that it is "competitive"...

Flip side is that the US are much richer so could afford to have much more then they have now.

>the anti-Europe sentiment in the current US government and libertarian spaces

I haven't seen this at all. Europe is generally seen as our closest ally.

Giving homeless people homes reduces homelessness.

In other news, giving thirsty people drinks reduces the amount of thirsty people.

Meanwhile in USA we're approaching nearly 1000 BILLIONAIRES in the country

(Billionaires have a MILLION dollars per MONTH of income, PER MONTH FOR LIFE)

yet people around here sleeping in the woods and cemeteries

exponentially more sleeping in their cars thinking it will only be for a few weeks (turns into years real quick)

The social and morale compass of the US is not comparable. Which also reflects in politics, obviously.

Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do to enrich billionaires further.

"AGI" will also make this even worse. It is a scam.

No response yet from the guy who shows up in these “guaranteed housing” threads to claim everyday people will stop paying rent and voluntarily live in the projects?

Must still be asleep on the West coast… Rise and grind, my dude!

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Cue a flood of people euphemistically saying this is because it is a "small, homogenous" country