Helsinki's solution to homelessness

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle-helsinkis-radical-solution-to-homelessness

by r0n0j0y • 7 years ago

105 119 7 years ago

com2kid2• 7 years ago

One problem of applying this to the American cities that have a homeless problem is that housing in those cities is prohibitively expensive.

Go to a city like Seattle and a 1 bed 1 bath is going to cost 300k+ to construct at density. (The city doesn't have enough land to build enough tiny houses at 30k or so a pop, so fixing the entire housing problem that way isn't doable.)

Qwertystop3• 7 years ago

Increased investment in public transportation would make it easier to use land that's not in already-densely-packed urban areas. It's not as though the US has less land than Finland, after all.

kazinator• 7 years ago

The other problem of applying this to American cities is that these homes will be used for criminal activity and trashed.

rhacker• 7 years ago

Should we just install cameras and watch them? It's not like they had privacy before. Privacy would be earned over time with trust.

kurthr2• 7 years ago

While I agree with you, in most cases that's only because they won't be policed... which also makes it a terrible place for all the other folks who need housing, when bullies move in. There are real on going labor/maintenance costs with providing housing to many homeless... even beyond the standard social services that are required.

eveningcoffee2• 7 years ago

The Finnish solution is to have a support team inside these facilities. There is also a trial period and substance usage is restricted (though per article there are places where it is more relaxed).

knolax2• 7 years ago

Why wouldn't that be the case for Helsinki?

alistairSH• 7 years ago

Citation? Salt Lake City used to have a similar program as Helsinki that was widely lauded.

Of course, as funding has dried up and real estate prices have gone up, the program has faltered and homelessness is once again on the rise in SLC.

TaylorAlexander4• 7 years ago

It’s my understanding that lots of US cities have more vacant homes than homeless people, so perhaps our solution is not building homes but simply placing people in existing homes.

eveningcoffee2• 7 years ago

Finnish solution is not to put homeless people into random houses. They have created special facilities for this that are supervised by a support team ("At Rukkila, seven staff support 21 tenants.").

WillPostForFood2• 7 years ago

a 1 bed 1 bath is going to cost 300k+ to construct at density

This is a problem that can be worked on that will benefit everyone across the income spectrum. No way we should be stuck with $~7500 per square foot construction costs (assuming a small 1 bed 1 bath would be 400sqft).

pkaye• 7 years ago

No way we should be stuck with $~7500 per square foot construction costs...

I think that should be $750 per square foot...

sampo5• 7 years ago

Of that $750/sq.ft. ($8100/sq.m.) maybe 25% is construction cost. The rest 75% is the value of the land in that location.

redisman2• 7 years ago

Right because Helsinki is famous for it's cheap real estate. Oh wait.. Condos are pretty comparable to Seattle and single family homes in the city are very rare and expensive. Seattle has probably built more housing in the last 5 years than Helsinki proper in the last 50.

WhompingWindows2• 7 years ago

It says in the article: "A leafy green suburb of Helsinki"

bostik• 7 years ago

They named it too: Malminkartano. Technically just at the edge of the Helsinki border, touching Vantaa.

Funnily enough, I grew up nearby, in Konala.

TaylorAlexander4• 7 years ago

Does anyone here think markets alone could solve this problem? Or do you see that coordinated group action is necessary to practically solve problems markets can’t fix?

Qwertystop3• 7 years ago

Markets clearly haven't solved the problem. They've certainly had the time.

DuskStar2• 7 years ago

Markets partially solved this problem a more than a century ago - the solution was "really shitty, cheap, shared housing". As a society we decided that such housing was unacceptable and banned it without providing a replacement.

"This enormously regulated industry doesn't yield outcomes we like for the poor! Obviously markets cannot solve this problem!" is a disturbingly common argument.

yitosda• 7 years ago

Depends on how you define "the problem". Homelessness is a symptom of several other things widely considered to be problems.

If you limit the problem to "some people who want a house don't have enough money to afford living space qualifying as a house", then broadly speaking market solutions are possible because we can assume these people participate in the market via their "demand" and their ability to "supply" something in return. Obviously there's an active debate on many market issues here, whether around too much market regulation (eg NIMBY), or too little market regulation (eg minimum wage).

However, my understanding is that there is mounting evidence that the homeless population is composed of people who have either no demand for a house ("free spirits") or no ability to supply anything to the market (mentally disabled). Obviously in these cases the market is not very useful, and only functions insomuch as those outside of the homeless population include it in their "demand function".

WhompingWindows2• 7 years ago

Homelessness would never be "solved" completely, by market or government, as there are always going to be people who transition into homelessness for unexpected/emergency reasons. Would a market prevent tenuous financial situations, broken family ties, substance use disorders, schizophrenia, PTSD, domestic violence, intimate partner violence? The causes of homelessness are too multi-factorial and hard to prevent, I think the best we can do is a dramatic reduction, not a complete solution.

In my opinion, to solve all of these predisposing/causative factors, we'd need a much much stronger healthcare system, and probably UBI or a strong welfare system, to cover all the above scenarios. Even so, good healthcare and welfare won't matter that much in acute emergency scenarios, for that we need vigilance and persistence and unrelenting altruism.

petrikapu• 7 years ago

Cold and harsh winter is actually what makes homelessness not an option around here

TaylorAlexander4• 7 years ago

Homeless people die every winter in San Jose CA, so I guess this program could have wide appeal.

virgilp• 7 years ago

Yeah, but the weather is mild enough that I bet many don't fully realize the risk. In Helsinki, spending the winter sleeping outside is obviously not an option.

DuskStar2• 7 years ago

Wide appeal to the homeless or wide appeal to policymakers?

0898• 7 years ago

The article's "solution to homelessness" is giving homeless people homes.

The article says they have to pay rent or they get kicked out, but doesn't explain how these homeless people can suddenly afford rent.

AnssiH• 7 years ago

Probably housing allowance (https://www.kela.fi/web/en/housing-benefits) and/or basic social assistance (https://www.kela.fi/web/en/social-assistance), the latter of which covers essential daily expenses if you cannot afford them.

Kela is the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (https://www.kela.fi/web/en).

TaylorAlexander4• 7 years ago

Maybe they can’t afford market rate rent by they can afford a subsidized rent? I’m just speculating.

Qwertystop3• 7 years ago

More homes means higher supply means rents fall? And the three-month trial period, additional support services, and near-guaranteed contract in perpetuity would help get people into homes who might previously have had difficulty holding down a job, or might previously have been evicted for reasons other than rent.

TallGuyShort• 7 years ago

It's a classic problem of mistaking the symptom of homelessness for the problem. If a person simply has a life event that wipes out their finances and they get evicted, okay sure - providing cheap housing just for people in their situation is great. But as much as we don't like stereotypes, a lot of homeless people do actually end up in that situation because of behavioral cycles that still need to be broken. What makes it worse is that homelessness changes a person - and sometimes they are unable to be a part of society right away for more reasons than money (and sometimes they don't even want to). My family operates a hotel that will sell off excess hotel rooms to various homeless groups in the winter - and many times the homeless don't want to be complete inside, so they open windows, etc. and only be as "inside" as they absolutely need to be to survive. That does cause problems if you share infrastructure with other people.

Fronzie• 7 years ago

and yet there's a large variation in homelessness per country, so somehow it can be affected: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_...

zackmorris• 7 years ago

No, what you're saying is a fallacy. After the housing bubble popped around 2008, millions of people around the world found themselves homeless. It can happen to anyone at any time for almost any reason, but often for things like healthcare costs or work accidents leading to unemployment and even bankruptcy. And it will happen again, and still nobody will remember, because of this mantra that homelessness is a lack of personal responsibility.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that your labelling of homelessness as a behavioral problem is the cause of homelessness. Repeated all around the world by countless people and politicians.

If we really want to solve poverty and homelessness, we need to start by separating the financial aspect from the behavioral aspect.

The financial aspect involves everything from vast wealth inequality, to lack of urban planning, to the divergence of wealth and automation, to regressive taxation and extortive healthcare programs. This is basically represented by 40 years of trickle down economics and complete disregard for externalities like environmental damage or displaced populations.

The behavior aspect centers mostly around mental health issues like anxiety, depression, schizophrenia and yes addiction. Things which are all present in the wealthy but properly managed by therapy, medication and a large support network made possibly by the possession of money. There's absolutely no reason we can't offer treatment to the poor. And indeed we used to, before Ronald Reagan began defunding mental health programs in the US:

https://sites.psu.edu/psy533wheeler/2017/02/08/u01-ronald-re...

Personally, I vote to maintain the separation of church and state in the US, which means that the government shouldn't have a say in what appropriate personal behavior is. Which means as a culture, we have a responsibility to pay into a system which is concerned with the care of people who need it.

Churches can still feed and house the homeless, but they shouldn't be the only ones tasked with that responsibility.

For anyone reading this, if you haven't thought about how your personal moral and religious beliefs play into the problem of homelessness, now is the time.

neuronexmachina• 7 years ago

I think you're describing the distinction between chronic and transitional homelessness: https://endhomelessness.org/addressing-chronic-homelessness-...

We now recognize that these patterns are indicators of chronic homelessness. Far from being the norm, only about 10 to 15 percent of people who experience homelessness are chronically homeless. But this relatively small group tends to be the most visible as well as the most vulnerable.

OldSchoolJohnny2• 7 years ago

That's 20th century thinking tied into the scourge of fundamental religion that blames every lack of success in any avenue of life on a moral failing despite every bit of evidence to the contrary.

Addiction is a great indication of this, it's pretty conclusive these days that it's a medical and biological issue that can be treated successfully when treated as what it actually is.

But do we do that? Hell no! Our North American protestant roots pretty much insist that we treat it as a moral failing which radiates outwards as ripples of harm on every level of society all because we can't leave some primitive dark ages way of thinking in the dust bin of history like we should.

Housing unaffordable for young people? Of course it's a moral failing, they just didn't work hard enough...cue harm to society in general as it spirals and radiates outwards from that one completely wrong and ignorant thought until we reach the point where there are desperate people everywhere with nothing to lose.

It happens with so many problems and it's lazy thinking that hurts us all.

vinceguidry• 7 years ago

Literally in the same sentence you're referring to, in the very next clause, it states they can apply for housing benefits to take care of the rent.

gnode5• 7 years ago

I'd add to this, that your eligibility for housing benefits is not coupled to your eligibility for housing. You could be in the situation of losing your benefit eligibility because you got a new private income, and refuse to pay your rent (or squander your income as to be unable to pay).

gnode5• 7 years ago

I think the word "solution" is being used offhandedly here, to mean a mitigating response.

They claim that homelessness is dropping in Finland (contrary to other EU countries), but don't go so far as to say nobody is homeless.

Being homeless doesn't necessarily mean you are unable to afford accommodation; even if you have no private income, this may be covered by welfare benefits. In many cases psychological issues, drug addiction and criminal history are barriers to renting in the private market, which result in homelessness. Being "moved" out of this accomodation may not imply being made homeless again, in some cases the destination may be a more managed form of accommodation (e.g. rehab; prison).

logfromblammo• 7 years ago

Article also says they apply for a housing benefit. I would hazard a guess that the rent is calibrated to the size of that housing benefit.

sampo5• 7 years ago

how these homeless people can suddenly afford rent.

General housing allowance [1] + unemployment benefits [2] + last resort social assistance [3]

[1] https://www.kela.fi/web/en/housing-benefits

[2] https://www.kela.fi/web/en/quick-guide-to-unemployment-benef...

[3] https://www.kela.fi/web/en/social-assistance

gnode5• 7 years ago

On the surface this kind of solution is easy to dismiss as an expensive socialist extreme; a cost to the taxpayer that there is no political appetite for in other countries. Yet counter-intuitively this is likely a saving for the taxpayer, as hospitals and prisons often end up filling this role, at a much larger cost than simply housing people.

luckydata5• 7 years ago

Said bluntly, who gives a shit about the taxpayers. Some things are to be done because they are right, not because they save money, even if they end up saving money.

The ROI-first perspective when talking about social policies has created the monstrous society the US is now.

gnode5• 7 years ago

For better or worse, taxpayers give a shit about taxpayers, so it's important to recognise when arguments made in their name, and against people who are suffering, are actually a false economy.

Konnstann• 7 years ago

The savings are there, the article even talks about it. I think the socialist extreme is the government owning 70% of the housing in the city. Not that it's a bad extreme, it sounds like it works fine, but out of the ordinary.

gnode5• 7 years ago

the government owning 70% of the housing in the city.

I'd argue that this is actually state capitalism, rather than socialism.

jeffreyrogers• 7 years ago

I live in Salt Lake City and we were doing a pretty good job with this approach. Unfortunately, a change in the police chain of command and in the local government led to scaling back of the housing program and a switch to a more traditional model (arrest, choice between jail or rehab, various support programs, housing at the end if you make it through all that).

This new system (which is really the old system come full circle) is much less effective as is clear to anyone who walks around the city. We have a beautiful public library downtown, which is completely unpleasant to visit because it has turned into the place where the homeless stay during the day. About half the times I go I see someone either being arrested or in active withdrawal.

Like most social problems, the solutions are simple, but politically hard to sell, and even harder to maintain once they've been put in place.

luckydata5• 7 years ago

It's unfortunate that the culture in the US is so deprived of compassion and so focused on the "punish first" reaction to anything outside of the ordinary that it will be difficult if not impossible to get anything like this solution adopted.

It's plan to see, even in the comments in this forum so many are really quick to jump to "but mental illness..." "but drugs..." etc...

It makes me sad to realize this is unlikely to change during my lifetime.

adammichaelc• 7 years ago

The data disagrees. It can happen in the US. It _did_ happen in the US.

“Utah reduced chronic homelessness by 91%. Here’s how”

https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chroni...

luckydata5• 7 years ago

I'm glad to learn that. It's also not a surprise it's been tried in Utah of all places.

8bitsrule• 7 years ago

Beautiful. Homes for the home-less, who'da thought that'd work better than spending $25K/capita pushing them around all year long?

"... housing comes first, services later. Clients do have to pay some rent — either 30 percent of income or up to $50 a month, whichever is greater."

And those homes don't have to be big, sprawling, 1000-footers either. An address, bathing, electric, a share in the cost ... is a leg up and a way to escape the terrors. Has to be a hell of a relief.

linuxftw2• 7 years ago

US public housing projects are some of the most dangerous places on the planet. We need to give the common person a path out of poverty that doesn't involve higher education. Once those people are able to move up the ladder, those at the very bottom (homeless) will be able to move up as well.

4ntonius8lock10• 7 years ago

(some) US public housing projects are some of the most dangerous places on the planet. So we shouldn't put homeless there (because the street is better) We can address this topic when everyone is much richer.

There are things in your argument that are implicit, but you left out or it would reduce your argument. I added those implicit things back in so that the full argument has to be addressed for what it is.

yardie• 7 years ago

US public housing projects are some of the most dangerous places on the planet.

Hyperbole, but go on. To hear it from some people the 5,000 people that died during 9/11 was the worst thing to happen to humanity, ever.

We need to give the common person a path out of poverty that doesn't involve higher education.

Like a .................... living wage? That's not very popular with the law and order crowd.

Once those people are able to move up the ladder, those at the very bottom (homeless) will be able to move up as well.

A nation of 180 million able bodied Americans can only tackle one task at a time. We are incapable of chewing gum and walking. The buffer will overflow!

4ntonius8lock10• 7 years ago

The sad thing is that the right thing to do is generally also the logical thing to do.

Housing homeless is less costly than providing jails + ambulances + other services needed when people are on the street.

The data is all there, but people will use sophism to make arguments that are either not proven, or that have been actively disproved. I mean, many arguments against helping the poor can be boiled down to: 'it isn't good enough, so let them rot'.

badpun8• 7 years ago

There's a moral hazard there though - if we're housing homeless for free, then why buy/rent a house, when you can just declare yourself homeless and live in one for free?

refurb3• 7 years ago

The majority of Americans I know have a lot of compassion for the homeless. They’d prefer they be helped, but our gov’t has yet to find a solution.

Of course some people have a negative opinion of the homeless due to negative interactions - being scammed, not really homeless, taking advantage of people.

luckydata5• 7 years ago

Does that compassion extend to anything more substantial than "aww, poor them" or donating a few bucks and into sustaining meaningful change in the way we deal with the issue?

mladenkovacevic2• 7 years ago

I always wonder if Puritanical roots in US have something to do with it. There seems to be a general belief that people "get only what they deserve". The belief that evil and misfortune comes from within each of us and some cosmic scale is constantly judging whether each person's demons are getting the better of them. These beliefs also carried through to capitalism where individuals who out-exploit and out-hoard everyone else are able to claim most of the rewards of society but any accountability for failing is also placed on individuals who just didn't "work hard enough", or didn't "want it badly enough", weren't "strong enough". Basically if you have any genetic propensity for addictive behavior, mental illness or self-destructive behaviour, belong to a group that's discriminated against, were born in poverty or with parents who didn't have the means or the time to raise you "properly", it's nobody's fault but your own and society doesn't owe you any help, support or compassion. A very heartless and cruel culture that'll ultimately cause our stagnation and eventual downfall.

effie• 7 years ago

cruel culture that'll ultimately cause our stagnation and eventual downfall

I am not sure. Cruel, yes. But it is the 'survival of the fittest' attitude, which although cruel, is natural.

hestipod• 7 years ago

It doesn't just make me sad, it enrages me. I did everything I was "supposed" to and still lost. I usually avoid making any political statements because it just causes fights and solves nothing, but its just wrong how we treat each other. My life is really miserable through no fault of my own and I am on the verge of losing it entirely. I am terrified of ending up on the streets, would not survive it, and never imagined it possible before. Living in the US Midwest I hear constantly how people in need are leeches and lazy and should just "work harder" etc. A major part of my hopelessness is the cultural norm and beliefs of the people I have to be around, and I have to be around them because I cannot manage to be anywhere else after my life was stolen. Some people are born empathetic, but culture has such a strong effect on how people view others than in many cases even when they suffer themselves they still cannot see the reality and continue to victim blame and rationalize. I hate the egos and excuses that come out every time the topic comes up. I hate how there aren't basic social protections like the rest of the first world has...housing, healthcare, humane things. I am tired of all of it and have failed to get anywhere better for me permanently because of the same reasons that put me here in the first place. It's a trap once you get in it in the USA. It only goes downhill for the overwhelming majority who find themselves here.

dgzl2• 7 years ago

Comparing other countries'policies to our own is like saying "but it works on mycomputer". There are too many differences in culture, rights and laws to just pretend that if something works over there, then it should work here too.

OldSchoolJohnny2• 7 years ago

This annoys me to no end; so is this intended to make sure no one does anything about a serious problem with this Whataboutism? Or is it intended to make us care less?

What exactly is the purpose of this kind of comment? Why on earth wouldn't it work?

dgzl2• 7 years ago

The literal foundations and functions of government are different between the countries, as are the rights that the residents have. It's like trying to copy a Windows program into OSX. You can't just use the .exe, the best you can do is rewrite the entire thing and hope the new OS will even support needs of the software. Personally, I'm really against the idea of just giving folks free stuff as a benefit. I grew up poor and my parents are on all the social programs you can think of, and none of them help in the way they're intended to. The government turns everything into an expensive cluster-f and doesn't ever fix the root problem. No, simple band-aids are not the answer.

1290cc• 7 years ago

I don't agree that every solution Finland or Iceland comes up with can be replicated to the rest of the world. These are ethnically homogenous countries with a small population and the majority of which is centered in a small area. Swedens perfect approach to education in the 2000's has now been debunked and even the swedes are telling everyone not to do what they did! I think the same would be true of Finlands "solution".

The US by contrast is a continent in its own right with a vastly diverse set of people and cultures. My own experience of the bay area is people are extremely giving and donate a lot of money and time towards homeless efforts. However I feel the latest backlash is born from fatigue towards no solution in sight. If homeless refuse to accept help or seek alternative options to sleeping on the street why would you want to keep helping? I am still stunned that the tiny city of San Francisco had a $300m annual budget to help less than 5000 people. Thats $60k/homeless person, this is greater than the per capita GDP of every single country on earth except the US.

Anecdotally I have a guy living in his car on my street that is filled to the ceiling with trash, he refuses to move or get into a shelter despite us trying to help him. Sadly the neighbors on the street are starting to sour towards him after 6 months of having social workers reach out to help and various charities try to assist.

kjeetgill• 7 years ago

I'm no pro on the subject but it's always worth remembering that statements of this form are almost always wrong:

"300m annual budget to help less than 5000 people. That's $60k/homeless person"

Maybe you have a killer source and I'm out of line, but the usual issues is that these numbers almost never come from one comprehensive study or source. You can't just grab two numbers without context and divide them to say anything meaningful. What exactly is that 300m/yr spent on? How many people did it successfully get off the streets or prevent from ending up there? How many new homeless people arrived over that same time span?

I don't have a meaningful answer to these questions and I'm sure you're right that there are better ways that the money can be spent. It's just that those numbers can be absolutely accurate and still fail to be a meaningful way to understand the problem.

sroussey2• 7 years ago

You should look into the efforts of people trying to get a public audit of where that money goes. At that budget (now doubling), lots of companies and non-profits live on that. And some homeless.

rndmize• 7 years ago

Man am I tired of hearing "the US is too big, too different, too whatever" when it comes to social policies. Social policies don't have to be implemented at a federal level.

SF is doing it wrong? Fine. No one has to do things like SF. But there's no reason not to try a Finnish policy at a city, county or state level if it'd been demonstrated to work.

flukus• 7 years ago

Man am I tired of hearing "the US is too big, too different, too whatever" when it comes to social policies. Social policies don't have to be implemented at a federal level.

Why is it only bought up for social policies? Why is the size and ethnic makeup never a barrier to starting a war or lowering taxes? It seems to mostly just be a lazy excuse to avoid $thingIDontWant.

It's also implicitly a white supremacist argument, "we can't have nice things because we have ethnic minorities".

9HZZRfNlpR• 7 years ago

The fact that you can just move to SF from Alaska does make difference. Here in Europe we have sort same problem and the poor Romanians and also the people taking advantage of anothers countries social system was definitely one factor for Brexit. A lot of countries that are in the EU are slowly being even allowed to work in different countries, the integration didn't happen overnight. So I'm sure similar problems apply.

People here say a lot of homeless like to move to SF because of climate too?

Bakary2• 7 years ago

I don't want to be needlessly cynical but it seems more plausible to attribute all that money being spent because the elites don't want to interact with the homeless, rather than out of compassion to the homeless.

originalvichy• 7 years ago

This ”ethnically homogenous” ”small country the size of a state” stuff is a really tired excuse.

Are you guys too ethnically heterogenous to have hundreds of military bases all over the world, have the most advanced weapons technology known to mankind, and global military dominance?

Are you too heterogenous to have science and engineering facilities in the world? Too heterogenous to have the largest corporations in the world? Too heterogenous to produce some of the best art in the world? Some of the best athletes?

Being so good at so many things, being terrible at things like this sounds more like a choice rather than destiny.

sampo5• 7 years ago

These are ethnically homogenous countries with a small population and the majority of which is centered in a small area.

Minnesota has pretty much the same population as Finland, and is almost as homogeneous, too.

tomcam• 7 years ago

Not sure you’ve been to the Twin Cities lately

sroussey2• 7 years ago

Was $300m/yr. Going to $600m/yr

opportune• 7 years ago

The "ethnically homogenous" argument is just a thinly veiled claim that "we can't do it in the US because of minorities".

Bodhisattya• 7 years ago

The solution to homelessness is {drum rolls} giving people homes.

Who knew? I am not partial to 'handout' economy, but one wonders where did capitalism go wrong.

Helsinki's solution to homelessness

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