Finland’s successful approach to ending homelessness catches eye of Quebec City
Quebec City Mayor Bruno Marchand has suggested that the solution to the crisis may be a Finnish model, which is a 'housing first' approach that aims to give everyone a home.
I am reading a book on supporting universal basic income, and it provided all examples of the times when the homeless were provided unconditional income and a home. Every cities in the world that did this have been successful in eliminating homelessness.
This is not a Finnish model, it's common sense.
What's the name of the book?
"Utopia for Realists"
has suggested that the solution to the crisis may be a Finnish model, which is a 'housing first' approach that aims to give everyone a home.
Fixing homelessness by giving people a home! I'm not sure that's going to work.....facepalm
If you go on reddit threads for topics like this you will always see some people echoing conservative think tank talking points like how homeless people are homeless because of their own not only shortcomings but also volition. They will say that homeless people being put into homes will trash the place and leave for the streets despite every housing first experiment showing a very good sticking rate. In fact one dude is doing this in this very thread.
Almost every developed country has the resources to solve the homelessness "problem" for good. The problem is the lack of political will. The property owning parasite class are scared of what easily available homes will do to property prices. The employers are scared labour not being docile without the threat of homelessness. It's just vampires all the way down profiting from keeping people destitute and on the streets.
You're absolutely right, to add a bit more depth to the conversation, providing a home is the first step. Those homes need to be dispersed throughout a whole community so no single neighborhood has to handle the influx. As opposed to project housing. They need to be near services like welfare, public transportation, food banks, etc, and occupational opportunities to break the cycle of poverty. In many places that means a job but it doesn't necessarily have to be.
I think the cause of all this is simple, a system where ultimately your only value is the wealth you generate instead of valuing the person we all are. I also think that the solution will be complicated. I've been fooled too many times by the simple solution to fall for it here.
If you go on reddit
You just need to go 5 posts from yours in this very thread to find one saying "homeless people didn't agreed to the rules". And one post beside yours "homeless will flock from all over the world".
Downvote the shit out of me, but explain how this works in the above case where one (let's even expand it a bit and say) nation chooses to do this, and everyone homeless around the world with the means to make the journey, decides to head down there and enter the country by whatever means? We're not talking about a taxpayer base, just a whole ton of people that want homes, and of course some small subset of those people that want free homes. People seems to scoff at the "it's a complex problem" thing because they don't think of the solution to homelessness within the confines of reality.
Im curious how you think they get to these nations, and you know theres immigration policy, you cant just move somewhere and take a house, you'll get deported back
How is housing a domestic homeless person and different from housing an immigrant, from a national economics point of view? It's not like the former paid any taxes so far.
I'm curious if this is what happened in Finland?
It’s almost like the only solution is to de commodify housing everywhere, globally, and provide everyone shelter because it’s a human right and so clearly works to fix many mental health problems.
It’s almost like C A P I T A L I S M does not inherently provide a good living standard to everyone, and allows the very wealthiest to pit us against each other in a rat race to the bottom. “Decommodification means someone will take your house!” No. It means you’ll always have a place to live and enough housing will be built to support the entire population. It means that billionaires will have to give up their extra homes.
Every homeless around the world with the means to make the journey... Is a number thats only irrelevantly larger than 0
Unfortunately as I expected, the replies are just more questions.
But this is just common sense?
I don't necessarily disagree, but why isn't it widely adopted then?
It really should be catching the eye of all cities / countries with large homeless issues.
The same people who say give them homes don't want to pay for it
The program has actually SAVED money, so this should be enough incentive for taxpayers to want to support it.
Never have I seen so many people with so many unworkable solutions to a problem take so long to come to the most obvious solution. Just give people homes. Don’t let people die on the street, it’s inhumane.
Yeah but... capitalism?
Sounds simple. But Finland is an insular society and has different social issues.
In my city, there was a push to put social housing in place, as most of the local homeless population lacked the skills to maintain a house by themselves. Mental illness and addiction together affect a very large part of the homeless population.
The result was that some people who sorely needed housing got some, and a lot of people refused to take part because they didn’t want to agree to other people’s rules.
And then the social housing attracted people from nearby communities so that it’s now full, but the majority of the local homeless from before the project started are still homeless.
Just saying that “just give everyone a home” may sound simple, but in reality is very complex.
Problem, the homes are getting full. The solution: Build more homes? Too complex.
What you’re describing is not “just give everyone a home”, so I’m not surprised it didn’t work.
Homeless in Finland are pretty much all addicts or people with mental illness. The problem is 100% same here than other developed nations.
What city was this that tried housing first and it didn’t work? I’m interested in reading the details