[HN Gopher] Finland has slashed homelessness; the rest of Europe...
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Finland has slashed homelessness; the rest of Europe is failing
Author : ashergill
Score : 161 points
Date : 2021-01-25 14:13 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| jswizzy wrote:
| Anyone who thinks that just giving the homeless shelter fixes the
| problem doesn't understand the problem to begin with.
| ashcza wrote:
| I highly recommend listening to 99 Percent Invisible's new 5
| part series on homelessness in America. Saying shelter doesn't
| fix the problem is misleading, as it is typically a required
| component to solving other issues that person is facing.
|
| https://99percentinvisible.org/need/
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The evidence, from Utah (Salt Lake City also attempted and was
| somewhat successful with Housing First) to Finland says
| otherwise. Housing the homeless _is cheaper_ and gets them
| stability to address the core issues (addiction, job placement,
| etc) with social services (which is incredibly difficult when
| folks are transient and sleeping rough).
|
| With that said:
|
| > Meanwhile, illegal immigration creates a homeless population
| many countries are unwilling to house. That is sabotaging the
| shift to housing first.
|
| You can't house everyone who comes to your country with no
| means to support themselves. Resources are finite.
| lostcolony wrote:
| That same issue applies to different states. It always makes
| me roll my eyes when conservative pundits point to blue
| states' homelessness as a reason why socially liberal
| policies fail; no, but social policies will attract people
| needing them from anywhere accessible that doesn't have those
| policies. Hence why it needs to be done at a national level.
| Eridrus wrote:
| Not to say the general approach is bad, but I think the cost
| side is overplayed. It depends a lot on what the
| cost/structure of your existing response is, and critically,
| whether you can actually realize any savings after the shift.
| Both because it is hard to reduce staffing/infrastructure,
| but also because many costs are not actually born directly by
| the city (eg medical costs are born by the hospitals).
| [deleted]
| cheph wrote:
| > Not to say the general approach is bad, but I think the
| cost side is overplayed.
|
| Not sure why I, as an immigrant to Europe myself, should
| pay cover the cost for illegal aliens while I cannot
| provide properly for my own relatives in my home country.
| It is unconscionable.
| Eridrus wrote:
| We live in an imperfect world with many constraints and
| trade-offs. Why did you have to emigrate, while others
| were already born into lucky countries? Why are some
| people denied the right to emigrate?
|
| Life is various shades of unfair and we're more likely to
| make a better world if we optimize for well being rather
| than fairness (of which there are multiple competing and
| contradictory definitions).
| cheph wrote:
| > Why did you have to emigrate, while others were already
| born into lucky countries?
|
| A lot of people worked very hard to make the place I
| immigrated from the place it is today, most of them are
| still there. No luck about it.
|
| > Why are some people denied the right to emigrate?
|
| As far as I know all EU countries give everyone equal
| rights to immigrate. Maybe you should check your facts.
|
| > Life is various shades of unfair and we're more likely
| to make a better world if we optimize for well being
| rather than fairness
|
| How exactly is it optimizing for well being to ignore the
| corruption, injustice and bad governance in Africa?
|
| Europeans should open their eyes, the world is collapsing
| around them while they sign treaties with China which is
| actively destroying Africa while committing genocide in
| their own country - and Europe does not care. Russia is
| busy oppressing their own people and it's neighbors while
| Germany is building a pipeline to them. This behaviour of
| Europe is pathetic cowardice, grow a backbone. Spending
| my tax money on illegal immigrants does not make the
| world fairer.
| fredgrott wrote:
| it's 3 areas: -income inequality -low cost housing supplies
| -mental health -job inequality
|
| Finland seems to be tackling some of the others in some fashion
| via their approach to democratic socialism government
| initiatives.
| jedimastert wrote:
| No, but it's almost impossible to get out of homelessness
| without it. It's really hard to do anything more with your day
| if you have to spend most of it making sure you have enough
| calories and a "safe" place to sleep.
|
| This doesn't fix everything, but there is a not-as-small-as-
| you-might-think subset of people for whom the only reason they
| continue to be homeless is they can't do anything other than
| figure out what they're gonna eat that day
| giantg2 wrote:
| "for whom the only reason they continue to be homeless is
| they can't do anything other than figure out what they're
| gonna eat that day"
|
| I'm not sure I believe this. Why did they become homeless in
| first place? With most there is an underlying issue. It might
| be that they are a felon, addict, or other medical issue.
| It's not that hard to ask for a job while also asking for
| money or food. Especially if you're already going to food
| establishment dumpster or begging outside of them.
|
| The person I know the best who homeless had a combination of
| issues. He was in a coma and lost his job. He was also
| required to pay child support and the bank account ran dry
| during that time. A warrant was issued and he was arrested.
| You can't find any "good" jobs with a record and warrants
| being issued. He basically gave up on the system and finds it
| easier to just let family support him.
| jedimastert wrote:
| > Why did they become homeless in first place?
|
| I think you are vastly underestimating how easy it is to go
| from poor to homeless. There was a ~3 year period of my
| life where all it would have taken is one bad month. Just
| one. And it wasn't for lack of trying, or because of
| laziness or mental illness. Just real bad luck and starting
| out in a not-great place within a not-great system.
|
| Homelessness is a hole that is easy to fall into and damn
| hard to crawl out of, and not to be insensitive but the
| assumptions you're making are part of the problem.
|
| When you assume that homelessness is fundamentally caused
| by a fault in the person, that person is basically dammed
| to stay homeless. The things you say here are the same
| reasons people give to not hire a homeless person. "They
| must either be crazy or lazy, neither of which is an
| employee I want".
|
| That's not to mention the fact that there are a surprising
| number of homeless people that _do_ have jobs, but just don
| 't make enough money to save up to get anything better
| (which, yes, is a failing of the system). Most people don't
| realize this if they haven't lived it, but being poor is
| _very expensive_.
|
| > He basically gave up on the system and finds it easier to
| just let family support him.
|
| Some people don't have a family that could support another
| person.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "When you assume that homelessness is fundamentally
| caused by a fault in the person, "
|
| When did I say that? The stuff I listed, like addiction,
| other medical issues, and the failings of the system
| aren't personal faults.
|
| "I think you are vastly underestimating how easy it is to
| go from poor to homeless."
|
| I've made no such claim. My claim is that finding food is
| probably not the main problem keeping homeless people
| homeless. You're talking about poor -> homeless, I'm
| talking about other direction of homeless -> poor (in
| response to the parent comment). Food may be a component,
| but I think it's more likely issues in the system like
| not hiring people with a record, medical or addiction
| issues, or just not being able to afford housing due to
| lack of good employment, property taxes. These are quite
| expensive compared to food and lack the level of charity
| and government support that is given to food (SNAP, WIC,
| food pantries, etc), not to mention individuals are more
| likely to give someone a meal than a place to stay or a
| job.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| There are a lot of reasons to be homeless and not want to stay
| in a homeless shelter. A big one is security. When I was
| homeless and learning to code, I couldn't afford to replace my
| laptop. People told me that if I stayed in a homeless shelter,
| there was a good chance my laptop would be stolen. I chose not
| to stay in one for that reason alone.
|
| A few years later, I offered to let a homeless coding student
| stay with me for a couple weeks while she got housing lined up.
| She didn't have one of her own, so I gave her my old MacBook
| Air. She made arrangements to stay in a shelter, left my place,
| and her laptop was stolen within a week.
|
| Safety & security matter, and any solution that is going to
| effectively address homelessness needs to take this into
| account.
| dbattaglia wrote:
| That's kind of a strong statement to make without some
| explanation. I'm curious, what is the core of the problem you
| are referencing that free shelter doesn't "fix"? Mental health,
| addiction, something else entirely?
| porb121 wrote:
| There is outstanding evidence that giving the homeless shelter
| does in fact fix the problem.
|
| https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H9oD3zeBPua7r5wFoHVrMZmmiqK...
| throwaway2a02 wrote:
| Could you be a bit more specific? People end up homeless
| because they are cut from society, have no social support to
| fall back to, no way of supporting themselves. Most commonly
| they get to that situation due to mental illness and
| addiction/substance abuse is an ever-present comorbidity with
| that.
|
| But the fact is, not having a shelter, running water, a way to
| cover their basic needs is what amplifies their suffering and
| dispairs to level where they simply can't get back on their
| feet. They can't get a job if you smell, your clothes are dirty
| and you're desperate and hungry. A shelter is a necessary
| condition I think for getting out of that cycle, and thus a
| very important first step.
| exDM69 wrote:
| The model used in Finland is anything but "just giving the
| homeless a shelter". It's accompanied by a lot of social work,
| together with medical, mental and substance abuse care.
|
| The reason for providing housing (not just a shelter, although
| those exist too) is that social work and care are ineffective
| when a person is homeless. When someone spends all their energy
| on staying warm, clean, safe and fed, they are unable to help
| themselves to a better life.
|
| Providing housing was found to be more effective than adding
| the same amount of funding to social and medical programs.
|
| Extensive research has been done with this, I'm sure you can
| find some in English language too if you find the article too
| hard to believe.
| usr1106 wrote:
| 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.
| eulenteufel wrote:
| I come from a German town with ~25.000 People, far away from
| any major city and there definitely are homeless people. It's
| not a lot in comparison to big cities like Berlin, but they do
| exist.
| Cloudef wrote:
| 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)
| jeofken wrote:
| To be fair to the reputation of Romanians on HN, the beggars
| and squatters around Finland, Norway, and Sweden are not ethnic
| Romanians even if they often are born there, but come from the
| Zigeuner/Gypsy/Roma people.
| [deleted]
| ido wrote:
| Investigating how Romanians often think and talk about the
| Roma people in their country may be more harmful to their
| reputation than thinking the beggars are non-Roma Romanians.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Things are more complicated than that. Romania is home to
| more than one Roma people. The Roma who go to Finland for
| organized begging are almost exclusively from the south of
| the country. They can actually seem quite foreign to
| Romanians from e.g. parts of Transylvania. There, the local
| Roma are often associated with different ways of making a
| living than begging, and speak a different set of languages
| preferentially. Some ethnic Romanians from Transylvania may
| be very tolerant about their local Roma community, but feel
| that those particular Roma people from particular counties
| are ruining things for everyone. Even Transylvanian Roma
| people can feel that way about the Roma from elsewhere.
| [deleted]
| oblio wrote:
| I don't think it's fair to single us out, though. This
| social problem, integration, is present in almost exactly
| the same way in Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Serbia. To a
| lesser degree it's also present in Spain from what I know.
|
| It's far from a simple problem. As the Finns are
| discovering.
| ido wrote:
| True, this is widespread and not unique to Romania.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Finland is home to a centuries-old Roma community that
| arrived via Sweden. They too are seen as abusing social
| services and not integrating, the same general
| stereotypes as in southern Europe. (Members of this
| community can often be identified in Helsinki from their
| distinctive clothing, the women wear traditional skirts.)
|
| So, Finns are already aware that Roma populations often
| live in tension with the major ethnicity of a country.
| However, the confusion about the ethnic makeup of Romania
| along with other Balkan countries persists due to the
| coincidentally similar names for these ethnicities, and
| lack of interest among the Finnish population about
| educating themselves about a region that seems far away
| and to which very few go to on holiday.
| oblio wrote:
| True. I checked and Helsinki is as far from Munich as it
| is from Bucharest, to choose a semi-random comparison
| point.
|
| I guess perception will shift as these regions become
| more touristic.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| I have read stories about almost any European country wherein
| it is claimed that homelessness is a choice, and that there are
| facilities that the homeless aren't utilizing, because they
| praefer to the homeless or are plain stupid.
|
| In many of those cases the actual situation is more complicated
| and the actual protocol is so involved and complicated that it
| is very hard for a homeless man to research.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I find it almost incomprehensible the first time sometimes
| told me (in the UK) they were going to sleep on the street
| because the shelter didn't allow drugs. I don't think they
| were a particularly special case.
|
| Victims of circumstance to some extent, but not stupid nor
| really living their preferred life I'd wager.
|
| I suspect you need a stable caring society for a couple of
| generations and still there will be some outliers. A worthy
| cause to address though.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| Many homeless reject shelters because they would have to give
| up much of their personal possessions, can't have a pet, live
| under tight restrictions, and deal with theft from other
| homeless people in the shelter.
|
| Giving people small, secure apartments would solve many of
| these issues along with many emergency hospital visits and
| many other issues.
| malcolmhere wrote:
| Many shelters in the US are run be religious organizations
| and discriminate against gay people, too. This is
| particularly a problem because LGBTQ make up a sizeable
| chunk of homeless youth (think: kids getting kicked out by
| parents).
| eznzt wrote:
| What is your source for that? Also, how do those shelters
| know the guy is gay? They have gaydars at the entrance?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| There are absolutely _some_ homeless people who choose to
| reject housing assistance and shelter programs. I know
| because I did some volunteering to help the homeless and met
| a handful of individuals that were happy to accept donations
| but refused to be committed to any program. They refused to
| have rules imposed on them by the shelters and preferred the
| freedom of doing as they please. One of these individuals has
| been homeless since the late 80 's and seems quite content
| with his lifestyle. I'm not claiming this is typical, but
| there are certainly more people like him out there.
| 1024core wrote:
| > Such people are very rare in Finland in reality however,
|
| Given the severity of Finnish winters, I'm not surprised.
|
| Try a similar approach in, say, Hawaii or the Bahamas, and see
| how many homeless you'll see roaming around.
| missedthecue wrote:
| We have real life data. Cities in California are spending
| north of $50,000 a year per homeless person (higher than
| finland's median income!) and the problem is still as bad as
| ever. The climate is also dry and warm 330 days a year.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| With that kind of spending, how can it be that homeless
| people have trouble finding shelters? Sounds like a lot of
| that money is going to middlemen and outsourcing companies
| than the actual people that need it.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Unless things changed since I last looked, that number is
| obtained by taking the budget and dividing by the number
| of people still homeless.
|
| So, for instance, if you had 100 potholes and paid $1
| million to fix 99 of them, leaving a single pothole, this
| statistic would read: you spent $1 million per pothole.
| eindiran wrote:
| You can use other metrics (eg the NHIP count[0]), but
| they point to the same thing. Under the NHIP count
| metric, SF is doing better than most metropolitan areas
| in the US, but even with huge spending on the problem,
| the number of homeless people continues to rise year
| after year. The per-capita count of number of
| successfully sheltered homeless people in SF (per city
| resident) is the highest in the country, but even still,
| I see dozens of completely unsheltered people walking to
| Bart from my apartment.
|
| Eg Chicago winters are very hard to live through if you
| don't have stable access to warm housing, and the West
| coast offers a reprieve from that.
|
| [0] https://sf.curbed.com/2020/3/4/21152501/san-
| francisco-homele...
| jandrese wrote:
| I wonder if any of the factor is that affordable housing
| in SF is extremely difficult to find? Especially if you
| don't have access to a vehicle for commutes and have to
| find housing in an area well served by public transit?
| danielheath wrote:
| Lots of reasons. A short list includes:
|
| * Shelters not allowing pets - many would rather remain
| homeless than give up their dog * Shelters not allowing
| drugs * Social services officers looking too much like
| cops (many homeless have had bad enough experiences with
| cops to keep them away from anyone cop-like) * Spending
| on 'discomfort' measures (eg deliberately-hostile
| architecture to discourage people from being homeless) *
| Effective mitigations being politically unpopular.
|
| For instance: cold-calling people who have just separated
| from their spouse to offer counseling substantially
| reduces the number of people you have to lift out of
| homelessness at very little cost. However, "free therapy"
| is a wildly unpopular suggestion in the USA.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| 99 Percent Invisible had a great episode on hostile urban
| architecture:
| https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/unpleasant-design-
| hos...
| ACow_Adonis wrote:
| except we also have additional data from overseas.
| Australia has comparatively mild winters and my family is
| originally from Queensland where some of the "worst" towns
| for unemployment and disadvantage clearly have a bit of a
| "paradise" effect (that is to say, if you're going to live
| on unemployment, you might as well live where there's good
| weather, fishing and swimming year round and prices are a
| bit cheaper than the urban centres).
|
| Australia does provide public housing, but I'll take a stab
| and say it's cut back from its peak amount.
|
| When you travel through California (and the US in general),
| i'd estimate homelessness and poverty to be at least an
| order of magnitude worse in the US (I want to hesitate to
| say two orders of magnitude worse) compared to anything I
| see at home. Clearly there's something about society and/or
| the structure of social safety nets that has a real and
| measurable effect on poverty and homelessness overall.
|
| / before someone jumps onto Google to try to disprove me:
| I've been to both countries (several times in fact), and
| worked with both homelessness and official national
| statistics. One of the things internet pundits
| misunderstand is the definition and measures of
| homelessness/poverty between the two countries: I think my
| estimate is pretty fair napkin math, it might be a 4 or 5
| multiple instead, but I think we're quibbling by that
| point.
| benlm wrote:
| https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/voices/culture/article/2017
| /07...
|
| "Homelessness then, in Australia, is more than lacking a
| roof over your head, it is also the absence of those
| features associated with "home": permanence, security,
| and the freedom to come and go."
|
| "If the world were to accept Australia's definition and
| include everyone with inadequate shelter, the number
| would exceed 1.6 billion - roughly 20 percent of the
| population. Also excluded from official figures are the
| world's 65 million displaced refugees in temporary
| accommodation."
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It sounds like you're aware that, according to official
| statistics, homelessness is higher per capita in
| Australia than in California or the US as a whole. I'm
| open to the idea that this might be due to definitional
| or measurement problems, but you've gotta explain what
| those problems are, not just assert that they must exist.
|
| The obvious alternative explanation is that Americans
| might simply be less tolerant of measures to decrease the
| visibility of homeless.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| This is what I thought... I suppose living on the street in
| such a climate can be deadly even. Definitely reduce life
| expectancy.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It is. Same in Canada. Typically in April a number of
| bodies turn up that were buried in snowbanks.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I lived in Helsinki for a while. It's not a great place to be
| homeless because despite recently mild winters, it's just not a
| nice place to be living outside when most of the year it can
| drop to freezing temperatures (or well below) at night. Having
| people on the street freezing to death in the middle of the
| winter is not something that is very practical. And of course
| the whole system ensures that people are mostly taken care off
| regardless of their issues (alcohol, drugs, psychological
| issues, etc.). Food, shelter, medical care etc. are easily
| accessible.
| iSnow wrote:
| >because they prefer to get drunk instead of spending it on
| food and rent.
|
| After a certain point, alcoholism is no longer a choice or
| preference, it's a debilitating disease. And before that point,
| it's frequently self-medication for untreated mental problems.
| Consider this: alcohol is the only mood-elevating drug sold
| freely, of course a percentage people will jump on it if they
| have massive problems.
|
| Not going to criticize the Finnish system as I know nothing
| about it, but probably the only way to get to those people is
| give them homes, food and clothing and try (again and again) to
| get them to reduce alcohol intake and/or get psychiatric
| treatment - and accept you won't be able to get all of them to
| accept that.
| bzb6 wrote:
| They already have all of that. The next step is forcing them,
| which is unpalatable as you can imagine.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Mood-elevating? Isn't it the opposite.
|
| Interestingly, perhaps, I rather feel it might only be
| poverty - the need to afford food instead - that's kept me
| from affording enough alcohol to abuse. I'm in a much better
| place now.
|
| The point is that "give poor people food, clothing, and a
| home" is not an answer in general. One needs people who are
| equipped and who care for you ... finding people who actually
| care is beyond democratic governance.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Alcohol is a central nervous depressant, but its affect on
| mood varies wildly from person to person and instance to
| instance.
| Delk wrote:
| While there's truth to that, it's worth noting that most of
| those homeless people are suffering from ill mental health
| and/or substance dependence.
|
| You make it sound like they just shrugged and decided that
| that's the life they want, but I don't think that's how people
| end up homeless. There are decisions involved, but they're
| probably not quite as voluntary as that.
| Cloudef wrote:
| Those people are given help, but if they refuse that, there's
| nothing you can really do. People are only forced if they
| start being dangerous to other people.
| justin66 wrote:
| > People are only forced if they start being dangerous to
| other people.
|
| I assume this isn't really true, and that the standard in
| Finland is that they're institutionalized if they're a
| danger to other people _or themselves._ The latter part is
| tricky, though. A person who is clearly in danger of
| killing themselves with a razor blade can be committed. A
| person who is in danger of drinking themselves to death on
| the sidewalk, perhaps not.
| wsinks wrote:
| For the record, welcome to San Francisco. (a joke, it's the
| similar here)
| Delk wrote:
| I'm not saying you can necessarily do anything; in some
| cases you can't. I'm just saying that things might not be
| under those people's voluntary control and decision-making
| either once mental health issues or substance abuse
| problems go far enough.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I'm not familiar with Finland but to those people have
| access to mental health services? In the US, a lot of folks
| who are addicted to drugs and alcohol are written off as
| moral failures when in reality, the drugs and alcohol are
| simply used to self medicate and numb the pain of their
| lives.
|
| I'm not saying there shouldn't be _any_ accountability for
| addicts, but the fact that we completely write them off as
| a society says more about us than it does about them.
| Cloudef wrote:
| Yes, they have access to mental health services, and even
| rehabilitation services, but again only if you agree to
| it.
| Delk wrote:
| They do have access, at least in theory and to some of
| the services.
|
| But when people do become homeless in Finland, their
| problems usually run quite deep already, and they may
| just be quite difficult to help.
|
| I don't know if this is true but I've understood that in
| the U.S. homelessness might more often be a result of
| just financial downfall, while in Finland homelessness is
| very strongly connected to mental illness, substance
| dependence, or both [1]. Those people have pretty much
| lost control of having a normal life, or perhaps they
| never had one. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be
| helped, but it does mean helping them is likely to be an
| uphill battle.
|
| Drug addiction does get judged harshly by the society in
| general; alcohol abuse is likely to be swept under the
| rug unless it causes obvious problems e.g. at work, but
| if it does, it gets judged as well, although not quite as
| harshly as drug abuse. I'd expect most social workers and
| medical professionals who work with the homeless to know
| better than to see addiction as just a moral failure,
| though, so the problem may rather be that it's quite
| difficult to treat people who have a multitude of
| problems that run deep. Health care professionals might
| be wary of committing limited public resources in cases
| if they don't expect it to bear fruit, so the mental
| health services might be limited to emergency care and
| general assistance by social workers.
|
| I'm not intimately familiar with how those services work,
| though, so they might be more extensive than I think.
|
| [1] That is, at least among the native population;
| another visible group of homeless are poor immigrants
| living in the streets. They probably just wanted a better
| life in a richer country or something, and their reasons
| for vagrancy are probably different.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| In the US, most circumstances resulting in homelessness
| are imminently solvable.
|
| However, there is little community will to address those
| circumstance and a great deal of political pressure
| against aiding vulnerable adults.
|
| To see strong examples political resistance, suggest
| moving folks in prison for low-level, mentally ill
| related crimes into in-patient facilities - redirecting
| per-person funding from prison budgets to pay for their
| care.
| watwut wrote:
| Some mental issues make you basically unwilling to accept
| that you have issues. And plus, we can't really fix
| mental health. It is not like everything would be
| curable.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| > People are only forced if they start being dangerous to
| other people
|
| Really this definition needs to be more strict. In San
| Francisco, you could be drugged up, throw needles and
| broken alcohol bottles on the street, openly defecate, and
| this behavior is still considered not dangerous.
|
| A better way to deal with this is to allow people to reject
| welfare, but if they do, they still need to live as a
| decent member of the society. No littering, no public
| nuisance (shouting, spitting, harassing people),
| maintaining hygiene (no public urination/defecation, no
| risk of disease transmission etc.), no permanent
| encroachment of public property and so forth. Otherwise, it
| just ends up in a slippery slope that creates a sinkhole of
| billions of dollars in costs to the economy, at the expense
| of others.
| deadbunny wrote:
| > A better way to deal with this is to allow people to
| reject welfare, but if they do, they still need to live
| as a decent member of the society.
|
| And if they refuse to "live as a decent member of
| society"?
| core-questions wrote:
| This is the hardest question.
|
| I make a point of talking to people across the political
| spectrum and I have heard all kinds of answers, from
| things which are basically "stick them in camps" (from
| both left and right-wing people!) to "ignore them" to
| various rehabilitation approaches.
|
| My view is that we should step back, and consider what it
| is that we, the folks who are the so-called decent
| members of society, want.
|
| The city I live in has a big decaying area next to the
| downtown core, like many cities of a million or more do
| these days. It waxes and wanes, right now in particular
| in the wake of Covid it's very bad. Crime, needles,
| sketchy people, it's horrible. The thing is, these are
| neighbourhoods that should be nice; they should be full
| of young families living a walkable distance from
| downtown, not crackheads and needles.
|
| I get that, as decent human beings, we owe each other a
| fundamental level of dignity. I am fine with efforts to
| feed, clothe, and house those who cannot do it
| themselves. But why does this need to extend to giving
| them a huge swathe of land, land that is potentially much
| nicer than any place I will ever live in, for them to
| ruin?
|
| But what can we do - lock them up? Restrict their
| fundamental freedoms? Can we _really_ just ignore them
| and accept sketchy, scary, crime-ridden cities?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Then take them out of society. Same as any other person
| who persistently refuses to obey laws.
| deadbunny wrote:
| From the GP:
|
| > Otherwise, it just ends up in a slippery slope that
| creates a sinkhole of billions of dollars in costs to the
| economy, at the expense of others.
|
| So given that is it better to try and help them
| reintegrate with society or do we just lock them up and
| forget about them? Or worse?
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| You could try to prevent people from reaching such state in
| the first place, for future occurrences.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| And still allow them the civil liberties expected in a
| democracy? I'm honestly not sure that's possible. Self-
| destruction seems almost like a human right.
| teekert wrote:
| It's pretty much the same in the Netherlands, given enough
| issues and after failing to get you back to work you
| basically land in a situation where the state pays for your
| existence though direct money and a lot of subsidies (ie
| when the stress of work cause a relapse in your drinking
| habits and it happened time and time again over the past 10
| years).
|
| It is thus very difficult to understand why there are
| homeless people. But I once went (with work) on a trip with
| a homeless person (this is a charity, you pay and homeless
| people take you one trip and talk about their lives). And
| indeed the people on the streets always have psychological
| issues. Extreme ADHD, abused as a child, depression but
| just a little bit to afraid to die to really end it. If
| they want help it is there, always. Homeless shelters,
| places to get a postal address for free to apply for
| subsidies and minimal social income etc. But some just go
| crazy while waiting or go crazy while sleeping with other
| people in one room. Or they walk barefoot in the winter
| until their feet are so rotten that they can't walk
| anymore, too afraid to get help because they believe help
| means they will be abused again or mind altered or
| something strange. Most of them are constantly afraid and
| not a danger to others, more like very shy animals afraid
| of other humans, so they retreat and suffer while their
| fear of death keeps them alive, just barely.
|
| One woman we spoke to had her child murder her other child
| and she just started drinking. How can you help such a
| woman? So much pain.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Exactly, it's not a choice.
|
| Also, I think the current method of making alcohol really
| expensive through levies is not working. It only makes
| homeless addicted people poorer and more likely to turn
| to crime.
|
| The rest of us don't give a shit how much it costs, we
| don't use much of it anyway. The price is never a factor
| in getting addicted or getting off it.
|
| All it is is the government profiteering of people who
| can't help themselves.
| [deleted]
| guerrilla wrote:
| How does that woman carry all the stuff from one city to
| another? Does she take buses and they just wait for her to load
| it all?
| Cloudef wrote:
| She walks with all that luggage. She sets up the luggage in
| queue, and takes the last luggage, brings it to the front,
| and repeats it until she gets to the next town.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Wow, that's a trip. Is there somewhere I can read more
| about this? I'll google translate it if all you got is in
| Finnish but I can read Swedish too.
|
| Edit: Reverse image search tells me her name is Laukku-
| Leena. https://www.iltalehti.fi/kotimaa/a/b225828d-c1b1-40b
| 5-b7b1-a...
| Cloudef wrote:
| Yes, googling laukku-leena will get you some news and
| forums where people discuss her whereabouts. Not sure if
| you can find any non finnish articles however.
| flagrant wrote:
| > 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.
|
| When you posted this hateful nonsense, did you think nobody
| would bring you up on it? Can you provide anything to back up
| this assertion?
| sharpneli wrote:
| How is this hateful nonsense? Every citizen is eligible for
| that support. Do you perhaps live here so you can say it's
| not true?
|
| Sure it's not always perfect, errors in bureaucracy happens
| sometimes but getting social security is the default. If you
| accept it you get a house.
| flagrant wrote:
| Without evidence, he stated that all homeless people in
| Finland are homeless because they would "prefer to get
| drunk". I don't think it's incorrect to describe this as
| hateful, because it's very clearly informed by a bias
| against homeless people rather than any real evidence.
|
| This is the equivalent of jumping into a discussion to say
| that Black people are poor because they "keep buying
| cellphones". It's not a serious intellectual comment, it's
| cloaked hatred.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > it's cloaked hatred.
|
| Homelessness causes suffering which is usually self-
| treated with substance abuse. This is not a hateful
| commentary.
|
| I'm not sure how a blanket characterization equates to
| "hate", when it's a lazy attribution due to indifference.
| Maybe disdain is the appropriate term.
| flagrant wrote:
| It ascribes a characterisation to homeless people (that
| they would prefer to get drunk than have a home) that
| there is simply no evidence for. The comment blames
| homeless people for their own destitution purely based on
| the commenter's preconceived bias against homeless
| people.
| Delk wrote:
| Cloudef's comment might make it seem like it's
| predominantly a voluntary decision by the homeless, and I
| disagree with that. AFAIK most homeless people in Finland
| do have a substance abuse problem, though.
|
| Edit: What actually might make this more interesting is
| that this could be how things are regarding homelessness
| in Western Europe in general, more or less, not just in a
| single country. I mentioned this in another comment, but
| AFAIK living in the streets in Finland, and quite
| possibly in Northern and Western Europe in general, is
| rather strongly connected to mental health issues and
| substance abuse problems. That doesn't mean that the
| homeless should be vilified, as both of those are
| illnesses and largely not a voluntary choice, but it
| could be something that's different about homelessness in
| the U.S. and in Western/Northern Europe.
| sharpneli wrote:
| He said mainly. No all.
|
| You do understand that everyone gets social security as
| money if they need. The problems happen if they are
| unable to use that money to pay the rent. And yes indeed
| the main reason is some sort of intoxicant use, as they
| rather get more stuff than use the money for rent.
|
| Legal debts are also not a reason not to pay rent, as one
| is protected from repaying them when it's about
| essentials. So that doesn't count either. As long as
| you're able to push the pay button in your online bank
| you use the default system. Only when that's not possible
| do you fall into the provided housing system. And not
| surprisingly drug use is a major reason for not pushing
| that pay button but rather taking the money and using it
| elsewhere. Does that honestly surprise you? What else
| could it even be?
|
| That's why we have the second option with food stamps and
| provided housing. It's not perfect as people elsewhere
| have stated the obvious "Hey want to buy 20e foodstamp
| for 10e?". But still they get it.
| flagrant wrote:
| I'll be happy to retract the "hateful" comment if anyone
| can provide evidence that "people are mainly homeless in
| Finland because they would prefer to get drunk".
| sharpneli wrote:
| We use two terms for homeless here. Strictly speaking if
| we just use the term homeless you're correct. 79% of them
| are not like that [ARA Asunnottomat 2019]. They're people
| like students bunking in a friends bed without a valid
| address or other short term issues, like the social
| security making a mistake, but they're eventually
| rectified. This means the homelessness has lasted for
| less than a year.
|
| 21% are long term homeless. And that's what people
| generally mean when they collegially use the term
| homeless. That's defined as homeless that has lasted for
| more than a year and has significant social or health
| component, such as substance abuse or mental illness. The
| thing about mental illness is that there is also
| treatment for them. The solution is different for them as
| for the substance abusers.
|
| If you ever see a Finn begging it's pretty much always an
| alcoholic who wants more beer. That's because the
| mentally ill cannot really beg as they're either
| receiving treatment or if they have unfortunately slipped
| trough the cracks of the system they're also unable to
| beg for any extended period.
|
| As for the scale of this problem. 2019 there were 961
| persons listed in the long term homeless category. That's
| out of a population of 5.518 million in 2019. That's
| 0.017% of the whole population. Also, even out of them
| 584 live with someone, just not with an official address.
| They wouldn't be counted as homeless in US.
|
| The actual amount of people in street on that category
| was 177. That's 0.003% of the population.
| [deleted]
| leesalminen wrote:
| Here ya go [0] https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle
| /10138/220951/Mort...
|
| Check out page 845 showing death by alcohol poisoning is
| 5x higher in the homeless population of Finland than the
| whole of the country.
|
| FWIW, and anecdotally, my ancestry is Finnish and we are
| known for having issues with alcohol. The majority of my
| extended family has drinking issues. Within our Finnish-
| American community, it's believed that Finns have some
| sort of gene that pre-disposes us to drink to excess.
| flagrant wrote:
| Thanks, but I didn't ask for evidence that "alcohol
| poisoning is 5x higher in the homeless population", I
| asked for evidence that "people are mainly homeless in
| Finland because they would prefer to get drunk."
| leesalminen wrote:
| Well, that's all you're going to get out of me. I gave
| you a 30 second google search. Have a great day!
| Cloudef wrote:
| https://ysaatio.fi/en/housing-first-finland there's no
| extensive graphs, but this page mentions it briefly.
| There's also been some freelancer yle documents covering
| up some homeless people that mainly refuse the social
| benefits to get more money for their daily drinking. [1]
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08FET347Tx4
| flagrant wrote:
| This does not support your claim. It's pretty clear that
| you didn't have the evidence before you made the claim,
| and you don't have it now.
| bzb6 wrote:
| Are you American?
| flagrant wrote:
| No.
| fsloth wrote:
| Uh, no. I'm finnish. You go to social security and they
| fix you with an apartment. It _is_ mostly due to the
| decisions of the homeless that they remain homeless.
| leesalminen wrote:
| No, the poster did not say "all" homeless people are
| alcoholics. He said that is "mainly", meaning most, but
| certainly not all.
|
| Just so we can all be as pedantic as humanly possible,
| here.
| flagrant wrote:
| Sure, fine. It's still a hateful, unevidenced comment
| about homeless people that can't be justified.
| Jochim wrote:
| I can see people taking issue with the word "prefer" in
| relation to getting drunk. It makes the tone of the OP seem
| dismissive of the fact that by the point you're putting
| alcohol/drugs before shelter and food you're no longer
| expressing a preference but rather a symptom of mental
| illness: addiction, depression, or otherwise.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is literally what people say about San Francisco as well:
| "They don't want the help" etc. etc. It's like the same thing.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| Except in San Fransisco there are tens of thousands of
| homeless. The entire country of Finland has a fraction of
| that number.
|
| There are indeed _some_ homeless who would prefer to be on
| the street. There are also tens of thousands who are mentally
| ill, or just incapable of taking care of rent / electric/
| water, etc.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| > the Romanian beggars you see in Helsinki streets.
|
| While Finns tend to use the term "Romanian beggars", this can
| be inaccurate and misleading. I understand that this confusion
| could have arisen because "Romani people" and "Romanian people"
| sound similar in Finnish and some of them are from Romania.
| However, many of them come from Bulgaria as well - a very large
| community comes from the Bulgarian town of Pleven seasonally
| each year.
|
| FWIW, the ethnicity names "Romani" and "Romanian" are not
| actually etymologically related, it is only a coincidence that
| they sound similar. You would think that after a decade-plus
| now of having Romani migrants very visible in the Helsinki city
| center, people could have learned a little more about who they
| are, and what drives them to make the long journey to Finland.
| tartoran wrote:
| The Romani, also known as Gypsies are quite often of Romanian
| citizenship and they seem to disintegrate as a migrating
| people. During communisms in Romania there were efforts to
| integrate them. I had 2 "gypsies" in my class and they were
| quite intelligent and studious. The situation has changed a
| bit but I've heard a lot of Romanian Romani have left Romania
| to go to Western European countries but the carnage and
| destruction they did there made a really bad name for
| Romanians in general and Romanians started to be confused
| with Romani.
| Cloudef wrote:
| Thanks, I edited my post.
| empiricus wrote:
| small addition which should clarify some more the issue:
| romani == gypsy
| ido wrote:
| At least in the German speaking countries the word Gypsy
| ("Zigeuner" in German) is considered a racial slur
| similarly (if not quite as strongly) ill-considered in
| usage as N*gger is in English. There aren't a lot of Romani
| in the US, which I think is why Americans aren't aware this
| is a word you should avoid (but I'm pretty sure it is also
| considered a slur in English in Britain and Ireland).
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| Lol that's not true.
| ido wrote:
| Which part? I've lived in Vienna and then Berlin since
| 2005 and have heard multiple times that you should say
| Roma & Sinti because Zigeuner is a slur.
|
| In the press, literature and academia you will generally
| not find the term Zigeuner in referring to the people
| (but again Roma or Roma & Sinti) if it was written in the
| last 20+ years.
| Merem wrote:
| Never heard of "Zigeuner" being considered a racial slur.
| I've usually heard it/hear it when it comes to certain
| people (actually, two varieties even - one tied to the
| "Zirkus" and the other one being a group of
| "Landstreicher" basically) but that's not tied to an
| ethnicity or whatever.
|
| A more prominent example would be the word "Neger" where
| the media tells us it's a terrible word, insulting,
| racial slur etc etc, yet however, it is used by normal
| people in a conversation without any issues. It's funny
| how irrational media (and some crazies) get, ignoring all
| context, how something and with what intention something
| is said. There is always a stark contrast between that
| and actual real life. I, for one, like to eat my
| "Negerkuss".
| rendall wrote:
| It's pretty common knowledge to be a slur in the US too
| mbg721 wrote:
| That varies a lot regionally. Plenty of people use
| "gipped" for "ripped off", and "Zigeuner Schnitzel" is on
| the menu at US German-cuisine restaurants. For once, it's
| us who haven't caught up with the magical outrage words.
| ido wrote:
| I'm sure you wouldn't consider it a magical outrage word
| if you were in the outgroup in your country and the word
| was used to describe your ethnicity in a usually negative
| way.
| mbg721 wrote:
| I'd be unhappy, but I'd much rather fix the outgroup part
| than ban the word.
| ido wrote:
| I'm sure the Romani would prefer to fix discrimination
| and generational poverty but you can do that while also
| asking people to not use their name as a curse word (and
| also it's not really being fixed).
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| In Western Europe there have been movements to avoid
| using the local equivalent of the term "gypsy", and these
| have seen some success. However, in the Balkan countries
| these movements have had little impact, even among the
| Roma themselves.
|
| There is a small Roma intelligentsia, university-educated
| and aware of those international trends, who welcomes the
| usage of "Roma (and Sinti)" instead of the traditional
| word. Among most Roma, however, it is often the case that
| if you use the term "Roma" while speaking with them, they
| will correct you and say "Don't call me that, I'm a
| <local word equivalent to 'gypsy'>".
|
| Note also that in the Balkans, the Roma generally prefer
| to maintain their own language rather secret, for in-
| group use only. I wouldn't be surprise if this extended
| even to their ethnonym, and when outsiders say "Roma"
| this sounds like those outsiders are appropriating their
| word.
| mbg721 wrote:
| In the SW US, there's also "I'm an Indian, not a 'Native
| American'." Euphemisms don't accomplish anything.
| vkou wrote:
| > That varies a lot regionally. Plenty of people use
| "gipped" for "ripped off",
|
| In my experience, they tend to stop, when you gently
| remind them that a very similar term that means the exact
| same thing, but refers to jews, has fallen out of favour
| in recent decades.
| renewiltord wrote:
| What's the word that refers to Jewish people?
| bbatsell wrote:
| https://www.jta.org/2019/09/25/culture/what-does-jew-
| down-me...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Oh. Oh wow. Thanks, man.
| collyw wrote:
| I don't think anyone is particularly bothered by their
| race, rather their behaviour. (In the UK there are both
| Irish gypsies and Romani gypsies, both have a bad
| reputation).
| ido wrote:
| The racist part is generalizing the behaviour of some
| people to everyone of that ethnicity. I'm sure a few
| decades ago you'd easily find plenty of Europeans telling
| you they are not bothered by the Jews' ethnicity per-se
| but by their behaviour.
| collyw wrote:
| Godwins law.
| ido wrote:
| It was the first comparison that came to mind. You can
| replace my example with comparison to generalizations
| against black people in the US if that doesn't break the
| Internet Law.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Godwin's Law isn't "if you mention Hitler you are wrong".
| umvi wrote:
| > pay the rent for them and give a special card that can be
| used for anything except alcohol and cigarette
|
| In theory that works but addictions are super powerful, so what
| ends up happening is that the person will still obtain
| cigarettes and alcohol, even if it requires begging to get the
| cash for it. Or they will trade their subsidized food for cash
| or cigarettes/booze.
| tartoran wrote:
| For hard addicts, I don't know, they'd do anything to get
| their fix and that can manifest in unproductive ways for the
| society: theft, muggings, etc. I'd actually let incurable
| cases of addiction get their fix for free in exchange for
| some things such as bathing regularly, stay in shelters at
| night and not wonder the streets, etc. I'd be a win-win
| situations in my opinion. Living in NYC allows me to see a
| very large number of homeless people. And what makes it
| really worse is that there are sometimes almost 1-to-1 to
| train cars and there is no way of escaping the stench on
| trains. If you weren't forced to be stuck in a subway car
| with a homeless with half of the car packed and the other
| completely empty except for one sleeping stinking homeless
| person. The other day my wife took my kid on the train and a
| homeless guy started smoking on the train. When the train got
| off she got off that car and got on the next one. It was
| worse, the smell of rotten gangrene is not something I'd wish
| upon anyone.
| agumonkey wrote:
| > they prefer to get drunk instead of spending it on food and
| rent
|
| Some are just deep into a depression pit. I agree that some
| people are just weak, but most people hitting homelesness went
| through big losses that damages your motivation to lead a
| normal life. Grudge, sadness, loneliness, grief, abuse .. don't
| conclude too fast.
| Cloudef wrote:
| The thing is that the "home first" movement in Finland states
| that home isn't a trophy that you get once you fix your life.
| Home and food is essential to get your life on track, and
| home is given even for alcoholic people. But if they don't
| pay their rent, and even give up on social welfare to pay the
| rent for you, what can you do?
| agumonkey wrote:
| I think it's unrelated, people like that are not ready to
| function 'normally', they need a shelter, asylum, hospital.
| It's an emotional problem more than material.
| Cloudef wrote:
| If they don't cause harm to other people, you can't
| really force them or tell them they are living their life
| wrong.
| agumonkey wrote:
| You're very contrarian it seems and that's annoying.
| js8 wrote:
| You can show them though, get them to talk to other
| people who have been in a similar situation, have been
| helped out of it, and have now a better life.
| Cloudef wrote:
| Note that, these kind of people are very rare. I can
| assure everyone gets all the help they can get. But these
| kind of extreme cases, usually have no drive to live
| their life other way, and you can do little to change
| them. There is very little homeless in Finland in
| reality, and it's one of the first things that always
| rubs me wrong overseas when I see homeless on the street.
| Seeing homeless on the street in Finland is not _normal_.
| chongli wrote:
| There are other approaches to treating people with drug
| and alcohol addictions than trying to get them to quit.
| One is harm reduction. This has most famously been used
| to help people with IV drug addictions, in the form of
| safe injection sites.
|
| It can also be used for alcoholism: you provide a bar-
| like setting where people can go to get free drinks
| (rationed and served on a schedule by a trained server)
| and also socialize.
|
| If this is coupled with free housing, food, medical care,
| and therapy, it stands a good chance of helping people
| where involuntary hospitalization might have failed.
|
| I've volunteered serving free meals to homeless people in
| a restaurant style setting. People get their choice of
| appetizer, entree, salad, and dessert. Volunteers wait
| tables and then sit down to eat with people at the end of
| their shift. I've had some amazing conversations with
| people who have all kinds of experiences to share. It's
| amazing how much of a difference it makes when you treat
| people like a person rather than a problem to solve.
| austincheney wrote:
| 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.
| SaintGhurka wrote:
| To add some missing details on this, in 2018/19 the city
| council passed some ordinances that removed the criminality of
| some homeless activities. Specifically, they made it explicitly
| legal to camp in most public spaces (excluding parks) and they
| permit panhandling, sitting and sleeping on public sidewalks.
|
| So there's a lot of "campsites" downtown. A lot of tents, or
| just people in sleeping bags on the sidewalk. A lot of people
| peeing against the buildings.
|
| It's hard to score the upsides and downsides without starting
| an argument, but it feels like much of Austin has soured on the
| "decriminalization of homelessness".
| jupiter90000 wrote:
| Any ideas why it seems like tech hotspots start passing laws
| like this? I'm thinking of San Francisco, Seattle, and
| Austin. I feel like there is some correlation, but I do not
| know what it is. My perspective is that maybe it seems more
| compassionate to not outlaw street camping, but I do not see
| how it is helpful to anyone including the ones on the street
| to allow this to continue.
| ativzzz wrote:
| Probably has something to do with much of the tech scene
| leaning left politically, so more lax homeless
| restrictions.
|
| In the end, it doesn't solve the root cause of homelessness
| (probably makes the situation worse locally since it
| attracts homeless from elsewhere), but it's not like anyone
| in the US has some serious plans to tackle the issue at
| scale.
| barbacoa wrote:
| Worth noting, before the city council legalized homeless
| camping there were literally zero tents.
| vkou wrote:
| Did you have no homeless people, or were they still
| sleeping rough, just without a tarp to keep the wind and
| the rain off their heads?
| SaintGhurka wrote:
| It's more homeless people [1]. I mean, it's really a lot
| of people. It's pretty unmistakable.
|
| The tent cities do make them more noticeable, though.
| Also, the police used to be able to roust people
| illegally camping, so if you had somewhere else to go,
| you'd have to go, or else go to the shelter.
|
| Now people have the option to refuse the alternatives. So
| maybe visible homelessness has climbed more than actual
| homelessness.
|
| [1] https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2020/05/austin-
| sees-10...
| barbacoa wrote:
| There was always a homeless population but they would
| stay in shelters or camp deep in the woods and keep to
| themselves. Now homeless are leaving the shelters and
| choosing to live in the streets.
|
| since 2019 (when the camping ordinance was passed):
|
| * homelessness has increased 11%
|
| * Un-sheltered homelessness is up 45%
|
| * Numbers in shelters and transitional housing is down
| 20%
|
| https://www.statesman.com/news/20200519/austin-
| sees-11-incre...
| vkou wrote:
| Why do you think homeless people are choosing to sleep
| rough, rather than stay in shelters?
| CubsFan1060 wrote:
| I live in a completely different area of the country, but
| around here the shelters are all very strict about drugs
| and alcohol. You can't bring them in, and you also can't
| be drunk when you arrive. That's one reason why folks
| here choose to not be in a shelter if they have another
| option.
| vkou wrote:
| Consider that millions of well-adjusted, middle and
| upper-class people, with jobs, children, access to
| doctors, therapists, friends, support networks, and,
| really everything they could ever wish for... Struggle
| with, and die from drug and alcohol addiction.
|
| If those people can't stop using drugs, it's hard to
| expect someone lacking all of those resources to be able
| to do so.
|
| If you make shelter conditional on sobriety, you're
| unlikely to get more sobriety.
| barbacoa wrote:
| I imagine numerous cities have been spending countless
| millions on studies and consultants to figure out an
| answer to that one.
|
| Personally, it's the lifestyle they choose. They make
| little micro houses out of rubbish and tarps equipped
| with couches and mattresses. They make comical signs such
| as "need money for booze" for laughs and get free food
| from charities or shelters. There are some that have no
| where else to go but a non-trivial number are there
| because it's cool these days to live a nomad hipster
| life.
|
| Downtown Austin is/was somewhat of a party area with
| numerous bars and clubs and it gets so popular on
| weekends that the police shut down some of the streets
| for pedestrians only. It was a festive place to hang out
| -- which is part of the attraction.
|
| In most cities areas that get taken over by the homeless
| become blighted places regular people never venture to
| (i.e. skid row in LA). The reason that people are so
| freaked out in Austin is that downtown is full of
| residential and commercially office buildings which
| results in people having to walk through these areas
| trying to get to/from work.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| > Something in the handling of the homeless problem had failed
| in that city.
|
| Or, the homeless are recent migrants from other areas? At least
| where i live, the homeless all congregate in biggest wealthiest
| cities, because it's easier to beg, their presence blends in
| more and also local communities are more atomized so they don't
| fight off the homeless as hard as in smaller places. I've heard
| a story of one homeless guy who have recently been sleeping on
| a bus stop near my home - he's basically travelling from one
| big city center to another, and stays as long as the police
| doesn't chase him off the area.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Austin is becoming what LA used to be (and in the winter,
| still is) for the Midwest: the place for cities to send their
| homeless to so they don't have to spend money on them.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Not only do they tend to select larger cities, but also
| warmer cities. You mostly hear about the homeless population
| in places like San Francisco, Oahu, Austin, etc. If you're
| homeless, you might as well go to a place where you're less
| likely to freeze to death. Although there are some homeless
| in places likes Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, etc.
|
| Not to mention some cities will give them money if they take
| a bus to another city. Just shuffle the people around so it's
| no longer that current city's problem.
| kleiba wrote:
| _[...] but also warmer cities [...] like San Francisco
| [...]_
|
| Err...?
| a3n wrote:
| > Not only do they tend to select larger cities, but also
| warmer cities.
|
| As a trucker, my view is mostly from the interstate.
|
| The most homeless I see in my travels all over the country
| is I-5 in California, Oregon and Washington, and CA 99.
|
| It's pretty cold in Washington and Oregon right now. Even
| California at night.
|
| Tents, tarps, sleeping bags, on both sides of the freeway
| fence, or inside interchange cloverleafs.
|
| Not judging their condition or their person, I don't know
| them. It looks pretty rough.
| paxys wrote:
| In other parts of the country you will freeze to death
| sleeping outside at night, so west coast cold is
| definitely relative.
| giantg2 wrote:
| That's certainly cold. I was just saying from a relative
| position. For example, it's relatively warmer than the
| midwest.
| zehaeva wrote:
| You do hear about it more in warmer cities, but the city
| with the largest homeless population is actually NYC by
| quite a large margin.
|
| https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/slideshows/cities-with-
| th...
| thehappypm wrote:
| Per capita? NYC is 2x larger than any other city.
| giantg2 wrote:
| LA/Los Angeles county (what the prior link uses) is a
| little larger than NYC, 10 million vs 8 million
| respectively.
|
| I would also be interested in per capita per city. Even
| more so for aggregates of cold vs warm cities overall.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I wonder if they have an aggregate comparison of warm vs
| cold cities. I'd still consider NYC on the warmer side
| (with the gulf stream on the coast) when comparing it to
| the midwest or even Albany. For example, even going from
| Pittsburgh to Connecticut can be an increase of 20
| degrees due to the gulf stream even though you are going
| slightly north.
| u678u wrote:
| Just another city run by Democrats. Seriously I'm a blue voter
| myself but its beyond parody how Democrats screw up their own
| cities like this.
| thehappypm wrote:
| yawn
| originalvichy wrote:
| Im not american but looking at your poll numbers isn't every
| major city democrat-leaning?
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into partisan flamewar. Nothing
| good can come of this.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| jseliger wrote:
| Most American cities will do absolutely anything to reduce
| homelessness except build more housing:
| https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-do-anything-to-en...
|
| California cities are probably the worst offenders:
| https://seliger.com/2017/08/30/l-digs-hole-slowly-
| economics-..., but even Austin is underbuilding relative to
| demand.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| One of the very liberal reporters at the LA Times did a
| series of articles on the homeless crisis in LA a year or two
| ago.
|
| He actually had difficulty finding a homeless person who was
| from Southern California. Nearly all of the homeless were
| from other states or other countries.
|
| It's not California's failure so much as it is that the rest
| of the nation is using California to warehouse their homeless
| so they can feel smug about not caring for their own
| citizens.
| michael1999 wrote:
| Remember that only 40% of Californians are from California.
| Most people in California aren't from there.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Austin story is simple: housing is overpriced, they are only
| slightly behind the same process as the SF Bay Area. In the
| time frame you mentioned Austin housing prices increased by
| 50%, which is ridiculous. There's not another mysterious cause
| of homelessness.
| austincheney wrote:
| I think that must be an oversimplification. Fort Worth just
| to the north is growing at the same speed as Austin. My house
| has doubled in value in the last 11 years. Yet, Fort Worth is
| extremely anti-homeless in its city ordinances and we don't
| have a visible homeless problem. As Fort Worth is a giant
| city in a warm climate I am sure there is a homeless problem,
| but we residents don't have to see it.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Even so, housing costs in Ft. Worth are still much cheaper
| than in Austin, and the difference is widening. In the last
| 30 years housing in Austin has gone from 30% cheaper than
| Ft. Worth to 30% more expensive. It's easy to see why: Ft.
| Worth enjoys liberal-marketarian zoning policies and Austin
| suffers increasingly from left-NIMBY potectionism,
| meanwhile population pressure is actually higher in Austin
| due to job growth. That is why the Austin situation seems
| to me to be quite similar to the SF Bay Area.
|
| Not discounting that Ft. Worth local policies may do a
| better job of hiding homelessness, only I don't think it is
| the root cause.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| It's because the city council a while back decriminalized
| homeless camping, so it's become much more obvious and
| prevalent in high traffic areas. I can see this for
| myself if I walk a handful of blocks from where I live
| and see the new tent city which wasn't there a year ago.
| They're likely going to reverse this rule since it's not
| really fixing problem.
|
| https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/01/25/austin-
| texas...
|
| https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/01/21/homelessn
| ess...
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| What do the jails look like?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Something in the handling of the homeless problem had failed
| in that city.
|
| Austin city council removed a ban on camping in public in 2019.
| The pitch was that it "decriminalized homelessness".
|
| Austin is still a liberal city, but revocation of the ban is
| now widely reviled given the tents and trash that have grown
| everywhere, without doing anything really to help homeless
| people. There is an initiative on the ballot for an election in
| May to reinstate the camping ban, and I'd take a 100-to-1 bet
| it will pass.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Something in the handling of the homeless problem had failed
| in that city
|
| I'd wager that they made the problem worse by importing rich
| people with a high tolerance for bad public policy and
| homelessness.
| finiteseries wrote:
| 2019 levels would be an improvement given what's gone on in
| 2020, the pandemic has made everything much, much worse.
|
| A progression of one of the camps from Jan 2020 to Aug 2020
| https://youtu.be/xbsXgU6PO6U
|
| Downtown Austin a few weeks ago: https://youtu.be/aDvqut1zLso
| agumonkey wrote:
| Anybody know about initiatives to build cabins instead of letting
| people sleep in the cold ?
| Joeri wrote:
| 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/
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| 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.
| e40 wrote:
| In-patient services for mental health were decimated in the
| 80's. Reagan cut the funding and cities were flooded with
| homeless + mentally ill people. I was at UC Berkeley at the
| time this happened. There were so many seriously mentally ill
| folks on the street. It was sad.
| jandrese wrote:
| It worked out great for Republicans. The spike in crime rates
| made their "tough on crime" message resonate. When you're
| homeless and mentally ill it's basically guaranteed that
| you're going to have fights with the police.
| HNfriend234 wrote:
| Tough on crime isn't purely a republican stance though.
| Democrats worked hand-in-hand with republicans in the late
| 1980s to push through many tough on crime policies. This
| was due to crime skyrocketing in the 1980s due to cheap and
| abundant crack cocaine flooding America's streets.
| klodolph wrote:
| Just an observation. The mental health system doesn't have much
| capacity to begin with. Even for middle-class folk with
| insurance it can be very hard to get treatment. There is a
| shortage of mental health professionals which is projected to
| get worse. Psychiatrists are mostly doing medication management
| because that's where they're most effective. Following the path
| of getting treatment--everything including diagnosis, therapy,
| medication, and accommodation requests--requires a shocking
| amount of initiative on the part of the patient.
|
| I would love to see the country dig itself out of the hole. I
| think the mental health crisis itself is huge. Both in-patient
| and out-patient. We need more psychiatrists and psychiatrist
| PAs.
| thebean11 wrote:
| > Psychiatrists are mostly doing medication management
| because that's where they're most effective.
|
| I think it's money: insurance will shell a lot more $/hour if
| they do 15 minute medication appointments instead of hour
| therapy + medication appointments.
| klondike_ wrote:
| Inpatient mental hospitals used to be in every state. They
| housed not only the mentally ill but also the chronically
| homeless and other outcasts. As the advent of antipsychotics
| and antidepressants reduced their population, these hospitals
| were an obvious target for budget cuts throughout the 80s and
| 90s. They money for the community health centers that were
| supposed to replace them never materialized, and thousands of
| patients were left without access to their medication. Some
| estimate that over 50% of the homeless population is mentally
| ill.
|
| Ironically prison systems now provide these services (and
| sometimes paying more for them!!), but in a much worse
| environment for the patients.
|
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/showsasylums/
| arrosenberg wrote:
| I'll never forget this fact because there is a King of the
| Hill episode (10:13) where a mentally-ill, homeless man named
| Spongy exclaims "Ronald Reagan kicked me out of my mental
| hospital!" and Hank bashfully tries to justify it as part of
| winning the cold war.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| 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.
| adaisadais wrote:
| 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.
| offtop5 wrote:
| I'll say this as someone who's been evicted twice, the number
| one reason the vast majority of people end up homeless is
| because they don't have money.
|
| This can happen for a small array of reasons, let's say you're
| in a bad marriage and your spouse leaves. You simply can't make
| the rent anymore, you're now homeless.
|
| 19 years old, and you're getting into really bad fights with
| your parents, you're now homeless.
|
| Develop a medical issue in your mid-30s which prevents you from
| working, you're now homeless.
|
| In my fantasy world we wouldn't even have evictions, instead a
| social worker would advise you that you're legally entitled to
| effectively a dorm of some sort.
|
| >In modern western society we have many failsafes that prevent
| people from becoming totally dislodged from a place of shelter.
|
| You're kidding right, when you're released from prison they
| give you 20 bucks. Awful hard to find housing with $20 you
| know, especially when you have a criminal record. A ton of
| people did do things which warranted a sentence, but we make no
| effort to reintegrate these people. So you did something bad
| when you were 20, you being 35 years old out on the streets
| without any hope isn't healing anything. If anything at all
| you're much more likely to resort to another crime of
| desperation.
| jariel wrote:
| I think there are generally accepted to be 2 categories -
| those that fall out temporarily and the long term homeless.
|
| Your situation is more the former. It's really common and
| that's what basic safety nets are for.
|
| The longer term folks - serious drug addiction, mental
| illness, excessive abuse etc. etc. - those are the harder
| cases.
| porb121 wrote:
| > In modern western society we have many failsafes that prevent
| people from becoming totally dislodged from a place of shelter.
|
| the US has much weaker social safety nets, and the ones it does
| have are often conditional on applications or proof of work.
|
| to say solving homelessness is almost impossible when US
| homelessness is orders of magnitude worse than countries like
| Finland's is nonsensical
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| It should be pretty elementary to solve homelessness, as
| Finland has shown. There's also no reason we can't have full
| employment. The Soviet Union had it.
| grumple wrote:
| The USSR ran enterprises at a loss and kept workers idle
| though. And then their economy and government collapsed.
|
| Not exactly a recipe for success.
| itake wrote:
| I've lived in LA, SF, and Boulder. Most of the homeless in
| these cities are not interested in being apart of society.
| They are perfectly happy with their lifestyle of mental
| health and drug addictions.
|
| Yes, there is a minority of homeless struggling to rejoin
| society, but the (pardon verbiage) worst people have no
| interest or empathy for society.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| You're already coming across as very judgmental of these
| people. Have you actually talked to them? Do you know why
| they prefer their lifestyle? I mean you just implied that
| mental health is a lifestyle or addiction (??? maybe check
| your phrasing), and that drug addiction is a lifestyle
| choice instead of e.g. a coping mechanism because society
| failed them.
| itake wrote:
| > Have you actually talked to them?
|
| yes. Everyone has their own story. Checkout these
| interviews on Youtube:
|
| LA - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6ZFzEW7_Q4 Seattle
| - https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw?t=877
|
| The homeless I talked with in Boulder romanticize camping
| forever along the creeks and being free from society,
| while trying to leach off of public services.
|
| > Do you know why they prefer their lifestyle?
|
| Drug addiction, mental health, and in some cases lack of
| family support.
|
| > that drug addiction is a lifestyle choice
|
| Drug addiction is a choice. Based on my very limited
| personal experiences, you gotta commit to making a change
| (see above videos). Many addicts just aren't ready to
| leave their vices for a better life. No amount of rehab
| will help someone if they aren't ready to commit to a
| change.
|
| > society failed them.
|
| Sorry if this sounds conservative, but trying to blame
| other people for your problems doesn't really get you any
| where. Society throws problems at everyone, some more
| than others. Laying around complaining or rejecting it
| doesn't improve anyone's situation.
|
| People need to apply critical thinking skills and tackle
| their own issues (hence the need for an addict needing to
| commit to the idea of solving the problem of their
| addiction).
|
| Ex-homeless/addicts getting together to correct "society
| failed" them problems via AA meetings is an excellent
| example of people that apply critical thinking skills and
| try to help.
| watwut wrote:
| > Sorry if this sounds conservative, but trying to blame
| other people for your problems doesn't really get you any
| where.
|
| The person you are responding to is not homeless and is
| not talking about own problems at all. Much less blaming
| own homeless problem on somebody else.
|
| Instead, he is someone who is trying to talk about
| strategies people like him, non homeless people, can push
| for so that other peoples chance to become homeless is
| smaller.
|
| Basically, compete opposite of your accusation.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Woop, there's the "socialism is a slippery slope to
| communism" argument.
| collyw wrote:
| Isn't socialism supposed to be the stepping stone to
| communism (but usually ends up in totalitarianism instead)?
| watwut wrote:
| No. Communism was supposed to be abrupt revolution and
| transformation. The democratic socialism was seen as
| enemy, because it made people calmer, happier and less
| likely to commit to revolution.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Isn't socialism supposed to be the stepping stone to
| communism
|
| The "socialism" stage of Marxist Communism, which in
| Leninist practice (which differs sharply from the
| dictates of Marxism from which it was adapted, but shares
| this and some other elements of theory) _is_
| totalitarianism (not a stepping stone to it) is supposed
| to be a stepping stone to the perfected end state in that
| theoretical framework. But neither the Marxist nor
| especially the Leninist form of that is the same thing as
| the "socialism" pursued by non-Marxist socialists, and in
| non-Marxist socialism there 's no consistent role of
| socialism as a stepping stone to something else, whether
| utopian Communism or some other end-state.
| iSnow wrote:
| >Homelessness does not beget homelessness. It is most important
| to note that
|
| But is this really a fact? I agree with your later reasoning
| that homelessness is a symptom of deeper problems, but I'd
| argue that our societies should have one more failsafe in
| place: housing for the homeless.
|
| I've never been sleeping rough, but I'd think it would be
| pretty traumatic. This would kick some into seeking help, but
| would make others fail even more.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > In modern western society we have many failsafes
|
| The US called, they want you to pay your hospital bills.
|
| Or when it comes to SF, rent.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Actually the answer is much more often rooted in capitalism,
| which is a lot easier to solve.
| crazypython wrote:
| 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:
|
| 26. Show HN: Rust-starter, a boilerplate to build Rust CLI
| applications (github.com/rust-starter) 18 points by csomar 19
| minutes ago | flag | hide | past | 6 comments
|
| 27. Finland has slashed homelessness; the rest of Europe is
| failing (economist.com) 30 points by ashergill 19 minutes ago |
| flag | hide | past | 11 comments
|
| 28. The Reasons I'm Joining BIGtoken as CEO (medium.com/crypto-
| oracle) 3 points by simonebrunozzi 19 minutes ago | flag | hide |
| past | 1 comment
|
| 29. Upvote to encourage more people to visit New Links on Hacker
| News (ycombinator.com) 164 points by crazypython 21 minutes ago |
| hide | past | 19 comments
| reedf1 wrote:
| 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?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Exactly so. I mean there's plenty of people that are not
| homeless but because of poverty can't get to the next tier of
| said hierarchy.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| One of the hardest things for me when I was in financial free
| fall was how little my friends could understand or help. They
| didn't understand that I literally had no where to go, and that
| me asking for a place to crash wasn't me simply wanting to
| visit at the last minute. My friends also weren't rich, so even
| if I could have stayed with them, it's not like they had a
| spare bedroom or guest cottage in which I could stay for a
| while. Oddly enough, the people who did let me stay with them
| were folks that were themselves nearly broke and/or recently
| homeless, all of whom I had only recently met. They understood
| that if I was asking them for a place to crash, that I really
| needed a place to stay. The kindness of strangers really saved
| my butt in 2009.
| asdff wrote:
| 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.
| anewaccount2021 wrote:
| Homeless in LA also won't freeze to death if they sleep outside
| in January.
| pretendscholar wrote:
| Why wouldn't scale help los angeles tackle the same problem?
| porb121 wrote:
| what works in Finland (giving people housing) definitely works
| in Los Angeles - LA was the subject of a recent research paper
| demonstrating the massive success of such a program
|
| https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H9oD3zeBPua7r5wFoHVrMZmmiqK...
| u678u wrote:
| In areas of the USA with the population density of Finland there
| isn't much (any?) homelessness either.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| And your point is...?
|
| I mean I guess culling the population to make the price of
| housing drop is one solution, but it's a bit strong don't you
| think?
| u678u wrote:
| The point is its easy to fix homelessness when land is cheap
| and building materials are cheap. It doesn't really help our
| problems in big American cities.
| hedberg10 wrote:
| In areas of the USA with the average temperatures of Finland
| there isn't much (any?) homelessness either.
| naavis wrote:
| It doesn't make much sense to look at the average population
| density of Finland. Homeless people don't really roam the empty
| countryside, they are in the cities, probably much like in the
| US too.
| nabla9 wrote:
| 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 Lacatusv.
| 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.
| eznzt wrote:
| > Related news: European Court of Human Rights just made
| important ruling that decriminalizes begging. Making it
| criminal to be poor is against human rights.
|
| Equating begging with being poor is wrong.
|
| Bothering others is not a human right.
| Youden wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment but based on the text of the ruling,
| I can't agree with the ruling itself [0]. Missing from your
| summary is:
|
| - "The applicant, Violeta-Sibianca Lacatus, is a Romanian
| national who was born in 1992 and lives in Bistrita-Nasaud
| (Romania)."
|
| - "In 2011 Ms Lacatus, who was unable to find work, began
| asking for charity in Geneva."
|
| Why was somebody who "lives in" Romania begging in Geneva?
| Would she not have received social benefits in Romania? This
| looks like a perverse kind of tourism. Refugees and asylum
| seekers I can understand but Romania isn't a warzone or
| dictatorship, it's an EU member state.
|
| And I think "decriminalizes begging" is a bit hyperbolic. The
| court did set some precedent but they were also clear that a
| critical factor in the ruling was that this woman was in a
| situation where she genuinely needed to beg in order to
| survive.
|
| [0]:
| https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/app/conversion/pdf/?library=ECHR&...
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| > Why was somebody who "lives in" Romania begging in Geneva?
| Would she not have received social benefits in Romania? This
| looks like a perverse kind of tourism. Refugees and asylum
| seekers I can understand but Romania isn't a warzone or
| dictatorship, it's an EU member state.
|
| Social benefits in Romania are miserable compared to other EU
| countries. And cost of living in the cities is going up due
| to business booming. I've seen families with kids sleep on
| the streets there. It's really sad.
|
| A well educated retired teacher who was begging in Bucharest
| whom I spoke to for an hour explained it to me. She was very
| smart and well aware of world politics (and excellent
| English) but she just couldn't make ends meet. Definitely not
| an alcoholic or someone 'who doesn't care enough to get a
| job'. It's the old people that are really in trouble as they
| lack the skills to work in this modern world and their
| pensions apparently are worse than in the communist days
| (taking rent increases / cost of living inflation into
| account). Many jobs were moved from public sector to private
| and their pensions evaporated as a result.
|
| Having said that, the young people do really well in Romania,
| they get good education and all the chances they need.
| Business is booming especially callcenters because Romanians
| generally excel at languages.
|
| I wish the EU would start imposing minimum standards to
| welfare because the old generation there is really getting
| left behind. I saw people in the flat beside our fancy office
| who had no windows but just plastic bags hanging in their
| flat, in -15 C. While outside the Audi's and BMWs from the
| upper class queue up and the young people are the new middle
| class, the old are just watching it all pass them by. The
| gains of the new system aren't divided fairly.
|
| I'm surprised this 28-year-old needed to beg though, their
| age group have the best chances.
| usr1106 wrote:
| That sounds like a reasonable decision.
|
| After all advertisement is nothing but begging to increase the
| profit of the advertiser. If I really need to buy something,
| I'm sure I can do so without advertisement.
|
| Advertisement, be it some marketing phone call, someone
| offering me whatever subscription on the corridor of the mall,
| and ads making my phone browsing experience super slow are a
| much bigger nuisance to me than beggars.
|
| The amount of various form of soliticing might vary where you
| live. But forbidding everything that's a nuisance to someone
| won't be the solution.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| A bit of a jump. I mean I get that you dislike advertising
| and I agree with you, but equating it to begging is reaching
| and diluting the discussion with your issue is adding
| confusion.
| usr1106 wrote:
| Where is the difference? Businesses charge more than what
| their costs are, the rest is their profit. Beggars request
| more than what they deliver, everything is their profit.
| Still beggars seem to succeed worse. I have no problem with
| that, but there is no reason to "declare" their business
| model illegal.
|
| If you buy an Apple product you bought a status symbol. If
| you give to a beggar you bought a warm feeling, that it did
| not harm you and helped them.
|
| Disclaimer: I have never bought an Apple product. I hardly
| ever give money to beggars. But I do give them food if I
| happen to carry some. Which could be my supremacy that I
| don't want the to spend my money on alcohol.
| nickff wrote:
| That depends on how you define 'costs'. You seem to be
| narrowing a business' costs to COGS (cost of goods sold),
| and disregarding marketing and financing costs which may
| be critical to reaching or maintaining an economy of
| scale.
| dd_roger wrote:
| > Related news: European Court of Human Rights just made
| important ruling that decriminalizes begging. Making it
| criminal to be poor is against human rights.
|
| Lol, you're taking a very ungenuine shortcut. Legal residents
| who also happen to be poor do not resort to begging because
| they receive help through the appropriate welfare programs. The
| the overwhelming large majority of people affected by this law
| are foreigners who take advantage of Schengen to come to a rich
| country only for begging. These people have no legitimity of
| being here and earn no sympathy from me.
| nabla9 wrote:
| I sure that we both can agree that
|
| - illegitimacy or being foreigners does not remove human
| rights and human dignity.
|
| - feelings or sympathy or lack of them should not be taken
| account when administering justice or government policy.
|
| ps. Roma from Romania are not illegitimate. They are free to
| move across Europe. Free travel is also for the poor. Swiss
| voters reject bid to curb EU freedom of movement
| https://www.dw.com/en/swiss-voters-reject-bid-to-curb-eu-
| fre...
|
| >Swiss voters on Sunday overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to
| limit the free movement of people and immigration from the
| European Union.
| dd_roger wrote:
| Romania isn't in Schengen so yes, they are illegitimate.
| But you're the only one talking about Roma here.
|
| What should be taken into account for policy making is the
| interest of the country's citizens (and non-national legal
| residents to a lesser extent), not "begging tourists".
| oblio wrote:
| This means that anti-panhandling/anti-begging laws will become
| void soon in several countries.
|
| This could lead to some interesting results if it's true that
| some branches of organized crime use organized begging.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Yes. This is very exiting.
|
| The ruling creates real incentives to attack real problems,
| instead of brushing them out of sight.
| cxcorp wrote:
| Unfortunately I would imagine that it's still easier to
| spread a narrative blaming the EU than to attack the real
| problems.
| username90 wrote:
| The beggar was not Switzerland's problem, it was a
| tourist.
| ashergill wrote:
| paywall link: https://outline.com/JV4xXe
|
| edit: no longer working, apologies.
| agilob wrote:
| The link doesn't work, it just shows "None."
| jchw wrote:
| https://archive.is/viQQG
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/viQQG
| ur-whale wrote:
| https://archive.is/viQQG
| sevenf0ur wrote:
| Why is France taking in more migrants than it can support? It
| seems cruel to have your migrants homeless and living on the
| streets.
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