[HN Gopher] Finland provides housing and counseling to the homel...
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Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (2020)
Author : mpweiher
Score : 323 points
Date : 2021-07-25 12:36 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scoop.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (scoop.me)
| [deleted]
| Proven wrote:
| > In the past 10 years, 270 million euros were spent on the
| construction, purchase and renovation of housing as part of the
| "Housing First" programme
|
| Almost $300 mil in properties to acommodate 10,000 people. That's
| California-style efficiency!
|
| Plus the government gets to play landord with taxpayer money.
|
| But no such info in the title - it's always about the benefit,
| never about the cost, as long as the money can be printed out of
| nothing or endlessly borrowed so nobody has to pay for that
| largesse!
| kaliali wrote:
| Also they keep their borders protected from begging parasites.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| NYC has right-to-shelter laws, which prevent anyone from being
| denied access to a homeless shelter. If the shelter runs out of
| space, they will literally rent out hotels.
|
| I think this is great, and it makes me proud of my city--but
| frustratingly, there are still beggars on the streets, who for
| one reason or another have decided not to accept the city's
| shelter. What has Finland done differently?
| flavius29663 wrote:
| I think the answer is in the article. They don't just provide
| shelters, which have many issues on their own, they put the
| homeless in apartments with tenant agreements, dragging them
| back into society.
|
| In most of Europe there are enough shelters for the homeless,
| but many people avoid them, I'm guessing violence, theft and
| strict rules is what turns them away. For example, whenever
| there's a cold snap, the Romanian police is canvasing all the
| homeless locations and bringing everyone in shelters...I guess
| they prefer dealing with homeless people rather than dead
| bodies.
| nerdponx wrote:
| NYC shelters are notoriously bad places to be. I've heard and
| read many times that the streets tend to be safer and more
| comfortable. Maybe things are good if you time it just right
| and get a hotel room during one of those overflow periods.
|
| I'm not sure what the solution to that issue was, but it seems
| to one of or the main reason why the shelter system does not
| work like you'd expect.
| perfobotto wrote:
| Whenever I read articles like "Nordic country succeeds doing X" I
| always wonder if that would work on a country that is not 6
| million people with tons of natural resources available per
| capita (Oil, timber, ore). Sadly I generally think not, but I'd
| be happy to be proved wrong ...
| floitsch wrote:
| Finland is not really a country that relies heavily on natural
| resources.
|
| First page I found ranks the US as having more income from
| natural resources than Finland.
|
| https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/natural_resources_...
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| I never understood comparing Finland and other small
| countries with the US.
|
| Finland's population is less than that of NYC.
| floitsch wrote:
| That's why you compare per capita.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| That's where you learn some systems are just not
| scalable.
|
| There is a reason why we use complexity measures in
| computer science.
|
| Why do we assume a-priori all social systems are scalable
| by 10 to 20 times?
|
| That seems unscientific.
| maqp wrote:
| Why do you need to compare the entire US? Only 20 states
| have more people than Finland does. Also, if Japan with
| its 125 MILLION people can have 0.3 homeless per 100k
| (about half of what we have in Finland) why can't
| California with 40M people pull it off. The GDP in
| California is 70k per capita, In Japan its 40,2k.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| Meanwhile, if I suggested doing housing for all, healthcare
| for all, etc on an island with only 2000 people, you'd tell
| me that was too _few_ people and you can't do it that way.
| So it seems that the only case where it will work is for a
| country with the exact number of people in the exact
| latitude as the countries that are already doing it, which
| are coincidentally the only places where it has been tried?
|
| Or maybe, you're just coming up with excuses.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| > Or maybe, you're just coming up with excuses.
|
| Where did I say that? Look up logical fallacies.
|
| Why do you assume social systems are easily scalable?
| That seems like an a priori belief without any scientific
| support.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| You really think that economies of scale are some kind of
| myth?
| rscoots wrote:
| >Meanwhile, if I suggested doing housing for all,
| healthcare for all, etc on an island with only 2000
| people, you'd tell me that was too few people and you
| can't do it that way.
|
| No?
| ekianjo wrote:
| Finland has very few people. It's like comparing Luxemburg
| with India, do you think you can just reapply what works in
| small countries regardless of scale?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It is measured as percent of GDP, so is not an absolute
| ranking. So you can absolutely compare Luxembourg to India
| if you'd like.
| perfobotto wrote:
| But your really can't. GDP per capita doesn't capture so
| many parameters and conditions (like being landlocked
| surrounded by wealthy countries that use you as a de-
| facto tax haven)
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It's not GDP/per capita, but total GDP. To say the USA
| earns more of its GDP from natural resource extraction
| than Finland does is completely meaningful if the claim
| being shot down is "Finland can only afford these
| programs (and the USA cannot) because of all the money
| they are making from natural resources."
| maqp wrote:
| The main reason it doesn't work in US is, you don't tax the
| rich and corporations like you should, and because your tax
| dollars are spent on inefficient massive military
| industrial, intelligence industrial, prison-industrial, and
| medical industrial complexes, that are effectively theft of
| government budget. End the limitless corruption and be
| amazed what you can afford. :)
| imtringued wrote:
| OCCNS (Our Country Can Never Succeed) Mentality: Our country
| can never succeed at doing X because our people have the OCCNS
| mentality.
|
| It's just a bad excuse.
| ben_w wrote:
| The question is valid, but I disagree with your belief. If
| anything, I would expect the default outcome of an abundance of
| natural resources per capita to be Dutch disease:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
| dazc wrote:
| Homlessness solutions are very expensive and, in countries such
| as the UK, very inefficiently managed. We have a system here
| where you can ask for help and if you are classed as vulnerable
| you often will get it.
|
| The best 'help' is offered to people with kids. This will often
| be a low budget B&B type accomodation which is usually just one
| room. It will be a step up from living on the street but only
| just.
|
| Next best comes to people who've just been released from
| prison, drug addicts and alcoholics. They may be offered a bed
| in a hostel full of people with similar problems. Not
| surprisingly, the sensible ones choose to stay on the street.
| Those who are truly vulnerable will take the bed and may end up
| worse off in the long term.
|
| At the bottom of the pile are people who just made a few bad
| decisions or had a temporary bout of depression. These people
| are not judged as vulnerable and can literally just go and
| screw themselves, the system wasn't set up to help these kinds
| of folks.
|
| Of course, there are success stories where people have worked
| their way through the system and eventually been offered a
| state-sponsored place of their own but such stories are not the
| norm.
|
| I have been homeless and I got lucky, a complete stranger
| offfered me help and I grabbed it with both hands. I got sweet
| nothing from any agency - of which their are multiple here.
| They are part of the problem since they employ lots of people
| who would never get a job elswhere and have huge cash resources
| to misappropriate.
|
| I don't know if the Nordic example given here would fare better
| but it certainly could not do worse.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Every country should have this. Capitalism is the way to go
| currently, but make sure the bottom of the food chain is provided
| for.
| HissingMachine wrote:
| This is fake news, almost nothing about this article is accurate
| or factual, homelessness is a problem in this country that
| usually is unearthed by investigative journalists because
| apparently we don't have homeless problem so we don't even keep
| an official record, but we get articles like this to pat
| ourselves in the back which makes this even more embarrassing. t.
| a 40yo finn
| Popegaf wrote:
| Links of that investigative journalism would be nice to support
| your claims of this being fake news.
|
| The Y-Foundation exists https://ysaatio.fi/en/home and they
| have reports too.
|
| > apparently we don't have homeless problem so we don't even
| keep an official record
|
| There is an official record by the Housing Finance and
| Development Center of Finland: https://www.ara.fi/en-
| US/Materials/Homelessness_reports
|
| More information can also be found at
| https://housingfirsteurope.eu/countries/finland/
| svnpenn wrote:
| Saying something is fake with your only reference being your
| claim that "you're a Finn", is pretty much meaningless.
| HissingMachine wrote:
| I used to be one of those homeless people that officially
| don't exist about a decade ago, we didn't exist then and I'm
| sure they didn't exist now either.
| davidshepherd7 wrote:
| Are you sure? The graph in the article seems to match a graph
| on the ARA's website: https://www.ara.fi/en-
| US/Materials/Homelessness_reports/Repo... (the ARA seem to be
| the organisation in charge of housing in Finland).
|
| Not that it's completely reliable, but Wikipedia also has
| information which matches the article
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Finland), no
| discussion on the talk page, and no signs of an edit war in the
| history.
| deanclatworthy wrote:
| Lived in Finland a decade now. There are drunks and drug
| addicts hanging around on the streets all night and in parks,
| but I have never once seen someone sleeping on cardboard, or in
| a sleeping bag on the street. Not once.
| taneliv wrote:
| They are in the forest, not on the streets. Makeshift or real
| tent, sleeping bag. I've seen a bunch of this in Espoo and
| Helsinki, admittedly more in the 80s and 90s than later on.
| (Whether this development is due to my own situation or that
| of the homeless people, I don't know.)
| vladharbuz wrote:
| Could you point us to a resource where we can read more about
| this? Perhaps a source pointing to data being covered up?
| agumonkey wrote:
| what's the general sentiment about homeless in the population ?
| is it more like "chase them out, i dont care" or "we would like
| to do something but nothing ever happens" ?
| fsloth wrote:
| Generally finns want and expect the government to offer
| everyone in need free housing. When this does not happen
| everyone is surprised.
| desktopninja wrote:
| States side: https://www.tmz.com/2021/03/18/jon-cryer-wife-lisa-
| joyner-do...
|
| I commend this project. Also personally wish 3D printing homes be
| formalized, at the very least for single dwelling units. Cities
| can rezone for it and probably use the land better than golf
| courses. I'll go on to wish that each SDU is has a cost limit of
| 10k$ anywhere you go in the country and can only have one human
| owner. If the unit is to be rented out, then rent would also be
| capped to number that is reasonable for basic living. The idea
| here is every adult citizen can own a dwelling. There's may
| ethical things to consider but pretty optimistic we could come up
| with good governance policies.
| collaborative wrote:
| When I became homeless and broke I was lucky enough to have a
| friend who at the time let me use his address to apply for a job
|
| I also tried seeking help from my local authority and was told
| there wasn't any
|
| 2 months of work, couch surfing and eating boiled pasta got me to
| a stage where I could rent a room
|
| I think that for most, support is all it takes to get back on
| your feet
| wirthjason wrote:
| I wish there were more in depth articles about these problems.
| They tend to focus on "feel good" aspects while glossing over the
| details and trade offs made.
|
| As I get older more and more I find that all new ideas are old
| ideas. As if great idea just sitting there, oblivious to everyone
| else, waiting for someone to pick it up.
|
| Often someone else tried the solution but it never worked. What
| changed? That's what I want to know.
|
| For example, the article has a click-bait headline that makes you
| feel good because homelessness "ended". Apparently homelessness
| was reduced, not ended. It's a better outcome than before.
| > In the last 10 years, the "Housing First" program provided
| 4,600 homes in Finland. While in 2017 there were still about
| 1,900 people living on the streets, the program could reduce this
| number to less than 1000 long-term homeless by 2019 - but there
| were enough places for them in emergency shelters so that they at
| least didn't have to sleep outside anymore.
|
| Also, the math is murky. The article states that the direct cost
| of housing is cheaper than the current expenses. It's quite easy
| to figure out the cost of building new things but very difficult
| for those other services. > Creating housing
| for people costs money. In the past 10 years, 270 million euros
| were spent on the construction, purchase and renovation of
| housing as part of the "Housing First" programme. However, Juha
| Kaakinen points out, this is far less than the cost of
| homelessness itself. Because when people are in emergency
| situations, emergencies are more frequent: Assaults, injuries,
| breakdowns. The police, health care and justice systems are more
| often called upon to step in - and this also costs money.
|
| The first book I read that went into these complex issues was
| "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell. He made convincing arguments
| about how economics work and how of often polices designed to
| help people hurt them. Rent control in NY was a policy designed
| to help people but actually made it worse for many.
| kubb wrote:
| When and where was it tried before? <1000 homeless sounds like
| a success.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| The homeless are there, to provide the lowest working-poor caste
| the illusion, that there is always a even lower station in life
| that fate could have delt them.
| kebman wrote:
| This reads like one of the silly headlines you'd see in the first
| iteration of Civilization. Except it's real. And heartwarming!
| kiza wrote:
| So the homeless are provided an apartment but they still have to
| pay rent.
|
| The article seems to be missing some key info about how the rent
| is different from a normal rental.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Y-Saatio offers non-profit apartments, so the rent is based on
| cost.
|
| https://m2kodit.fi/en/
|
| I for example found a 35 m^2 apartment in Espoo that's 542
| EUR/month. I rented a similar size apartment in Espoo from a
| private company for about 800 EUR/month some years back. The
| safety deposit is also 0 EUR. My apartment had a very cheap
| safety deposit - 200 EUR, but that is probably too much if
| you're homeless. Some might charge way more, like two months
| worth of rent, which would've been 1600 EUR for me.
|
| They also ignore payment deliquencies, which make it very hard
| to find an apartment on the free market.
| ex3ndr wrote:
| This is a price of 200m^2 flat in the center of Saint
| Petersburg, Russia. With ~same prices for food that makes ~x3
| to the price of food.
|
| In what world this is ok for homeless to pay that much?
| maqp wrote:
| Finnish social welfare includes free medical/dental care
| and drugs. The social welfare and housing support total
| about 1200EUR / month. So after bills, they have between
| 400-700EUR / month for food, clothing etc. It's not
| anything fancy, but it will keep you off the streets,
| begging.
| lmilcin wrote:
| I always wonder what is the point of progress if we can't use it
| to solve basic problems like people not having food, shelter or
| access to basic medical help.
| EGreg wrote:
| This is not a new question. In fact, over 100 years ago, a
| person got really famous writing a book called Progress and
| Poverty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty
|
| His name was Henry George, and he famously recommended reducing
| all taxes to one: the land tax. His book was hailed by everyone
| from Milton Friedman to Leo Tolstoy and US Presidents wrote
| glowing reviews. And somehow, it is all forgotten today, except
| among trained economists who had to maybe read it in college.
| Most libertarians in the US today are capitalist, and have no
| concept of Georgism or left-libertarianism.
| at_compile_time wrote:
| Link to the audiobook for anyone else interested:
| https://librivox.org/progress-and-poverty-by-henry-george/
| lmilcin wrote:
| The trouble is that the times of land meaning anything are
| over.
|
| In today's world of intangible goods you can produce without
| owning any land.
|
| Why would multi-billion pharma company pay less taxes than a
| local farmer, because the land needed for offices to run bio-
| research is less than a small field to grow crops for couple
| families?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Looking at real estate prices, land is far from worthless.
| lmilcin wrote:
| I am not saying land is worthless. I am saying that
| owning land is no longer prerequisite for producing a
| lot.
|
| Two hundred years ago you had to own land to be "big",
| because most ways to produce anything required land to
| grow crops or land to extract natural resources or
| services with connection with those two types of
| activity.
|
| If you look at top 10 largest companies in the world,
| only one is tied to a lot of land or services for other
| companies with lots of land (Saudi Aramco).
|
| Before one hundred years ago the largest companies or
| wealth creators would inevitably be largest land owners
| or ones that provide services for largest land owners.
| panic wrote:
| What we think of as 'progress' depends on a lot of dangerous
| and unpleasant labor. It would be difficult to get people to do
| this labor without the the threat of homelessness and
| starvation.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| There are many historical examples of people participating in
| less-than-ideal labor situations because they were well-
| compensated and saw that their work would lead to greater
| prosperity for their community and country. The carrot was
| enough and the stick superfluous.
|
| Capitalists often fall prey to the notion that hard and
| productive work isn't being performed unless someone is
| sacrificing their health or safety or happiness; that's
| wrong. We can do these things and provide a good life for the
| people doing them, too. In some cases this will mean that the
| doing will be its value itself, or even a loss leader for
| other efforts. That's fine; not everything needs to be
| profitable to be valuable.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Perhaps viewed differently: providing everyone with food,
| water, power, housing, and medical care takes a lot of
| unpleasant and coordinated effort and that needs to be paid
| for somehow.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I'd argue that progress and "people not having food, shelter,
| or access to basic medical help" are definitionally
| incompatible.
| jokoon wrote:
| Well, technological progress doesn't necessarily cause social
| progress, but it might allow it though.
|
| It's a problem of values. Despite abundance, people still
| believe that people who don't work a 9to5 job are not worthy or
| good treatment.
|
| Most people still believe in a hierarchy of people and values,
| and that "there is no free meal", except yes, there is: most
| food is subsidized and cheap.
|
| Like it or not, "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work sets you free") was
| displayed at the entrance of concentration camps, and I really
| think that if you ask people around, they would still hold the
| same opinion that 100% of people should work and that nobody
| should escape that.
|
| Now, work is divided between "noble" work, which is essentially
| office work, and "essential" jobs, which are necessary. Like in
| the middle ages, nobility is better valued because they're
| privileged.
|
| Society is really upside down, and despite the years of
| communism and socialism, which are mostly dead now, it seems we
| haven't really evolved.
| imtringued wrote:
| The contradiction lies in the fact that people work so they
| can work less and once there are people that do not have to
| work then how do they get access to that abundance? Through
| their own work? That would defeat the point. Through the work
| of others? The working people will get angry because they
| want to work and for the sake of fairness, they demand others
| to work just as hard even if there is no work for them to be
| done. Yes you can create more work so that everyone has work
| but what people forget is that you have to create those jobs
| in the first place.
|
| The reason why politicians should strive for full employment
| is that abundance of labor leads to desperation, which leads
| to a worse treatment of workers and thus employers are more
| willing to waste their time. When there is full employment
| then labor is scarce and precious, meaning the time of the
| workers is scarce and precious which means employers will
| either make sure that the workers are treated well and enjoy
| their time or at least let their time be used for more
| "productive" endeavors.
|
| >Society is really upside down, and despite the years of
| communism and socialism, which are mostly dead now, it seems
| we haven't really evolved.
|
| They are solving the wrong problem. Really, just make sure
| basic macroeconomic accounting rules work and everything will
| be fine. For example: Everything produced must be consumed.
| When you apply this principle on labor, full employment
| becomes inevitable. How does our economic system violate that
| rule? It is possible to earn more than you spend, meaning you
| produce more than you consume. The excess is the deposit in
| your bank account. If you don't consume labor through work
| then it will be consumed by being idle. Thus the real value
| of your savings is eroding day by day until one day your
| savings have no value because all the freed time was spent
| idle.
|
| Thus the logical conclusion is that there must be a deadline
| for your savings. At some point you must spend them before
| they lost all their value, not because there is an evil
| government stealing your money or whatever, because nature is
| eroding the real value of your money. Labor is spoiling the
| same way fruit spoil. If you want to save then you should
| save in real terms. i.e. you use your money to buy goods that
| last longer than labor (a house or industrial machinery) or a
| promise of a future payment (bonds or stocks). Saving in real
| terms leads to the employment of other people rather than
| their unemployment because it still counts as spending for
| accounting purposes.
|
| The reason why a gold standard is a stupid idea is that
| linking money to something like gold will make people hold
| onto the currency because of the exposure of gold. When gold
| goes up in value people will stop spending because their
| nominal wealth is going up even though their real wealth
| isn't going up. In fact, by not spending your money there
| will be people that didn't work and your real wealth is
| actually going down.
|
| There is another reason why spending should be forced or
| encouraged: Debts create money and repaying them destroys
| money. Holding onto money prevents debts from being repaid or
| in other words: The debt will exist as long as the deposit
| exists. There are obvious implications: Government debt can
| never go down because deposits never go down because people
| are not forced to spend them.
| stadium wrote:
| > Most people still believe in a hierarchy of people
|
| This is a broad generalization and it varies widely by
| culture.
|
| Some people believe that all work is important.
| crisdux wrote:
| We have solved those issues for the vast majority of the
| country! Heck we provide all of that and more. Now we are even
| giving welfare payments to middle and upper middle income
| families(in the form of an enhanced child tax credit).
| ithinkso wrote:
| I think it comes down to 'I work to have what I have, why
| others should have things for free'. Even though the things you
| get for working are good and you have a great life, and the
| free things are shit but let you at least survive just barely,
| it's still too much. 'If I work to have a great life, those
| that don't are not eligible for _anything_ , not even the
| smallest things' and then you can complain about homelessness
| in your area because it's more important to be able to complain
| than to solve the issue and get rid of the issue to complain
| about
| throwaway-x123 wrote:
| Lets consider more common case with working poor. At the same
| time we see high income inequality. We see unemployment. We see
| that productivity is a few times higher than it was in 1930.
| What is the solution? I think you know it, it was done once,
| 100 years ago. The work day was reduced to 8 hours/day. It
| could be reduced now to say 4 hours/day. No wage cut. In the
| past, who reduced the work day? The workers organized and
| reduced the work day. Why they do not do that? I think they do
| not know that they can work less. They still think they need to
| work more to produce all the food, more houses, etc. While in
| reality they produce income inequality, lots of bullshit jobs
| and unemployment.
|
| You can help, agitate, organize, join union for shorter workday
| same wage.
| vidarh wrote:
| A point on the 8 hour work day, because a lot of people will
| instantly think "Ford", is that it took _decades_ of union
| campaigning, and quite a few dead and injured in clashes with
| police and Pinkerton agents, to start getting traction. By
| the time Ford shortened his working hours, the unions had
| already gotten hours cut a lot and put in a huge amount of
| effort changing the narrative on working hours.
|
| Most people are also unaware that May 1st as the
| international day for labour demonstrations is in part in
| commemoration of the Chicago Haymarket Massacre, and as the
| starting point for a renewed fight for the 8-hour working day
| in its aftermath, on the request of the AFL president at the
| time.
| ericd wrote:
| There are also far fewer barriers to working with people
| around the world who don't demand nearly so much as you are,
| than there were in 1930. We could put some up, but it's not
| as just simple as saying "we want twice the hourly wage and
| half the workday".
|
| Cheap international flights, instant high fidelity
| telecommunication, standardized container shipping, and
| streamlined trade with low trade barriers are just a few of
| the things that have made it less necessary to find workers
| locally.
| agumonkey wrote:
| world is complex, i'm not excusing but i've seen enough
| absurdity like these to start to know that, at large scales,
| simple becomes problematic. money flows where big pockets and
| trends go, unless it's a country which values a solid higher
| ground for all, you'll be left out
| hereforphone wrote:
| It's almost like the problem's harder than it seems at first
| glance or something
| runarberg wrote:
| Nah, these are two separate problems. First is the
| technological problem of producing enough food, building
| material, medicine, etc. Then there is the problem of the
| political class not unwilling to fund infrastructure and
| projects to put this technology in use.
|
| Think of it like a software team that has excellent
| developers but terrible devops. The developers have long long
| since fixed many of the bugs and implemented most of the
| features, but the devops is slow, corrupt, and incompetent so
| very few of the features actually make it to production.
| lmilcin wrote:
| > Nah, these are two separate problems. First is the
| technological problem of producing enough food, building
| material, medicine, etc.
|
| There is no technological problem. We are already wasting
| more food that would be necessary to feed people who are
| starving.
|
| Even USSR, at the height of its inefficiency, was able to
| build housing for most of its inhabitants. It wasn't
| palaces but it did its job.
|
| And when we need we can somehow find a way to crank out
| vaccine to vaccinate entire countries. And these are given
| out for free (of course, we pay for them in taxes, but
| still it can be done...)
|
| > Then there is the problem of the political class not
| unwilling
|
| I think you meant "willing".
|
| Here, this is the problem.
|
| When you say it is "political class", what you really say
| it is not _your_ problem. And this is the cause of why this
| is not getting solved.
|
| Because the problem is really you and other people like you
| who think it is not their problem.
|
| If the people decided it is a problem worth solving and
| supported it with their votes, the "political class" would
| follow and solve the problem.
|
| The "political class" responds to what is on peoples minds
| and to what people want. If people decide to spend their
| focus quabbling over building big walls or election results
| or vaccine efficacy, guess what is not getting solved?
| _Anything else_ isn 't getting solved.
| runarberg wrote:
| Being an immigrant and not allowed to vote, it is not
| fair to claim I'm responsible for the political class.
|
| Also public opinion rarely results in policy. Most
| Americans for example favor spending on green
| infrastructure to tackle the climate crisis, most
| Americans favor a more universal health care system, etc.
| yet the political class is hesitant.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Being an immigrant you are in a special position. In most
| countries people do have power to change things, if
| enough of them want to.
|
| There are some exceptions like China or various regimes.
|
| But even Chinese Communist Party is very scared to allow
| their population to exchange knowledge freely, for fear
| they can just coordinate and decide together.
| amalcon wrote:
| The technological problem (assuming it exists, which I
| tend to agree it does not) is in logistics, not in
| production.
| runarberg wrote:
| That feels like an excuse a politician would make.
| Logistics is never a real problem that halts execution.
| Yes it is often a hard problem and is often done wrong,
| resulting in things getting done slowly and
| inefficiently. However it is seldom the reason for
| nothing being done at all. E.g. usually we don't wait
| months or years until the logistics problem has been
| solved.
|
| The technological problem of feeding and housing every
| human on earth has been solved many times over. The
| logistics of distributing the available food and shelter
| to those that need is poorly designed and needs an
| overhaul. This is a political problem and can only be
| fixed with the political class that is seemingly
| unwilling.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| In USSR and many other countries of the Soviet Bloc, it
| was also illegal not to work.
|
| Exceptions applied (mothers with young kids, registered
| artists), but otherwise this was enforced and if you
| stayed out of work for a certain period and didn't have a
| valid employer stamp in your papers, you would be chucked
| into prison for Parasitism (that was the name of the
| crime).
|
| As a result, the Bloc had almost no visible homelessness,
| but this kind of solution would probably not fly in the
| West.
| lmilcin wrote:
| I am certainly not defending USSR.
|
| Just showing that there is no need for technological
| progress to build a lot of housing from public budget,
| only willingness to do it.
| kiba wrote:
| The most difficult problems in life are sometime political,
| not physics or technical challenges.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Not sure why you are getting downvoted, obviously you are
| right.
|
| Now, the political problem reflects us as people. If people
| wanted the problem solved, politicians would find a way to
| solve it for the sake of their own interest.
|
| The way I understand it is that most people are really
| selfish in that they only care about themselves and maybe
| family and friends.
|
| And it doesn't get any better because people are more and
| more focusing on themselves and getting cut off from
| community.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| The first job is buy-in. When a society collectively chooses
| to solve some difficult problem, it gets solved, no matter
| how hard it is. Apollo program or homelessness.
| tedunangst wrote:
| When was the last time somebody stepped on the moon? If
| that's success criteria, we just need to stick all the
| homeless in a hotel for a night, declare the problem
| solved, then kick them out in the morning.
| patrec wrote:
| Back in reality, the majority of society was opposed to the
| Apollo program (even after the successful landing support
| was only lukewarm) and I have no difficulty thinking of
| difficult problems with enormous societal buy-in and vast
| funding that proved intractable.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/moon
| d...
| orzig wrote:
| Or cancer! Oh oops
| jeffrallen wrote:
| 5-year survival rates have improved -- for some cancers
| -- in adolescents and young adults
| https://sph.unc.edu/sph-news/5-year-survival-rates-have-
| impr...
| ben_w wrote:
| Cancer is many things rather than one, and some of those
| things have been solved.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| So's homelessness.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Cancer is a hugely complex problem. It is not a single
| attack vector like a virus.
|
| But we are still making great progress on it, just think
| that the best vaccines for Covid came as fruit of cancer
| research.
| umvi wrote:
| I don't buy it. Apollo almost failed many times by
| administrative churn and lack of public support. Apollo was
| successful because of passionate engineers working on the
| problem not by public support
| ben_w wrote:
| Their passion helped, but it consumed 4.4% of the US
| federal budget at peak and might well have been cancelled
| if JFK hadn't been assassinated -- for basically the same
| reason no human has returned there since Apollo or gone
| to Mars at all, and for the same reason Space Station
| Freedom was cut back and morphed into the ISS -- or if
| NASAs work hadn't been deliberately spread through most
| states to make it a pork barrel for senators looking to
| boost their own state using the Federal budget.
|
| It's basically only now that we have a new space race run
| by absurdly rich space-nerds that we don't need active
| public support, merely that the criticism is limited to
| grumbling.
| lmilcin wrote:
| The engineers did not pay for the project or their
| salaries. And certainly they weren't working for free or
| even under market rate.
| umvi wrote:
| The salaried engineers worked way more hours than a 9-5
| and were not paid overtime AFAIK
| lmilcin wrote:
| Which is almost every company I have worked for for the
| past 20 years.
|
| Listen, these guys were very good, dedicated engineers.
|
| But to say they did this without public support is
| stupid, because they were paid for from public money in
| the first place.
|
| The public support comes in many ways. Just because some
| people didn't like the idea doesn't mean there was no
| public support.
|
| The ultimate public support is the government, which is
| officials elected by... wait for it... _THE PUBLIC_.
| umvi wrote:
| > The ultimate public support is the government, which is
| officials elected by... wait for it... THE PUBLIC.
|
| Well if that's your definition of "public support",
| Apollo just barely had enough to succeed. The Lyndon B.
| Johnson Administration that came after JFK was actively
| defunding Apollo and trying to dismantle the space
| program.
|
| Back to my original point, society didn't "collectively
| decide" to make moon landings happen. JFK made a few bold
| claims to boost his public image against Russia and his
| successors tried to dismantle said space program. If it
| weren't for the tenacious engineers and leaders at NASA,
| moon landings would not have happened. In other words, if
| the engineers/leaders at NASA were not passionate enough,
| LBJ would have succeeded at dismantling Apollo.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| It depends on the kind of problem. An engineering
| challenge, even a really difficult one, is something that
| can be attacked with effort. Changing human beings is far
| far more difficult. Perhaps impossible on timescales less
| than generations.
|
| We've had societies that really wanted to stop people from
| using mind altering substances, agree with that goal or not
| it was something that multiple societies choose to try to
| solve and mostly they failed. The ones that partly
| succeeded were the ones that used heinously brutal methods.
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| Certainly half of it is. Unfortunately, it's not the half of
| the problem that progress is helping with since we're not for
| a lack of productive output or a dearth of needless waste.
| endisneigh wrote:
| you could make a strong argument that humanity has barely
| progressed socially in spite of vast technological development
| rayiner wrote:
| We do all of those things! Medicaid, Section 8, SNAP, SSDI,
| etc.
| yarky wrote:
| I'd guess it's all about individual vs collective progress.
| I've realized that places with homogeneous demographics (e.g.
| nordics) are usually those interested in solving what you call
| basic problems while the focus tends towards individual
| progress wherever people look less alike.
|
| I guess there must be well understood tribe/ethnic reasons to
| explain that.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Most definitely. You see this effect within Amazon fulfilment
| centers too. More ethnic diversity is correlated with less
| willingness to unionize on an inter-center basis.
| bluGill wrote:
| Unions depend on a feeling of we are all together, so
| diversity is one possible Union killer. There are others,
| and unions need other things, but a sense of togetherness
| is part of it
| baron816 wrote:
| Unions have also historically been pretty racist--
| explicitly excluding anyone who wasn't a white male.
| That's probably less the case today, but they're still
| dominated by white, socially conservative men.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Nordic countries are kinda special in this regard.
| Historically, you were very unlikely to survive in northern
| climate on your own. Being part of community was necessary
| prerequisite for survival.
|
| I have been on couple trips to northern Norway/Sweden. People
| there did not even have locks in their houses, it wasn't even
| necessary. I wonder if it changed now with advent of
| migrations from eastern Europe and Middle East.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Same in Northern Canada. When buying a house there usually
| at the end of the financial part of the transfer of a house
| you get the keys. The previous owners rather sheepishly
| admitted they didn't have them. Lawyer pipes up 'then we'll
| have to change the locks'. Owners say that's going to be a
| lot of work because the doors never had any locks in the
| first place. We kept it like that.
| wccrawford wrote:
| I can't even imagine _not_ changes the locks on a house
| you just bought. (Unless, as in your case, locks aren 't
| even desired.) Even if the previous owner had no
| malicious intent, they might have accidentally kept a key
| that someone else could get ahold of... Or they might
| have given out a key, etc. There's no good reason to
| avoid it, IMO.
| bittercynic wrote:
| It's also a fun thing to do.
|
| The re-key kit is only a few bucks, and it's a pretty
| simple process, and you get to enjoy the ingenuity
| contained in the lock while you work on it.
| wincy wrote:
| As a middle point, I've been living at my house in the
| Midwest for 4 years now and while we have locks, I didn't
| changed them out from the previous owners. I suppose they
| could have some extra keys but I trust that they don't
| and won't come into my house (and unless they're playing
| a really long game, they haven't, and the previous owners
| live fairly close as we got some letters from their
| child's daycare accidentally sent to us).
| adventured wrote:
| Where I grew up in the US - Appalachia - in the 1980s and
| 1990s it was common to not lock your house or car. Crime
| was rare, murder was non-existent, homelessness didn't
| exist, and drugs weren't a problem yet. In my neighborhood
| everybody knew everybody else, all working class types
| (mixture of middle class and lower middle class mostly), it
| simply wasn't much of a concern.
|
| Small groups of people with intimacy and a culture of low
| rates of crime. Violence or crime would make you an
| immediate outcast.
| [deleted]
| cma wrote:
| I didn't think I'd be seeing great replacment theory
| talking points on hn. Were western European migrants ok
| because they were unlikely to survive the winter where they
| came from? No cold parts of eastern europe compared to
| parts of western?
| kurofune wrote:
| That also seemed to be the norm in northern Spain not so
| long ago, none of my grandparents (maternal/paternal side)
| locked their doors, even at night.
| rhino369 wrote:
| People don't lock their doors in many parts of America
| either like safe suburbs.
|
| My house growing up couldn't really even be properly
| locked up. You could lock the door but the first floor
| windows and sliding door on the deck didn't lock at all.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| I haven't ever locked my door unless I'm leaving for a
| several day trip.
| wincy wrote:
| If I notice the door is unlocked before bed I'll lock it,
| but my neighborhood is very safe and I'm sure the locks
| often go unlocked before we go to sleep.
|
| Before we moved here after our daughter was born, we
| lived in a rougher part of town and would instinctively
| lock the doors any time we went in our out. Our neighbor
| got robbed while she was at work, and my wife was at home
| when it happened, so we were very cautious. As a last
| resort we had a gun, which luckily we never had occasion
| to use.
|
| It's amazing how moving 10 miles away was such a huge
| stress reducer for me and my family.
| ekianjo wrote:
| That was also the case in France at least till the 50/60s
| bluGill wrote:
| It wasn't that long ago when there were only 4 unique
| keys in the world and a thief had a skeleton key that
| would replace them all. In those days nobody locked their
| door because there was no point. As lock technology got
| better people in places of crime installed good locks and
| told their friends to do the same. Most people have no
| need to lock their door, but nobody knows if they are the
| exception.
| heikkilevanto wrote:
| With all respect, I call bullshit to your "4 unique keys"
| theory. Locks have a long and varied history all around
| the world. There is no way a single skeleton key would
| even fit into an Arabic, Chinese, Indian, Venetian,
| Swiss, or German lock.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| As a point of comparison, North America has harsh winters
| that can be difficult to survive if one is unprepared. Many
| (a majority of?) early European colonists died within a
| year of arrival for this reason. Indigenous peoples were
| instrumental in their coming to understand the cultural and
| behavioral changes that needed to be made for Europeans to
| survive in America at the technological level they were at.
| This did not foster a communal spirit, however; the general
| rule seems to be that European diseases decimated
| Indigenous populations, and many (though not all) of the
| survivors were slaughtered in land disputes. Curiously,
| there are cases up and down the East Coast of European-
| Native American integration; it would be interesting to see
| why they were different, and where the tipping point
| between true communal integration and simple appopriation
| is when survival is on the line.
| psadri wrote:
| What makes you think Middle Eastern or Eastern Europeans
| specifically would change anything?
| aaron-santos wrote:
| To understand the parent commenter's question (in a US-
| centric way) you have to examine the political-economic
| parallels, historical and contemporary, between the US
| and Nordic countries and decide whether the same
| structures and conditions exist or not. Presumably, the
| parent commenter was hinting at the way by which US
| elites in the 1600s developed a theological basis for
| social-economic stratification which divided and maligned
| non-property holders in order to maintain the status quo
| the effects of which reverberate to this day. Nordic
| countries, being perceived by the US as being racially
| homogeneous presumably wouldn't have be susceptible to
| the same divisive forces, but with shifting racial
| demographics, inch themselves closer to those same
| initial conditions.
|
| To answer the original question, it depends on the
| likelihood that social divisiveness foments either
| spontaneously or cultivated purposefully. Someone with
| more knowledge on topics like the Sweden Democrats,
| Norway's Progress Party and their progress toward social
| division would be better at addressing it than me.
| zo1 wrote:
| Also curious why he forgot about all the migration from
| Africa. Everyone locks their doors here in Africa and
| builds cages around their houses effectively.
| lmilcin wrote:
| The last time I paid attention to statistics, in Norway
| the migrants were a small minority of inhabitants but
| large majority of all crimes.
|
| As a note, the people who like to "do crime" for some
| reason are not willing to move up north and prefer to
| stay in Oslo.
| Popegaf wrote:
| What statistics? Are there stats on convicted criminals
| by country of origin in Norway?
| karencarits wrote:
| Sure: https://www.ssb.no/sosiale-forhold-og-
| kriminalitet/artikler-...
|
| Regarding countries; when adjusting for gender and age,
| three countries have > 100 offenders per 1000 immigrant
| (table 3.3), namely Kosovo, Somalia and Iraq. The lowest
| rate is 26.8 for the Netherlands (or 10.1 for Oceania,
| but data not available per country).
|
| Note that immigrants, in general, were underrepresented
| for some crimes (damage to property, drug-related) and
| overrepresented for others (ratios): 1.73 for theft, 1.5
| for violence and abuse, 1.2 for trafic. When adjusted for
| age, gender, place of living, and occupational status,
| immigrants from Africa were overrepresented by 174% and
| 101% for violence/abuse and offending public
| order/integrity, respectively (p. 34).
|
| From the abstract:
|
| > [W]e use data on all immigrants, Norwegian-born persons
| with two immigrant parents and people in the remaining
| population who were 15 years or older and permanent
| residents as of January 1, 2010, and explore the
| proportion in each group that was charged with at least
| one offense committed between 2010 and 2013. The results
| show that both immigrants and Norwegian-born persons with
| two immigrant parents are overrepresented as registered
| offenders, with the rate of overrepresentation being
| highest in the latter group. Among immigrants, the
| overrepresentation is most substantial among family
| immigrants and refugees, as well as for individuals from
| African countries. For Asian immigrants the picture is
| more complex. Overall, Asian immigrants are
| overrepresented. However, while immigrants from certain
| Asian countries are similarly overrepresented, other
| Asian countries are underrepresented. Individuals from
| Western Europe and North America, as well as education
| immigrants, are underrepresented as well. The pattern is,
| with some minor exceptions, relatively similar for
| Norwegian-born persons with two immigrant parents. The
| patterns of over- and underrepresentation also apply to
| most types of offenses, except for drug offenses where
| most immigrant groups are underrepresented. Overall the
| overrepresentation is substantially reduced when we
| account for differences in age and gender, especially in
| the groups with the highest rates of overrepresentation -
| including Norwegian-born persons with immigrant parents.
| Place of residence and employment have limited
| explanatory power once the demographic differences are
| accounted for. For most immigrant groups a certain level
| overrepresentation persists also after sociodemographic
| characteristics are taken into account. It is, however,
| important to stress that the vast majority of individuals
| in all population groups were not registered as offenders
| during the period we consider.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| The bigger the country, the more diverse their population is,
| and empathy is less generalized. Colonizers used ethnic
| cleansing as a workaround, but as the population grows, it
| starts differentiating again.
|
| It seems nations, like people, can get too big for their own
| health.
| michaelscott wrote:
| I think half the success of this approach is due to culture
| as well. I know in my home country, an approach like this
| would definitely not work and you'd be stuck with unemployed
| squatters with slow legal recourse to get rid of them (and if
| you have to get rid of them are you really successful in the
| first place?).
| eplanit wrote:
| That's actually a good anti-diversity argument (not saying
| that's necessarily your intent). Japan is another, similar
| example re: "solving what you call basic problems".
| Hasnep wrote:
| I'm not sure about that because places like Japan, Korea and
| the UAE are very ethnically homogeneous, but my impression is
| that they are quite individualistic. Although from skimming
| Wikipedia, Korea and Japan have extremely low levels of
| homelessness so maybe there is a link!
| ketzu wrote:
| Korea and Japan are usually some of the first examples when
| discussing individualistic vs collectivistic cultures,
| where they are examples for colectivistic cultures.
| gmadsen wrote:
| because those problems involve messy parts of the human
| experience. math/physics, basic science can be pretty divorced
| from human sociology/psychology/etc.
|
| you don't need to think of the 2nd/3rd/4th order effects on
| society if you prove some theorem in number theory.
| abeppu wrote:
| Just as a point of comparison, one of the programs San Francisco
| introduced during the pandemic was "safe sleeping sites", which
| are parking lots where homeless can have their tent without it
| being periodically swept by police. To that, they add chemical
| toilets, a water supply and (I'm not sure why) 24/7 security
| staff. For this, the city pays around $60k per tent site per
| year. I'm not sure if this is in part due to some unsavory
| relationship between the org administering the program and some
| city official. Recently the program was extended. It would be
| cheaper to rent apartments at current market rates, even in San
| Francisco.
|
| Our revealed preference seems to be that we'd rather have
| homeless people live in tents than have poor people get free or
| nearly free housing.
| option wrote:
| people living in tents in SF are not just "poor" - many have
| severe mental health issues and drug addiction. In fact, many
| are there because of SF's open-air drug market.
|
| My point is that the program you mentioned is even crazier and
| more cruel and wasteful. We need many of these people booked
| into the rehab (mandatory if needed) and then subsidize cheap
| apartments for them.
| derefr wrote:
| > and (I'm not sure why) 24/7 security staff
|
| You can lock your stuff in a house or car and walk away. You
| can't lock your stuff in a tent and walk away. This is the real
| reason for homeless people "keeping their life in a shopping
| trolley": they need to move their possessions around with them
| because there's nowhere _secure_ to keep them.
|
| Security staff, preventing randoms from stealing these people's
| possessions out of their tents (or especially, discouraging
| them from stealing from _each-other_ ) makes a tent into
| something much closer to a home.
|
| -----
|
| An alternate approach I've seen applied to my local area
| (downtown east-side Vancouver) is to offer something half-way
| between "safety deposit boxes" and "storage units" as a
| free/cheap service -- where each homeless person gets their own
| assigned 53-litre storage tote, with mediated check-out to
| ensure nobody has access to your tote but you.
|
| This doesn't solve _exactly_ the same set of problems -- you
| can 't usefully store your food and cooking implements in a
| place that's only open 9-5 -- but it at least allows you to
| trust that your sentimental objects, small collectibles, etc.
| are being kept safe.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| And, sadly, to prevent random people from attacking the
| homeless people.
| ralusek wrote:
| And to prevent homeless people from attacking each other.
| riffraff wrote:
| Parent comment was down voted but AFAIK it's correct,
| many homeless people avoid shelters because they consider
| them unsafe due to other homeless people, some of which
| _are_ dangerous to others.
| nly wrote:
| Wouldn't lockers be a relatively affordable option?
| baby wrote:
| If your possessions fit in a locker. But I think security
| here is to prevent or react to violence, not necessarily
| theft. I've heard stories of homeless people avoiding
| shelters because you can get raped, for example.
| exolymph wrote:
| > But I think security here is to prevent or react to
| violence, not necessarily theft.
|
| Perhaps I'm quibbling, but I suspect that violence and
| theft aren't necessarily separate categories of incident.
| baby wrote:
| I was just thinking that it'd be really hard to avoid
| theft in a camp settlement.
| oldsecondhand wrote:
| The reasons I've heard for avoiding homeless shelters
| were theft, robbery and lice.
| jlokier wrote:
| I knew someone homeless who told me his tent had been
| attacked twice - slashed, and set on fire one of those times
| - while he was sleeping in it.
|
| That sounds like enough of a reason for 24/7 security to me.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| > For this, the city pays around $60k per tent site per year
|
| Is that 60k per tent site or per tent?
| devwastaken wrote:
| Renters would rather have empty rooms than homeless. No
| commercial renter references, no full time employment, even a
| hint of "homeless" = no apartment.
|
| Friend in Canada is purely disabled along with their relative,
| and lives on disability - which is guaranteed rent. Renters
| wanted nothing to do with them. They had to go to a government
| agency that locates housing based on income, and they only got
| that because their parents cosigned and the landlord was nice.
| tdeck wrote:
| Presumably this is the source for that number, for those who
| might be interested in digging further:
|
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/S-F-pays-61-000-a-...
| dehrmann wrote:
| > $60k per tent site per year...It would be cheaper to rent
| apartments at current market rates, even in San Francisco.
|
| That's $5k per month. Absolute best case, that's two one-
| bedroom apartments, so 6 people? Surely there are more than 6
| people at the tent site.
| cldellow wrote:
| No, the price seems to be $5k per _person_ per month:
| https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/sf-homeless-
| department...
| LegitShady wrote:
| At those prices some consultant/contractor/vendor must be
| getting outrageously rich.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| "(I'm not sure why) 24/7 security staff."
|
| Despite your doubts - homeless folks are not idiots. I live
| near a similar site. It has a no visitor policy, 24/7 security
| etc. I would call it a huge success relative to the surrounding
| homeless impacts.
|
| The issue for the homeless and many govt run programs is that
| it's often easier for govt to do nothing. Ie, your stuff is
| stolen, visitors etc cause problems etc. A huge amount of
| public housing really suffered from this - despite being govt
| run it was worse, not better.
|
| If you can carve a (small) space, no zoning issues, tent on
| pallet, secuirty for your stuff and yourself, no visitors
| causing trouble - you can give people some basic stability in
| sleeping etc.
|
| As to the $60K - you need to be comparing to costs in SF
| generally for services for a homeless person - I'd estimate
| $110 - $150K (higher end is if you include the excess ambulance
| runs etc). So this is relatively competitive.
| opportune wrote:
| Yeah getting your stuff stolen is a huge deal for homeless
| people because they don't have much to begin with. So they
| value a lot the possessions they do have. Ever see a homeless
| camp or person with tons of black trash bags? That is
| everything that person owns. And the police probably
| can't/won't get that stuff back if it's stolen.
|
| You may be thinking "who would steal stuff from homeless
| people?" Other homeless people, so in a camp where they're
| concentrated it's a real concern.
|
| There's also the concerns that drug dealers will hang out at
| the camp/shelter since many of the homeless are addicted, and
| the ones that aren't are vulnerable. Same with petty crime
| rings like shoplifters/fences.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Something is seriously wrong if it costs $150k per year to be
| homeless in SF.
|
| 6 years ago, I lived there quite comfortably making only $70k
| BEFORE taxes, and was able to save a decent bit per year on
| top of that.
|
| Even now, I /only/ spend $90k per year - and my lifestyle is
| quite extravagant.
|
| It's just out of control if it costs almost twice as much
| money to have almost nothing.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| SF does $600 million to $800 million per year just through
| DHSH.
|
| My guess is around 300 - 400 million through other depts
| (SF DPH etc). Behavioral health services alone run $500M
| and DPH is at $2.4 billion in their budget.
|
| I'm excluding Fire / Police / MOCD / other services (there
| are a ton).
|
| Rough numbers maybe $1B/year? for 8-12,000 folks?
|
| This is both very large, but SF probably only spends around
| 8-10% of budget on this - the SF budget is very large.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| That's crazy! I know american cities handle services that
| are handled at a provincial level here in Canada but the
| budget for the city of Montreal is only around 6B$ in
| Canadian dollars. And that's with all the costs that come
| from snow removal and the never ending repairs our roads
| need due to winter damage.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| Montreal is much larger though I think? Sf is 800K or so
| in population
| lazide wrote:
| You also presumably were able to manage your own affairs,
| had a reputation and connections that meant you could get
| safe living quarters without being assaulted or having your
| stuff stolen, weren't leaving dangerous biohazards around
| someone else needed to be paid to deal with - all of that
| adds up.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > To that, they add chemical toilets, a water supply and (I'm
| not sure why) 24/7 security staff. For this, the city pays
| around $60k per tent site per year.
|
| This is ridiculous, it's more than enough for annual rent of a
| very decent apartment.
|
| The fact that a mighty country of America can't fix such a
| trivial problem shocks me.
|
| With countless billions thrown onto the problem, they can
| equally well build a few blocks of luxury skyscraper
| apartments, and give them away.
|
| Literally, for these money you can build an apartment block
| somewhere in Dubai.
| selectodude wrote:
| You going to put a parking lot full of people into an
| apartment?
| baybal2 wrote:
| I mean such money will be enough for multiple apartments.
|
| And with West Coast states allegedly spending countless
| billions on "doing something" about homelessness, just
| giving away luxury apartments doesn't sound that crazy in
| comparison to these digits.
| skybrian wrote:
| Consider whether you would be safe sleeping there in a tent?
| And how about keeping all your stuff there too? Some neighbors
| may have mental issues, there may be a criminal element (crime
| is high in San Francisco), and others (who aren't dangerous, or
| even if they are) need to be protected from them.
|
| So I'm not sure this is best thought of as similar to normal
| housing or similar to a campsite where they can easily kick out
| anyone dangerous since they're far away from the city. Instead
| you might compare with hospitals, nursing homes, or even
| prisons, but in primitive conditions and without the necessary
| security infrastructure. The costs aren't going to be similar.
|
| Actual walls and doors with locks would probably help a lot to
| reduce the staffing needed.
| harikb wrote:
| It is nearly impossible for an entity (city or state), with a
| limited budget and no borders to enforce, to provide a perfect
| solution. The "country" on the other hand is a completely
| different matter..
| pkdpic_y9k wrote:
| With that 60k number on the table Im wondering where people
| think a universal basic income might fit into this discussion?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| UBI would work well for some homeless and would be a disaster
| for others (those with severe substance abuse issues).
| maqp wrote:
| What's the actual percentage of homeless people with severe
| substance abuse problem (i.e. one where its ~daily and they
| wouldn't agree to treatment)?
|
| This comment makes it sound like it applies to something
| like 50% of SF homeless and that can't be right.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| For the long term chronic homeless, pretty high (that
| and/or mental illness). For the less chronic short term
| homeless, not high at all (or they wouldn't be short
| term).
| HideousKojima wrote:
| It actually is about 50%:
|
| https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http
| s:/...
| maqp wrote:
| I'm sorry, where on that 23 page document does it say
| 50%?
|
| On Page 2 it says "On a given night in January 2010" --
|
| "26.2% of all sheltered persons who were homeless had a
| severe mental illness"
|
| and
|
| "34.7% of all sheltered adults who were homeless had
| chronic substance use issues"
|
| of course that was 10 years ago, so I wouldn't be
| surprised if it has increased but still, I'd prefer more
| accurate numbers. Did I look at wrong page?
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Page 4
| maqp wrote:
| Ah, very good, thanks! So yeah, half of the chronically
| homeless. That's extremely bad news. But let's remember
| that doing drugs to forget your life has been a mess for
| a long time is not a lifestyle choice decision.
|
| There's no study on this so we can't be sure how many
| will say yes, but given a "Finnish opportunity" of free
| housing if you agree on medical treatment/rehabilitation
| for the drug problem, free debt debt counseling, and a
| state-supported employment, I suspect not many would say
| no to what's essentially a fresh start.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| 50% actually seems way too low to me, and I wish I had
| some time and resources to look at their methodology.
|
| The other number that would seriously affect solutions is
| whether homeless in general travel to cities that better
| support being homeless or not. That is, how much of the
| problem is homegrown and how much is just because
| Seattle, LA, SF have good resources and weather? Because
| if mobility is an significant option, the better any one
| city does at solving their homeless problems, the worse
| their problem will become.
|
| All the studies I've seen so far have been really flawed
| (eg most Seattle homeless living in pioneer square before
| they became homeless).
| dogorman wrote:
| > _and (I 'm not sure why) 24/7 security staff_
|
| Are you trying to make some sort of point with a show of
| feigned ignorance, or do you really not get it? Security is the
| second rung on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, one of the most
| _basic_ needs.
|
| You may as well write _" and (I'm not sure why) water"_.
| Baffling. Any human being should be able to understand this
| need without having it explained to them.
| ralusek wrote:
| My revealed preference is that, due to the economic surplus
| produced by economic liberty, we have the _luxury_ of being
| able to allocate resources to individuals in need. A luxury,
| mind you, in no way guaranteed by the conditions of nature.
|
| Now, given that we have the resources in order to allocate some
| resources to individuals in need, I think it's a perfectly
| serviceable objective to provide housing for those unable to
| house themselves. I _don 't_, however, think it's a perfectly
| serviceable objective to provide housing for those unable to
| house themselves by saying that they have a right to remain on
| an extremely space-constrained peninsula which has led to one
| of the most competitive and expensive real estate markets on
| the entire planet.
|
| So to reiterate my revealed preference: no I don't think the
| homeless should be housed in tents in SF, and neither do I
| think that they have a right to be housed anywhere in SF. I
| think that we have the luxury of surplus resources to provide
| housing for those in need, but I think that this housing should
| be built in an area that is not space constrained, and is as
| economically viable as possible.
| [deleted]
| ashtonkem wrote:
| The majority sentiment appears to be that homeless people
| deserve to suffer to some degree, and that without pain they'll
| never be properly motivated to get a job and rejoin society.
|
| The fact that this _never_ works doesn't really seem to
| dissuade anyone. No city has managed to solve the homelessness
| problem with anti-sleeping architecture and police crackdowns,
| but they'll keep trying.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| The majority sentiment in our large US cities, especially on
| the west coast, seems to be that tens of millions of people
| ought to have significantly reduced quality of life rather
| than thousands of people have their freedom curtailed. Even
| if that freedom is being used in ways that are not only
| degrading quality of life for the tens of millions but not
| even creating especially great quality of life for the
| thousands.
|
| We've prioritized autonomy so much that we've ended up in a
| miserable equilibrium for all involved.
|
| The only things progressives have to offer is maybe if we
| spend just a few more tens of millions; maybe if we throw
| just a few hundred more well intentioned social workers, drug
| counselors, and psychologists--then those few thousands will
| _choose_ a different path. Because obviously the universe is
| a just one and there's never any tough tradeoffs to be made.
| If only everyone cared as much as we progressives (aka good
| people) wouldn't life be so glorious?
| archagon wrote:
| What is the "non-progressive" solution to homelessness? As
| far as I can tell, it's "I don't care where you stay, but
| it can't be here," which is obviously not an actual
| solution in a global sense.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Institutionalization. I'm all in favor of nice
| institutions and every effort at rehabilitation but if
| you are in such a condition that you can't go about your
| life without ruining those of everyone around you, then
| society is entitled to protect itself by removing you.
| [deleted]
| joshribakoff wrote:
| I don't think homeless people should suffer but there should
| be rules. Instead of allowing people to ruin a sidewalk by
| storing 100 stolen bicycle scraps and other trash, they
| should be relocated to safe sleeping sites. Should tax payers
| have their view ruined, live in stench, and have HIV positive
| schizophrenic folks with an ax running into their place of
| business? My friend owns a business and had to stop selling
| merchandise due to theft. This literally happens daily here.
| The mayor doesn't want to place some of these people in
| conservatorship which is what's required at a certain point.
|
| (I'm aware I'll be down voted by people who do not live here,
| haven't had to call the cops for help themselves, and think I
| am just exaggerating)
| noobermin wrote:
| Your comment seems to suggest you don't actually want the
| situation to get better, you want people to suffer for some
| reason. The point is the Finland solution actually works
| and that's why it should be done.
| joshribakoff wrote:
| I literally stated I do not want them to suffer. I am not
| arguing against sleeping sites I clearly stated I am in
| favor of them
|
| I am just stating if someone refuses the safe sleeping
| sites and continues to break into yoga studios and throw
| feces and blood at people, maybe there ought to be a
| backup "solution".
|
| Why does homelessness become an excuse to commit crimes?
| We can both help homeless people and also not make them
| immune to laws.
|
| Why should my neighbor who is wheelchair bound have no
| access to her sidewalk because a homeless guy is storing
| 100 stolen bicycle wheels on the sidewalk?
|
| I specifically want more safe sleeping sites, but I also
| want people arrested if they refuse the safe sleeping
| site and choose to be a menace to a society.
| gordian-mind wrote:
| Very cool application of the "Principle of charity".
| noobermin wrote:
| May be I can clarify, when I said, "it suggests..." I
| probably should have said that if you follow the logic
| all the way through, they don't want to actually solve
| the issue. Who cares about how you feel? Do you want to
| solve homelessness or do you not? What other alternative
| is there?
| bequanna wrote:
| I don't think the sentiment is that they "deserve to suffer"
| so much as "why should I be subsidizing the comfort of a
| group that is so aggressively antisocial?".
|
| I think it is fair to categorize the majority of interactions
| the public has with the homeless as negative. With most
| falling somewhere between simple harassment (aggressive
| panhandling) and serious crime (mugging, assault, property
| damage, etc).
|
| Of course, this is a huge generalization and #notallhomeless
| blah blah blah... But I think even those that advocate for
| homeless would have a tough time arguing that they increase
| the quality of life in the neighborhoods they inhabit.
| [deleted]
| ashtonkem wrote:
| > I don't think the sentiment is that they "deserve to
| suffer" so much as "why should I be subsidizing the comfort
| of a group that is so aggressively antisocial?".
|
| What is the effective difference between believing someone
| deserves to suffer, and purposefully withholding aid that
| could be rendered? One might be dressed up in more
| comfortable language, but they both result in homeless
| people not being helped on purpose.
|
| Homeless people have objectively been let down by society,
| of course they're antisocial. They're hungry, exposed to
| the elements, and treated like garbage by most people they
| interact with. Every single one of us would behave in
| antisocial ways if we were in that situation. If you want
| them to change, you have to begin changing the
| circumstances that motive their current behavior. Denying
| aid until they change is just a polite way to deny aid
| permanently.
| bequanna wrote:
| > What is the effective difference between believing
| someone deserves to suffer, and purposefully withholding
| aid that could be rendered?
|
| This is silly. By your logic we in the Western world are
| essentially causing the suffering of the Uyghurs in China
| because we haven't started a war to stop their
| oppression.
|
| You aren't complicit just because you don't try to fix
| every wrong in the world.
|
| The real world is difficult and involves suffering, pain,
| unfairness, etc. Our resources to limit these negative
| aspects of existence are finite. When we view someone
| "suffering" and see it as the result of their own
| actions, yea, I think we are even more reluctant to do
| anything.
|
| All that to say: Good luck convincing people that they
| should allocate scarce resources to help out the people
| who throw containers of urine at them and defecate on the
| sidewalk in front of their apartment.
| noobermin wrote:
| If you agree homelessness is an issue than the right
| attitude to have is to reduce it no? The Finland solution
| actually works, so do it regardless of how you feel about
| it? Anything short of that means you actually don't want it
| to get better.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >If you agree homelessness is an issue than the right
| attitude to have is to reduce it no?
|
| Back in the mid 1980s, the Village Voice[0] ran a feature
| article entitled "What do homeless people want?"
|
| The author helpfully provided an answer in the first
| sentence of the article: "Homes, mostly."
|
| Given the very visible homeless population in New York
| City[1] at the time, and that more and more of those
| folks were families with children, it seemed a reasonable
| question to ask, with a readily available answer.
|
| And in 2000, there was a piece in the San Jose Mercury
| News[2] about full-time school teachers working in the
| San Jose public schools who were living in homeless
| shelters because they couldn't afford housing on their
| salaries in the South Bay.
|
| And yet, 30+ years later the problem is getting worse --
| due to the lack of affordable housing stock, increasing
| economic insecurity and inequality, among other, lesser,
| issues.
|
| So let's not continue to believe the Grimm-esque fairy
| tale that poor people are poor because they're lazy or
| stupid. And that _all_ homeless people are drug-addicted,
| mentally impaired losers.
|
| So what is it that homeless people want? Homes, mostly.
|
| Yet our zoning and housing policies make increasing
| housing stock to meet demand and effectively difficult,
| if not impossible.
|
| Yes, homelessness is a serious issue. And something I
| experienced back in those fabled 1980's. And I did have a
| drug (cocaine) problem while I was homeless. Then again,
| I didn't start using those drugs until I was already
| homeless. Hmmm. Correlation isn't causation, but...
|
| [0] https://www.villagevoice.com/
|
| [1] https://citylimits.org/2013/03/11/a-brief-history-of-
| homeles...
|
| [2] https://www.mercurynews.com/
| bequanna wrote:
| I'll go back to what I noted in my original comment: "why
| should I subsidize the comfort of people who are so
| aggressively antisocial?"
|
| This group has generated so much negative goodwill with
| the general public that any "logical" solution that
| requires public $ is going to have a difficult time
| prevailing.
|
| The easiest and intuitively cheapest solution in the
| minds of most people is: make them go somewhere else.
| noobermin wrote:
| My point is you subsidize them or the issue is not fixed
| and the issue persists including the aspects you don't
| like. Making them go somewhere else doesn't work because
| somewhere else will make them go back to you.
|
| I get that it's not popular with the public, that's why
| we have these debates, because the public needs to figure
| out whether it really wants to solve the issue by
| partially getting over itself or it doesn't and prefers
| to live in the bad situation that current exists.
|
| EDIT: usually these arguments from the progressives
| appeals to morality or whatever, but in this case, it's
| literally an effectiveness argument. It works, regardless
| how one feels so it should be done.
|
| Now, if one argues "well, it might not work here," that
| to me is a more interesting and worthwhile discussion.
| But if one's point is "well, I don't dispute whether it
| works or not or whether it won't work here, I just hate
| the homeless so much I don't want to do the thing that
| would actually fix it," leads me to question whether one
| hates it enough to actually address the issue or not.
| bequanna wrote:
| > Making them go somewhere else doesn't work because
| somewhere else will make them go back to you.
|
| Not really true at all. If you are a Midwestern city with
| a homeless "problem", giving them a one-way ticket to San
| Francisco (or somewhere else that is hospitable to
| homeless) seems to be a good way to get rid of them for
| good.
|
| If one is able to look at this situation objectively,
| this is a really interesting and complex problem to
| consider at the level of the municipality. Different
| cities will have different strategies.
|
| ...and like in my example above, a change in one city's
| strategies might actually change your strategy. If San
| Francisco starts cracking down on tent cities and tries
| to prohibit panhandling, open drug use, etc. then those
| Midwestern cities may have to start sending their
| homeless to another place, or just deal with them in-
| place.
|
| The equilibrium that this game reaches may be the place
| that has the most reasonable, humane and probably
| expensive solution to homelessness actually increases the
| number of homeless they have to accommodate as they
| become a permanent draw.
| wonnage wrote:
| So your proposed outcome is that nobody has homeless
| services?
| rayiner wrote:
| Majority among _who_? People in SF?
| Kalium wrote:
| > The majority sentiment appears to be that homeless people
| deserve to suffer to some degree
|
| As far as I can tell, San Francisco doesn't seem to believe
| this. San Francisco _does_ seem to collectively believe that
| adding housing is an abomination to avoided at all costs and
| that helping the homeless is a moral imperative.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > No city has managed to solve the homelessness problem with
| anti-sleeping architecture and police crackdowns, but they'll
| keep trying.
|
| That isn't true, of course they've solved _their_ problem
| using such measures...by pushing them to another city. For
| example, Bellevue WA will have the riot squad out pretty
| quickly if you so much as lay down on a bench, and it works
| since Seattle WA is right across the lake.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| > The majority sentiment appears to be that homeless people
| deserve to suffer to some degree, and that without pain
| they'll never be properly motivated to get a job and rejoin
| society.
|
| I don't think this is true at all. Citation is needed for
| this.
| opportune wrote:
| You can't give apartments away at market rates to fix
| homelessness because about half of the homeless people are too
| mentally troubled/addicted to be able to handle an apartment.
| So you still have to pay for security and now you also have to
| pay for people to come and clean the apartments.
|
| Also, SF has indoor shelters and such. Including putting people
| in hotels. The tents, AIUI, are for people who wouldn't be
| allowed in the shelters for whatever reason (like people with
| dogs or people who are using drugs very frequently, not allowed
| around children, etc.)
| WhatIsDukkha wrote:
| """about half of the homeless people are too mentally
| troubled/addicted to be able to handle an apartment."""
|
| citation needed
|
| You're simply expressing your prejudice about a huge group of
| people and you have immediate experience about a very few of
| them that you noticed (probably because they were loud).
|
| Are some people too troubled for easy housing? Absolutely,
| but you've made this huge step into "about half" and you are
| expressing a prejudice which keeps the problem from being
| solved because it becomes seemingly impossible with this
| hurdle you've invented.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| An over estimate, but not too far off the mark:
|
| "In 2019, 36% percent of the chronically homeless suffered
| from a chronic substance abuse problem, a severe mental
| illness, or both" [1] For the published data used to come
| to this conclusion see [2].
|
| This doesn't include less sever mental illness which almost
| certainly contributes.
|
| [1] https://sunrisehouse.com/addiction-
| demographics/homeless-pop...
|
| [2] https://files.hudexchange.info/reports/published/CoC_Po
| pSub_...
| tdeck wrote:
| That statistic doesn't come near to supporting OP's
| claim. There are plenty of people with substance abuse
| problems or mental illness who could "handle" living in a
| free apartment if it were provided to them. The fact that
| they can't afford market-rate housing doesn't necessarily
| mean they'd destroy any home they lived in.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| The US isn't the only country with homeless people. In
| much of Europe where people actually can literally go and
| obtain free social housing there are still sizeable
| homeless populations for exactly the reason OP pointed
| out, they cannot manage their day-to-day affairs because
| they are drug addicted or mentally ill.
|
| In Germany we have about 50k people living on the
| streets. Technically none of those people need to be.
| They could all get the necessary financial aid.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| The quote you provided states that:
|
| "In 2019, 36% percent of the chronically homeless
| suffered from a chronic substance abuse problem, a severe
| mental illness, or both"
|
| The key word here is "chronic." According to the National
| Alliance to End Homelessnes[0][1] (based on data,
| including the link you cited, from HUD[2]), less than 20%
| of homeless people are chronically homeless. As such,
| less than 10% of the total homeless population "suffer
| chronic substance abuse problem, a severe mental illness,
| or both"
|
| So you're projecting the traits of a (relatively) small
| group onto the larger whole. An assertion which seems
| problematic at best.
|
| [0] https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-
| america/homeless...
|
| [1] https://public.tableau.com/static/images/20/2020SOH_P
| IT_bars...
|
| [2] https://www.hudexchange.info/programs/coc/coc-
| homeless-popul...
| weswpg wrote:
| > > about half of the homeless people are too mentally
| troubled/addicted to be able to handle an apartment.
|
| > citation needed
|
| To fully qualify the statement made by the person you're
| replying to:
|
| I would argue that it is indeed clear that around half of
| the individuals facing chronic homelessness urgently
| require mental health and addiction support.
|
| for those people, they may likely face crisis and be
| consequently unable to upkeep any dwelling that is freely
| provided to them unless they have extensive support and
| possibly even in-patient care.
|
| * About 30% of people who are chronically homeless have
| mental health conditions.
|
| * About 50% have co-occurring substance use problems.
|
| https://www.homelesshub.ca/resource/individuals-
| experiencing...
| joshribakoff wrote:
| Incredible that you're down voted for simply speaking the
| truth. There are literally people who fling their HIV
| positive blood or feces at anyone who approaches them and
| carry machetes and axes. They need conservatorship not an
| apartment
| opportune wrote:
| I guess what I said just sounds callous to people who are
| aware of homelessness but don't have direct experience
| trying to help them. It's a complex problem and there's a
| reason beyond graft that it hasn't been fixed.
|
| As with many things I'm sure 80% of the resources are going
| to the 20% of people who are the most difficult to handle.
| Many homeless people are normal people who are just very
| down on their luck. But those homeless people are often
| "invisible" to the general public since they usually don't
| sleep rough, yell at people on the street, etc.
|
| Finland can probably solve it because they fund "inpatient
| mental health services" which is what can actually fix
| homelessness for the most difficult people suffering it.
| That is super expensive though.
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| On the other hand, you cannot force people into the wards
| unless they pose grave danger to themselves or the
| society.
|
| And the current sentiment is that yelling slurs or
| urinating in a subway is not grave enough to justify
| involuntary confinement.
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| Not quite true in California - being "gravely disabled"
| also justifies involuntary detainment and treatment: "A
| condition in which a person, as a result of a mental
| health disorder, is unable to provide for his or her
| basic personal needs for food, clothing, or shelter."
|
| In reality though, the lack of funding for such people
| means that only the most severe are treated under this
| category. What's required is the funding and political
| will to enforce it, the necessary legal structure is
| already in place.
|
| https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySec
| tio...
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| > "A condition in which a person, as a result of a mental
| health disorder, is unable to provide for his or her
| basic personal needs for food, clothing, or shelter."
|
| Wait a minute. Does it also apply to all these infamous
| unemployed college graduates who still live with parents?
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| This really isn't funny or comparable. Unemploymed
| college graduates do not lack the capacity to do these
| things, they have a choice to do them or not do them.
|
| People with mental health issues that compromise their
| ability to care for themselves don't have a choice.
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| Not funny, indeed, but how do we tell people who "can,
| but don't want" from those who want, but cannot care for
| themselves?
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| In most cases, that's fairly easy to tell by looking at
| their history, current living situation, and cognitive
| abilities.
|
| Also, are those who are lazy really the majority case
| here? Or a straw man being used to justify ignoring the
| problem?
| swearwolf wrote:
| From what I've heard from mental health professionals, in
| practice simply being able to answer some very basic
| questions (like "Are you hungry? If so, what should you
| do?") with plausible answers ("I should eat") is
| sufficient to pass the "gravely disabled" test.
| smoe wrote:
| The difference might be that mental issues are identified
| and cared for much earlier, before people end up on the
| streets and things worsen more and more. Locking people
| up into wards is not the only option.
|
| Not at all an expert in this, but it sounds like there
| are much more mentally ill people in the streets in the
| US compared to other places.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| I'd bet more American families kick their problem
| relatives out instead of caring for them within the
| household. "Not my responsibility."
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Sounds like those people belong in an asylum then, not an
| apartment.
|
| I know some asylums are mismanaged and let's just pretend
| they're not here and that states properly fund and regulate
| them.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| It's a gray area. There are people who, with care and
| looking-after, can be useful-if-weird members of society,
| but who without that support would spiral out of control.
| "Crazy"/"not-crazy" isn't a binary.
| andrepd wrote:
| You're not wrong except when you say "about half". Unless you
| have hard statistics it's better to refrain from throwing
| numbers up in the air.
| eplanit wrote:
| They used to be called "Hoovervilles" [1].
|
| San Fran can instead appropriate newly vacated office buildings
| and turn them into modern, high-rise versions. Because they've
| created the shithole that the city is now, it's frankly hard to
| give a damn how much more they befoul themselves.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooverville
| [deleted]
| dnautics wrote:
| > Our revealed preference
|
| Is this revealed preference? It's clearly due to political
| drag, corruption, hubris, or something that is not necessarily
| preferences of individuals in SF.
|
| It's not like people aren't trying. IIRC Marc Benioff (who I
| have no particular love for) donated 30 million to homelessness
| "research" to UCSF, and 17 million to various direct programs.
| Last homeless point in time count estimates 8k homeless in SF;
| let's round up to 10k; leaving aside the soft corruption that
| might have gone into that grant (come on, we have a probably
| 80% correct model of what causes homelessness), that's TWO
| PEOPLE who could have given enough money to go a third of the
| way to paying $1500mo/homeless person rent. estimating that the
| all-in cost for social services per person is a generous
| $1000/mo.... it seems that this situation is eminently
| solvable.
| scottLobster wrote:
| In any democratic system the government exists with the
| consent of the majority of people. If solving the homeless is
| a priority for the constituents, they can vote out the ruling
| government as punishment. That hasn't happened yet,
| indicating it's just not a high priority for most people
| living in SF. The gap between voicing an opinion and taking
| action is large.
|
| Of course voting out the ruling government might mean voting
| in someone they disagree with on other issues, but this is
| why single issue voters get more things done politically than
| their "wiser" counterparts who try to consider all the
| variables.
|
| It's the same with the various opinion polls that make
| headlines showing "75% of Americans want X, so why is the
| government still refusing?" The simple answer is far less
| than 75% are willing to base their vote solely on X, whereas
| the opposition often is.
| dnautics wrote:
| > Of course...
|
| so, in short, it's not revealed preference.
| scottLobster wrote:
| Depends on how you define "preference". Any number of
| people would "prefer" any number of things in a vacuum
| that fall apart when put up against the real world.
| That's not a particularly useful definition of
| "preference". I'd argue what people truly "prefer" is
| revealed by what they are willing to take action on.
| dnautics wrote:
| Many people prefer that china not torture uighurs, but
| they are, understandably, not willing to take action on
| it.
|
| Preferences are not 'revealed' by action because even if
| we were hyper rational, action would take into account
| expected success, which may be depressed by factors that
| have nothing to do with our preferences.
|
| I reject your operational definition of preferences. I
| Think most people would be with me on this one.
| scottLobster wrote:
| I'd argue most people would be willing to take action on
| it, they simply don't have to power to do so and can't be
| reasonably expected to achieve that power. Whereas people
| in SF who have voting rights DO have power over what
| politicians do about the local homeless situation.
|
| When a group has the power to change something but
| chooses to prioritize other things instead (which may be
| a valid response, depending on circumstances), it's clear
| that the group "prefers" the thing they do over whatever
| they might say.
|
| This is all a long-winded version of "Actions speak
| louder than words", or more in context: "votes speak
| louder than opinions".
|
| I reject your purely theoretical definition of
| "preferences". I imagine most people would "prefer" to
| eat and drink whatever they want, never exercise and
| still maintain perfect health. Unfortunately in the real
| worth that "preference" is completely irrelevant, and
| plenty of people (myself included) don't "prefer" health
| all the time for any number of reasons.
| nerdponx wrote:
| > In any democratic system the government exists with the
| consent of the majority of people.
|
| This is incomplete to the point of being incorrect. The
| correct version is:
|
| > In any democratic system the government exists with the
| consent of the majority of people who happen to have the
| time/energy/intelligence to research candidates and
| physically cast a vote in spite of various barriers to
| voting, choosing from among the small number of candidates
| who happen to be running.
| scottLobster wrote:
| Sure, but so long as the democracy is still technically
| functioning those laws can be changed with enough
| support. Most of the barriers in place, whether they
| should be there or not, are not insurmountable.
|
| I guess I'm defining consent as "anything less than a
| desire for violent overthrow of the government" because
| that's the primary problem democracies solve. Things can
| still get bad to the point where in any other system a
| violent rebellion would take place, it's just that in a
| functioning democracy there's a bloodless rebellion at
| the ballot box instead of a civil war.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| This is really a curse of the two-party system, although
| California has open top-two primaries so you'd think they'd
| be less susceptible to this issue.
| option wrote:
| California has been single party for quite some time.
| Much like "united russia" in Russia.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| If different factions in a party can put forward
| different people who can make it to the top two, the open
| primary makes the point moot as long as they disagree
| enough.
|
| The religious and more recently nativist turns that the
| GOP has taken nationally have made them uncompetitive in
| California; it's notable that the last Republican
| governor of California was neither of those things while
| that transition was happening.
| Leherenn wrote:
| Even multi-party systems suffer from this. You will never
| have enough parties to satisfy everyone on every issue.
| It's also worsened by the multiple years between
| elections, the feedback cycles are very slow, and too
| much is muddled together when there's an election.
|
| I would have said the solution is referendums, where the
| population can regularly vote on some specific issue. But
| as far as I understand California's "proposition" fit
| this, and they don't really seem to work.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Referendums are flawed because
|
| * referendums, as a single-issue-only vote, suffer when
| an electorate is only thinking about immediate first-
| order effects, and due to how many issues are happening
| at the same time it's also very easy to get voter
| fatigue. WA has been through a few cycles for lowering
| car tab fees to $30, it ends up being ruled
| unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court due to
| procedural errors, and in the meantime it totally wrecks
| budgets. But who would vote down a tax cut for themselves
| even if the final figure has no bearing on reality?
| Similar story with Prop 13 and all the nasty knock-on
| things it has caused.
|
| * referendums only represent a snapshot in time, but due
| to inertia it is hard to change it. Is Scotland going to
| get a second vote after Brexit? Who knows? New Caledonia
| is trying a third time in three years for an independence
| referendum.
| durpkingOP wrote:
| How does it only cost $60k when 1 individual security guard
| would be homeless earning only $60k themselves in a year in San
| Francisco?
| Salgat wrote:
| The hardest part of dealing with homelessness in America is
| that homeless people will migrate to the best areas to live and
| beg, which unfortunately also means that certain cities become
| targets to bear the brunt of the nation's homeless expenses,
| which incentivizes them to try to push out homeless to make
| other city's/state's problem. Finland is smart by making this a
| nation-wide solution.
| umvi wrote:
| Why don't all of EU's homeless simply migrate to Finland
| then?
| maqp wrote:
| "You cannot secure your means of support with benefits paid
| by the society."
|
| See more info under "income requirement" under
| https://migri.fi/en/residence-permit-on-other-grounds
|
| Sure, you can apply for e.g. political asylum, but even
| then some restriction apply.
| gsnedders wrote:
| There's a bunch of complexity in EU law around certain
| benefits, housing and unemployment benefits among them.
|
| Those who weren't already resident in Finland, Finland
| doesn't have any responsibility towards.
| stepanhruda wrote:
| Language and cultural barrier. Moving between EU countries
| is a much bigger psychological deal than between US states.
|
| Also, Finland's weather is a negative if you are homeless.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| Freedom of movement is conditional, you cannot be an undue
| burden on social assistance system of the host member
| state, which you are if you are homeless and don't have any
| job.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| unfamiliarity of culture and language probably plays a big
| role compared to the US, where everything is available in
| English by default. A large amount of Finns speak English,
| but then that would require a person moving there to also
| speak English well, which I wouldn't say is a given.
|
| Also, compared to the moderate Mediterranean climate of,
| say, SF, Finland has very harsh winters, which would make
| it very unattractive for sleeping outdoors.
| re-al wrote:
| "Our revealed preference seems to be that we'd rather have
| homeless people live in tents than have poor people get free or
| nearly free housing."
|
| Well, I'm sick of your preferences; they make no sense to me.
|
| I'm being facetious, but why talk that way? You are an
| individual. If you have an opinion state it.
|
| Government and its decisions are not you, you do not need to
| pretend that you agree with these decisions, or that they are
| somehow the result of a benign expression of voting decisions
| that you are bought into.
| Kalium wrote:
| > I'm being facetious, but why talk that way? You are an
| individual. If you have an opinion state it.
|
| This phrasing makes clear the policy preference of the polity
| of San Francisco while _also_ implying that the author does
| not agree with it.
|
| As you say, the author is an individual and does not need to
| pretend to agree! This author seems to agree with you. They
| have expressed their opinion as well as noted that of of the
| polity.
| JoeyBananas wrote:
| > Our revealed preference seems to be that we'd rather have
| homeless people live in tents than have poor people get free or
| nearly free housing.
|
| The reason why such programs exist in the first place is
| because of San Francisco's highly liberal government. There is
| no doubt that the politicians would absolutely love to give
| people houses for free, but they can't because that would be
| even more expensive.
|
| The San Francisco system is flawed by design. It's not
| economical to support people with welfare because America is
| not a communist nation. Homelessness should not be considered
| to be primarily the government's problem. If the economy is
| strong, homelessness as a problem will largely disappear and
| charities will take care of the rest of them.
| baron816 wrote:
| The city is still giving out lots of housing. Except when the
| city tries to build housing, it takes many years and $800k per
| unit.
|
| The city has put up so many regulatory hurdles that make it
| almost impossible to build anything. Consider this project that
| would've added 19 housing units
| https://twitter.com/samdman95/status/1415839145386196993. It
| was blocked because it would've increased shadow cover on
| Delores Park by .001% (as if SF has a shadow problem instead of
| a housing problem).
|
| There really is no point in the city trying to build housing
| for the homeless without addressing the regulatory issues
| first. If the city were to try to build housing for all its (by
| the official count) 8000 homeless people, it would cost >$6
| billion.
| malandrew wrote:
| Relative to pretty much all other markets, it's practically
| impossible to solve homelessness in San Francisco. There are
| at least two major considerations. The first is the one you
| pointed out that there are far too many barriers. The second
| is that San Francisco is a fundamentally hard city to succeed
| in. Even competent folks with good educations and no real
| personal problems struggle to do well in San Francisco. If it
| is hard for such people, it's only going to be far more
| difficult for people without the same education and with many
| personal problems.
|
| With these two major constraints in mind, it boggles my mind
| that we continue to try and solve the problem in San
| Francisco, instead of directing all the resources to other
| markets without these constraints.
|
| Providing resources elsewhere and removing support in San
| Francisco will serve to incentivize the homeless to relocate
| to places where programs like housing first can be tried and
| where they have a chance of actually getting on their own two
| feet because they aren't in a hyper-competitive local market.
|
| Last time someone asked me to donate money to the homeless
| problem in San Francisco, I told them no, but then proceeded
| to donate money to a homeless program in another city (at the
| time I chose a program in Sacremento) because it's beyond
| stupid to keep putting money into trying to solve the problem
| in San Francisco if you actually want to see results from the
| money you spend on the problem.
|
| People working on this problem in San Francisco either have
| more heart than brains or they are part of the San Francisco
| homelessness industrial complex and have a vested interest in
| keeping these programs in San Francisco because they want to
| live in San Francisco and are employed in this industry.
|
| Social worker salaries in San Francisco are $60k to $100k a
| year. If you can pay for two to three social workers in other
| markets instead for the same price, why pay for such people
| to work in San Francisco.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| And solving the regulatory hurdles might also might start to
| reduce the homelessness problem before the city even starts
| giving away free units to anyone in need.
| ineedasername wrote:
| The causes of homelessness may be different in SF vs. Finland.
| Mental health & drug addiction are common problems among long-
| term homeless in the US. Resolving homelessness requires better
| solutions to those issues as well.
| maqp wrote:
| You need both, like here in Finland. E.g. see info on housing
| under https://www.espoo.fi/en-
| US/Social_and_health_services/Health...
| ineedasername wrote:
| Thanks for the reference, pretty much as I would expect
| things to be. Homelessness doesn't just happen, there's a
| cause that must be dealt with.
| kebman wrote:
| As far as I can see, Finland has some of the lowest drug
| abuse in the world, so it stands to reason that providing
| homes is more affordable for them. As far as I remember, they
| used to have a bigger problem with alcohol than their Nordic
| neighbours, but I'm unsure if this is still the case.
| zhoujianfu wrote:
| How many tents fit in one of those sites? $5K a month for maybe
| 50 people seems pretty affordable ($100/mo)?
| dannyr wrote:
| It's 60K PER tent!
| joshribakoff wrote:
| Currently people experiencing homelessness can effectively
| sleep anywhere without being sweeped by the city. The police
| department lets me know they cannot physically move the tents
| without an eviction process and can only issue a misdemeanor
| which only entails fines that these people most likely will not
| pay anyway. The police department lets me know this is Chessea
| Boudin's policy and that all they can do without a court order
| is ask the homeless people to move nicely. By Fulton and Great
| Highway there are often lines of cars to buy drugs from people
| living in this one RV who apparently have a "right" to be
| there. Police state the individuals turn down the help offered
| by the homeless outreach team. The individuals turn the area
| into a literal dump, junk yard, and trap.
|
| (I'm aware I'll be down voted by people who do not live here,
| haven't had to call the cops for help themselves, and think I
| am just exaggerating)
| swearwolf wrote:
| For the record, this kind of thing is absolutely happening in
| San Francisco, and it's happening in other West Coast cities
| as well, like Portland. The OP is a little off in their
| attribution. The biggest cause of this is the 9th Circuit
| ruling in Martin v. Boise, which dictated that cities cannot
| force a person not to camp on public land unless they can
| offer a meaningful alternative. Cities have built their own
| policies to deal with this, and then multiple cities on the
| West Coast also elected progressive District Attorneys, who
| explicitly consider things like what the OP is describing to
| be "non-violent" crimes, and therefore not a priority. Here's
| what San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin said about this:
|
| "We will not prosecute cases involving quality-of-life
| crimes," he said. "Crimes such as public camping, offering or
| soliciting sex, public urination, blocking a sidewalk, etc.,
| should not and will not be prosecuted. Many of these crimes
| are still being prosecuted; we have a long way to go to
| decriminalize poverty and homelessness."
|
| That's a noble goal, but it comes with a HUGE blind spot -
| namely the intersection of homelessness and criminality. The
| apparent implication is that the citizens impacted by these
| "quality of life crimes" can go pound sand.
| Cpoll wrote:
| > the city pays around $60k per tent site per year
|
| Is this number missing a zero? That sounds very reasonable for
| use of land and 24/7 security. And at $5k a month I'm not sure
| how many apartments you can afford. Or is that meant to be $60k
| per tenant? How many people can you house in one of these
| sites?
| graeme wrote:
| $60K per tenant
| morsch wrote:
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/S-F-
| officials-w...
| bzbarsky wrote:
| "Tent site" usually means "place for a single tent". If
| grandparent has the usual usage, it's $60k/tenant, unless
| people are sharing tents.
| Cpoll wrote:
| Thank you for the clarification, that makes much more
| sense.
| sologoub wrote:
| It's $5k per tent per month - you can rent 2-3 studios for
| that, even in SF. A similar program in LA is coming in at
| $2100 per rent per month, definitely enough for at least one
| apartment: https://ktla.com/news/local-news/east-hollywood-
| tent-village...
|
| That's the point the original article made - they were
| throwing money at short-term shelters and other things, just
| like everyone else and the problem got worse not better.
| Instead, doing stable housing first and applying conditions
| later allowed people to adapt. I suspect that they also get
| to re-use units the NGOs bought to house next set of people
| once the initial occupants have improved their situation
| enough.
|
| If one were to use the $2100 for mortgage payment as well,
| with taxes/hoa/insurance included, that would finance over
| $400k worth of unit.
| s5300 wrote:
| Landlords aren't going to be so keen on letting the
| homeless be shoved in their rentals when they'll likely be
| filled by non-homeless soon enough.
| sologoub wrote:
| Have you heard of Section 8? There are landlords who
| specialize in such programs - the benefits are quite
| compelling for the right cashflow setup, taking the
| Finnish model as the example: you rent to the NGO that
| has government backing (e.g. risk of nonpayment goes to
| near zero), the NGO assumes all risk and is responsible
| for the unit. That's a pretty great deal compared to the
| Landlord being responsible for vacancy, individual tenant
| management, etc.
| maqp wrote:
| Plus here in Finland the city owned apartments etc. are
| distributed around the city (not the Manhattans but the
| rest). Thus there are no slums in Finland and thus
| there's practically zero gang problems: there's exactly
| two city districts in the entire Finland I would not feel
| safe walking at night. So individuals renting to NGOs,
| city buying apartments etc. benefit both the community as
| well as the individual who gets out of the crayfish
| trap.*
|
| *There's a popular analogy with crayfish traps here in
| Finland wrt. one individual finding their way out of the
| trap, only to have the other crabs pull them back in.
| s5300 wrote:
| Sorry, I was speaking specifically with regards to San
| Francisco w/the parent. And yes, I believe there is some
| Sec 8 in SF, but not exactly the point of the current
| issue.
| sologoub wrote:
| We have to structure the incentives to drive the outcome.
| Sec 8 is one program that (for all its faults) has shown
| effective and manageable. The door swings both ways -
| need to ensure good landlords want to provide housing and
| the "slumlords" are identified and punished/removed from
| programs.
|
| SF also has the BMR program that's designed to provide
| ownership opportunities for low income people. If NGOs
| with State backing could be involved, BMR inventory could
| be an interesting starting point. Then you could provide
| additional incentives to developers to include even more
| BMR units, etc.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| is per tent site === one single 'parking space' for one
| homeless person's tent? if so it's outrageous.
|
| Even if it means say a parking lot for 20, that seems pretty
| crazy. You can just give $2k to buy an apartment, if you are
| puritan and have to control whether or not they spend it on
| substances just pay the landlord directly. Probably has to be
| a place that can get cleaned up easily though after they move
| on.
| pbourke wrote:
| That amount of money buys a lot of tiny houses - maybe 2
| for $60k.
| sokoloff wrote:
| It can't possibly be $60K just to provide 24/7 security for
| a year for a whole location, right? That's a bare minimum
| of 5 full-time employees, but more likely 6 to 8.
| maqp wrote:
| How much does a set of bullet proof window for a tiny
| one-bedroom apartment, and a security door cost? Guarded
| tent-site sounds like pouring truckloads of money to the
| sea.
| jlmorton wrote:
| > It would be cheaper to rent apartments at current market
| rates, even in San Francisc
|
| Indeed it would, but that is not a realistic option. These are
| high needs groups, many with severe mental disorders and drug
| addictions.
|
| It is an embarrassment that we don't have better infrastructure
| to serve these groups, but it's tough renting out market rate
| apartments to serve them. Landlords of course have to agree.
|
| SF is able to do this with custom-built housing, or Project
| Roomkey, but it's not like we can find 4,500 private apartments
| where landlords will happily put up a schizophrenic guy with a
| meth addiction.
|
| It's also worth pointing out that $60k for these sites is not
| just payment for shelter. It includes three meals a day, social
| services, security, sanitation.
| noobermin wrote:
| May be for some of the houseless but many don't have mental
| disorders or drug addictions, many people are just down on
| their luck. Also, pretty sure Finland has people with those
| issues as well.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "but many don't have mental disorders or drug addictions,
| many people are just down on their luck"
|
| Be out of luck for a while and chances are high, that you
| develope mental disorders as well as drug addictions.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Do you live in SF? It's quite apparent that a huge
| percentage of the homeless, if not the majority, have a
| mental disorder, drug addiction, or both.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| That's just for the visible chronic homeless. There are
| plenty of homeless people living under the radar in their
| cars and such that really are just down in their luck,
| and don't get noticed them because they aren't chronic
| cases.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Sure. But they do get captured here:
| https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/01/ExecutiveSu...
|
| 69% are reporting being disabled in some way that's
| preventing them from being housed (read: addiction,
| mental illness, health issues resulting from these, etc).
| 42% are self reporting _current_ addiction, 39% have
| _self reported current_ psychiatric /emotional disorder
| of some kind, and 37% with PTSD (apparently getting
| separately reported from the prior stat). These numbers
| are likely higher in reality.
|
| Of course there are some that lost their job, don't make
| enough, etc. That's the population that you could expect
| to make a come back with support. But a very significant
| portion are beyond tractable. Drive thru the tenderloin
| and tell me what you see is rehabilitatable.
|
| Seems to me the easier story would be preventing
| homelessness in the first place, which would involve
| making our society kinder for all, not just the homeless.
| It got significantly worse after Regan defunded the
| mental health wards. Many progressives support this cause
| of holding people against their will -- I'm not sure
| being homeless and mentally ill is more humane. At some
| point it's easier to centralize long term care than to ad
| hoc beds and social services.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| That isn't a given. It could be that the standard strong
| social safety net is enough to keep people without
| substance abuse or mental illness problems out of
| homelessness. It would be interesting to do an honest
| accounting, at any rate.
| noobermin wrote:
| Are you saying talking about the social safety net in
| Finland or the US? I don't understand the argument you're
| making, if anything the weakness of the social safety net
| in the US bolsters my argument that a larger fraction of
| homeless people in the US are just down on their luck
| relative to the fraction of homeless people in Finland.
|
| EDIT: In order to avoid deepening the thread, may you
| restate your point so that I can understand what you
| mean?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Finland.
|
| Also I'm not sure how to evaluate "a large fraction of
| the homeless are just down in their luck." Those are the
| easy cases that are more likely to get effective help
| already, even in more dysfunctional American cities. And
| if they aren't, we have a much better chance of doing a
| better job there, since their problems are much easier to
| solve than those of the more chronic homeless.
|
| In fact, our first priority should be to prevent "down in
| their luck" homeless cases from becoming chronic
| "substance abuse/mental illness" homeless cases.
| abeppu wrote:
| > where landlords will happily put up a schizophrenic guy
| with a meth addiction.
|
| Isn't this a discrimination under the Fair Housing Act? My
| understanding is that both mental illness and drug addiction
| can constitute a disability.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Neither the mentally ill nor drug addicts are protected
| classes. The best protection they will get is under the
| ADA, and I've never seen it be used to argue for access to
| housing for non-physical handicaps.
| jjeaff wrote:
| That is not correct. I'm sure mental illness would
| qualify for ADA protection with the correct doctor's note
| and filings. Drug addiction is definitely protected under
| the ADA.
|
| (Pdf) https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/drug-
| addiction-aand-...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Not for housing. Protection yes, but landlords are not
| required to not evict a paranoid schizophrenic that has
| threatened violence on other residents (and the eviction
| sticks when they try to rent later). The ADA also doesn't
| prevent landlords from ignoring drug convictions from
| someone a substance abuser. They can't ask you for your
| status, but they won't ignore any other signals that are
| a consequence of that status.
| bequanna wrote:
| Maybe... but most localities will allow you to do a
| background check.
|
| As a former landlord, I can almost guarantee someone with
| the problems you mention will and felonies, poor rental
| references, and/or evictions. You can easily use those to
| legally disqualify a prospective tenant.
| kebman wrote:
| An important difference is that Helsinki regularly has
| temperatures down to -7degC or 19.4degF in the winter, on
| average. While you _can_ live in tents at those temperatures,
| given well insulated sleeping bags and clothes, it 's not
| exactly comfortable. And for people with drug or mental issues
| it can be deadly, say, if they're too far gone to take the
| proper precautions. Meanwhile San Fran winter temps are as far
| as I can see about 14degC or 52.2degF on average. But yeah, if
| the cost you're indicating is true, then it's completely
| outrageous. Though it's not the first time I've heard about
| high costs involved with social cases in the West. I suspect
| some of it is political, but some might also be due to simple
| profiteering since these people doesn't exactly present a
| strong political lobby themselves.
| mioasndo wrote:
| > For this, the city pays around $60k per tent site per year.
| I'm not sure if this is in part due to some unsavory
| relationship between the org administering the program and some
| city official. Recently the program was extended. It would be
| cheaper to rent apartments at current market rates, even in San
| Francisco.
|
| 60k per tent site, as in - multiple, like a dozen, tents? Or
| 60k per tent?
| option wrote:
| 60k per single tent
| mioasndo wrote:
| Wow, that's almost double the median individual income.
| saklani wrote:
| Finland be like: fuck it, lets just end homelessness by giving
| everyone a home.
| wcerfgba wrote:
| The Housing First approach has been around for a while and has
| plenty of evidence to support it [1]. Good to see further uptake
| and to see this on front page HN. :)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| These programs have existed in several large US cities for over
| a decade. They're not well known, though. Usually people who
| live in a city with one of these programs think that their city
| is unique for having done it.
|
| The programs do help, but they're not a magic bullet for all
| homelessness. I have a group of friends who have made careers
| in this space. Sadly, getting housing for these people is only
| half the of the solution. The temporary homeless really do use
| these housing units as a springboard to get back on their feet,
| usually moving out as they get their lives in order. The
| challenge is the rest of the residents who aren't interested in
| even free services to help get them change their lives or
| overcome their issues. It's also a challenge to get some of the
| residents to cooperate with the rules of these housing units
| (which aren't different than regular rentals, nothing onerous).
| bjornsing wrote:
| > The challenge is the rest of the residents who aren't
| interested in even free services to help get them change
| their lives or overcome their issues.
|
| As I understand it, the trick is to just accept that these
| people exist and still need a roof over their head. Turns out
| that's cheaper than policing them when living on the streets.
| tcbasche wrote:
| It's definitely noticeable as a newly-adopted Helsinkian. I think
| I might have seen like 3 people on the street asking for change
| in the last couple of months. And it's the same 3 people...
| 988747 wrote:
| I forsee a lot of people becoming "homeless" in the near future,
| so that they can get the free housing.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| >"Housing First", on the other hand, reverses the path:
| Homeless people get a flat - without any preconditions. Social
| workers help them with applications for social benefits and are
| available for counselling in general. In such a new, secure
| situation,
|
| It's more of an IOU handout. We will help you if you're willing
| to help yourself. Although this is somewhat of a detractor:
|
| >4 out of 5 homeless people will be able to keep their flat for
| a long time with "Housing First" and lead a more stable life.
|
| Not sure that I'd like to live somewhere with constantly
| changing tenants and people who may have bouts of mental issues
| that I'd have to suffer through. I've lived in a low cost
| apartment. It's fine so long as you ignore the relationship
| issues.
|
| My only beef with this is then it gives a lot of people the
| reason to believe that it's okay to live a lifestyle outside
| your means because you can always get free housing if you lose
| it all. Part of the incentive to prevent you from blowing all
| your money on toys is ending up homeless since you can't pay
| your bills.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Please provide data to back this unfounded assertion.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| There is nothing unfounded about the claim that people are
| driven by self-interest. What data is he/she supposed to
| produce for a new policy that is only going to show the full
| scope of its impact over 50 years?
|
| EDIT, I'm being rate-limited, so I'll respond to the below
| here:
|
| No, there is very clear negative correlation between economic
| growth and government spending levels:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20170821004405/http://ime.bg/upl.
| ..
|
| Calling it "wild speculation" is disingenuous given social
| welfare spending's well documented negative impact on
| economic efficiency, and the basic economic theory that
| predicts this outcome.
|
| >>there are overwhelming examples of entitlement systems that
| are solvent and functional despite a level of free ridership.
|
| The most commonly cited example, Scandinavia, shows the
| opposite of what's popularly believed:
|
| https://iea.org.uk/publications/research/scandinavian-
| unexce...
|
| >>Stop holding back progress with unconstructive and
| uneducated critiques of iterative improvements to the social
| safety net apparatus.
|
| Stop taking it as a priori that any move toward your
| preferred economic system; social democracy, is progress, and
| any one who questions it is being "unconstructive and
| uneducated". It's a very emotional/unconstructive attitude to
| bring to a discussion of such importance.
| cloudfifty wrote:
| as usual you're just using your market fundamentalist links
| to prove your market fundamentalist ideas despite
| overwhelming on-the-ground evidence that e.g. Scandinavia
| has been a remarkable success.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| If you dismiss any evidence that shows that social
| democracy doesn't work, including the evidence I provided
| about Scandinavia, which clearly shows how unsuccessful
| social democracy has been there, then of course you're
| only going to see the evidence supporting your pre-
| conceived notions. It would be impossible for any amount
| of evidence to cause you to change your mind when you
| take it as a priori that such evidence is from "market
| fundamentalists" and thus not credible.
|
| "as usual",
|
| the only thing "usual" is how reluctant those conforming
| to the mainstream ideology are to examine evidence that
| contradicts their narrative.
| jahaja wrote:
| As the saying goes; Extraordinary claims requires
| extraordinary evidence. A couple of free market think
| tank links don't meet that standard. There has to be some
| kind of a bar that must be met to warrant the effort of a
| response.
|
| Please provide a link to a single respectable [economic]
| historian that support your claim that social democracy
| is a proven failure compared to others. No free market
| think tanks or figures please.
|
| > as usual
|
| Yes, you are always using the same ~3 think tank links
| and have obviously never ever even tried to refute your
| own ideas because you otherwise wouldn't say thinks like
| "we've moved increasingly towards soc dem the last 60
| years". Third-way soc dem that actually happened is
| exactly the opposite? It's just so blatantly wrong it's
| pathetic, why should one spend efforts refuting that when
| you've clearly haven't put in any effort in yourself.
| Government spending is not synonymous with Social
| Democracy ffs.
|
| Here's an actual paper from this year explaining what
| actually have happened:
|
| "The rightward shift and electoral decline of social
| democratic parties under increasing inequality"
|
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01402382.202
| 1.1...
|
| Key quote:
|
| "As equality was a founding principle of social democracy
| and protection of the welfare state has historically been
| a strong means of mobilisation for Social Democrats, the
| party family's turn away from these traditions, while
| inequality rises across the West, has been detrimental to
| their fortunes."
|
| They adopted more and more market principles, and with
| that rising inequality, and has as such declined all over
| Europe.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Wild speculation masquerading as an educated opinion holds
| negative value. If you make the assertion, provide facts to
| back it. People _are_ self interested and yet there are
| overwhelming examples of entitlement systems that are
| solvent and functional despite a level of free ridership
| (which is unavoidable). We provide food assistance to
| people, some of whom might be able to work a bit more to
| not need it, but the benefit is overwhelmingly positive.
| Everyone will not immediately become reckless if universal
| healthcare is provided. This is no different. Everyone will
| not quit their jobs tomorrow to get a free home, just as
| everyone has not quit their jobs to live off of food stamps
| (or your country 's equivalent benefit).
|
| The worst that happens is its an experiment that fails, and
| there is still value in the data point. If you're not in
| Finland, and you're not contributing financially to this,
| I'd like you share _why_ you _feel_ so revolted by this
| idea, as we have to get to the heart of the core belief or
| value system being challenged by this effort.
|
| (removed last sentence quoted in comment I replied to
| because it felt unhelpful and unkind to the discussion)
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| How is it unfounded? They created a crazy incentive to do
| so.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| And it shows a lack of mental discipline and character to not
| seriously wrestle with the potential consequences of the
| perverse incentives created by social democracy.
|
| EDIT, responding to the comments below:
|
| >>Painting social democracy, of all things, as a dangerous
| unproven experiment amounts to declaring complete moral and
| intellectual bankruptcy.
|
| Social democracy is a proven failure, despite how many people
| are indoctrinated to believe otherwise. There has been a broad-
| based move toward social democracy over the last 60 years:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long...
|
| And it has correlated with a significant decline in the rate of
| wage growth, and the West losing its lead in industrial growth.
|
| >>Someone with the bio "Promoting an Ethereum-based world"
| probably shouldn't be tossing around too much criticism of
| "potential consequences" and "perverse incentives"?
|
| I'm not asking for any tax dollars to be involuntarily ceded to
| Ethereum. It will only succeed if it's more efficient than the
| incumbents. Social democracy can 'succeed' in spreading even as
| it wastes trillions of dollars in economic output, because it
| only has to convince a barely informed electorate once every
| four years, that it's the right path. There is no informed
| consumer voting with their own dollars like exists in the
| market.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Someone with the bio "Promoting an Ethereum-based world"
| probably shouldn't be tossing around too much criticism of
| "potential consequences" and "perverse incentives"?
| brazzy wrote:
| It shows a lack of mental discipline and character to act
| like these "consequences" have not manifested and been dealt
| with for decades.
|
| Painting social democracy, of all things, as a dangerous
| unproven experiment amounts to declaring complete moral and
| intellectual bankruptcy.
| jowsie wrote:
| You should try reading the article instead of having an instant
| reaction to the headline alone. They don't simply give free
| houses to people who claim they don't have one.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Even if this is true, so what? All types of assistance will be
| gamed by a minority.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| The housing isn't free, which is clearly stated in the article.
| Your prediction is based in your own bias and not any form of
| data or reality.
| finnjavel wrote:
| Hi Finnish guy here.
|
| The housing is subsidized by the government, as most homeless
| people do not have an income. So essentially, the taxpayers
| are paying for the housing, not the tenants.
|
| The company mentioned in the article has just found a way to
| tap into those government funds to provide housing, nothing
| more.
| bestcoder69 wrote:
| Cheaters. You gotta do this a roundabout way, not by just
| addressing the issue directly.
| [deleted]
| snthd wrote:
| [2020]
| konart wrote:
| What about people who refuse to use the shelter?
| jamil7 wrote:
| I got the impression from the article that they would have to
| go through a social worker and explicitly apply for housing but
| that it's granted more or less unconditionally. I didn't look
| into details (actual website is down) but it doesn't seem like
| it's forced on people in a way that they would have to "refuse"
| it.
| brazzy wrote:
| People refuse shelter when it's dangerous to them or comes with
| prerequesites they cannot fulfill.
|
| I think you can figure out the rest.
|
| Here's an inside view:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/vagabond/comments/o5yalm/accordong_...
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Like, for example, inability to consume alcohol or use drugs,
| which is half of the reason people in US refuse shelters (the
| other half is that shelters are full of homeless people).
| brazzy wrote:
| Yes, a shelter program that does not adress addicts (and
| keeping them out does not count as "addressing") is in fact
| designed to fail.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Or designed to handle homeless cases not related to
| addiction. That the arguments "Not all homeless are drug
| addicts and/or mentally ill" and "homeless services not
| designed to deal with drug addiction and/or mental
| illness will fail" are often located close to each other
| annoys me. There is plenty of low hanging fruit to be had
| in dealing with the easier homeless cases. While we
| shouldn't ignore the harder cases, it's no excuse for
| waiting to pick that low hanging fruit.
| zdragnar wrote:
| The problem is, you cannot (legally) force addicts to
| stop (in the US). They either accept the help, or they
| don't. Some do, many more do not.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| You can, at least for some drugs: in many places,
| possession of drugs is a criminal offense, carrying jail
| term. However, it is commonly understood today that
| jailing addicts so that they can recover in controlled
| setting is inhumane, as opposed to letting them overdose
| under the bridge.
| brazzy wrote:
| Note that that is only a problem as long as you consider
| addicts consuming drugs in government-provided shelters a
| worse problem than addicts consuming drugs on the
| streets.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Which is precisely why "Housing First" works as a policy;
| it solves both issues via private apartments.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Housing first works for easier homeless cases that don't
| involve substance abuse or severe mental illness (or
| both). It makes sense to give people housing if they can
| handle maintaining it on their own. For the harder
| homeless cases, at best they will sublet for drug money
| and at worst, the neighbors aren't going to be very
| happy. You can't just handout housing without some
| treatment or supervision.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's why it's housing _first_ , not housing-only.
| Utah's successful experiment in it included using that
| housing to enable regular access to social workers and
| other services, for example; it's a lot easier to deal
| with a mental illness if you're not worrying about a roof
| over your head.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The Utah system has huge gaps, however, especially
| related to mental illness, eg
| https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
| states/utah/articles/2021-0...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The Utah system got _defunded_.
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-homelessness-
| housing/...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| That's not what the article says. Instead, it specified
| that costs increased and the state didn't build new
| subsidized housing units to keep up with increasing
| demand.
|
| So how much more money does Utah need to spend to really
| solve its problem?
| vardump wrote:
| I once went to talk to a group of homeless guys. That's
| exactly what they told me as the reason.
|
| They were offered proper apartments, but they refused it
| because it came with a condition: no alcohol allowed.
| antiframe wrote:
| Maybe a better title would have been "Finland ends involuntary
| homelessness".
| jSully24 wrote:
| This is an interesting experiment in Minneapolis. I can't find
| any earl results yet. What I like is it's meant to be a
| transition, not permanent. https://www.freethink.com/social-
| change/tiny-house-village-f...
| Geee wrote:
| Just to clarify, in Finland housing and basic living expenses are
| provided for everyone who doesn't have enough income. Still,
| there are people who end up on the streets for some reason, and
| this program is aimed at helping those people.
| jollybean wrote:
| By their own data it seems they were able to effectively combat
| and reduce homelessness long before the 'housing first' strategy,
| which is worth noting.
|
| Also notably - is that the 'big dent' made by the program is
| those that are living temporarily with friends, not those on the
| street.
|
| In fact, those living 'Outside, in temporarily shelters or
| dormitories' has actually grown quite a lot into 2019.
|
| It's always interesting to see how detailed data sheds insight
| into big picture schemes.
| peakaboo wrote:
| Communism. They should do it like in America and just charge
| people 10 times more for their shelters. Thats progress! /s
| timonoko wrote:
| This is what Sweden did 50 years ago. My Vespa broke down on the
| way to Paris. I needed money, so I just went to the Goteborg
| employment office and got a job and an apartment. But all this is
| now gone. They have huge homeless problem among older ethnic
| Swedes especially. Because this is HN, I wont go into details and
| causes and consequences...
| 100011 wrote:
| lol at people lapping this article up to support their
| brainwormed political opinions. i actually live here, no
| homelessness has been ended.
| container wrote:
| Beyond the clickbait headline, even the article didn't say it
| was.
| known wrote:
| Why do we need to know about progress if we are concerned about
| the world's large problems?
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/problems-and-progress
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(page generated 2021-07-25 23:01 UTC)