Medicine Hat becomes the first city in Canada to eliminate homelessness

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-thursday-edition-1.3074402/medicine-hat-becomes-the-first-city-in-canada-to-eliminate-homelessness-1.3074742

by graeham • 11 years ago

102 105 11 years ago

cbc.ca

beloch• 11 years ago

My first reaction when I started reading this was, "Yeah, but what do you do with the crazy people who prefer sleeping on the streets?". Their answer was to just keep picking them up and taking them to their new home, until they chose to live there. Medicine Hat is not a big place, but doing that 70 times in some cases showed commendable perseverance.

I'd like to see this approach in other cities in Alberta, but there are some pretty big obstacles to overcome. Calgary, for example, presents the choice between very high property values in the core and remote suburbs that aren't very pedestrian friendly. Relocating someone from downtown to a likely site of affordable housing could mean a 30 minute drive. If most people they knew were downtown, this would cut them off pretty effectively, and that's a long way to take someone 70 times too! Perhaps situating affordable housing near a train station and giving residents free transit passes would help.

There are several months out of the year when living outside in Alberta is basically impossible. Some of the homeless go to shelters, but many wind up sleeping inside of derelict buildings or hiding in office buildings. The security guards working those buildings sometimes let them sleep there (the result of kicking them out on some nights is likely death), but security guards aren't the most uniformly humane and caring bunch. Some of them treat the homeless very badly. Getting these people into housing and treating them with a modicum of dignity could really help their mental state improve.

Hopefully Medicine Hat's program can prove that housing the homeless is an economically viable approach, even in bigger cities.

digi_owl• 11 years ago

In the end it seems to come down to housing as shelter vs housing as investment. And in this day and age, the investment wins...

marktangotango• 11 years ago

> There are several months out of the year when living outside in Alberta is basically impossible. Some of the homeless go to shelters, but many wind up sleeping inside of derelict buildings or hiding in office buildings.

Great perspective, thanks for this.

minikites3• 11 years ago

I even said some dumb things like, 'Why should they have granite countertops when I don't.' However, I've come around.

This sort of "crab mentality" makes even discussing things like basic income, minimum wage, or projects like this so difficult, let alone implementing them. People come to believe they deserve their position in life when so much of it is due to advantages/disadvantages outside their control: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business-jan-june13-makingsen...

The rich players are determined randomly by coin toss, the game rigged so they cannot lose. And yet, says Piff, despite their presumably liberal bent going in, [w]hen we asked them afterwards, how much do you feel like you deserved to win the game? The rich people felt entitled. They felt like they deserved to win the game. And that’s a really incredible insight into what the mind does to make sense of advantage or disadvantage.

Successful people believe they deserve to be successful and they believe that unsuccessful people must have acted in a way to deserve it, because attributing your success and their destitution to factors outside anyone's control is scary and difficult.

Red_Tarsius• 11 years ago

I'm all for basic income and minimum wage, but I think the luck mindset is quite detrimental. It strips men of their own agency and fosters cynicism.

I even said some dumb things like, 'Why should they have granite countertops when I don't.' However, I've come around.

Unfortunately, he ends with However, I've come around to realize that this makes financial sense. Silly me, I thought the change of mind was about empathy.

scotty79• 11 years ago

Empathy does not result in social change. Economy does.

dghf• 11 years ago

Unfortunately, he ends with However, I've come around to realize that this makes financial sense. Silly me, I thought the change of mind was about empathy.

Enlightened self-interest that results in action is worth any amount of empathy that doesn't.

learnstats25• 11 years ago

Silly me, I thought the change of mind was about empathy.

It's important that it's economic.

If I work my median job, and live my median lifestyle, and I observe that people who don't work are getting more than I am, that's very challenging. I immediately feel resentful about the fact that I had to work for this when others didn't.

It makes it seem like the economic system is broken and unfair. As soon as that happens, there's no chance you will feel empathy to those people who are benefiting more.

Recognising that the economics is OK is therefore very important - it allows you to start to have empathy.

stephengillie• 11 years ago

Luck is applied probability. Good and bad happen randomly.

It's up to us to use the events around us as tools to shape reality and the future into patterns of events that we want. While we cannot influence all cosmic events related to ourselves and others, we can still influence some.

sospep2• 11 years ago

Unfortunately, he ends with However, I've come around to realize that this makes financial sense. Silly me, I thought the change of mind was about empathy

My guess would be that the "formerly homeless" of Medicine Hat, appreciate the "roof over their head", much more than any amount of "empathy"

na85• 11 years ago

It strips men of their own agency and fosters cynicism.

Does it do the same to women?

RobertoG• 11 years ago

Agree. I think we should change how we talk about this. Instead of talking about “the successful people” or “the rich” we should say “when we are successful we believe we deserve to be successful, when we are poor [..]”. In psychological terms, there are not difference between we and them, and that should show in the way we speak.

There are bias that we all suffer when we are poor and when we are rich: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865583328/Does-money-corr...

This is not a moral fault of the rich in the same way that it's not a moral fault of the poor. Only if we go beyond this confrontational mindset we can learn something.

As Ortega y Gasset put it: I am I and my circumstance

tcfunk• 11 years ago

Yet it's pretty incredible that he not only came around to accept the idea, but even admitted to having said things like what you quoted.

Quite a flip in mentality!

sliverstorm• 11 years ago

He's a flip-flopper! We can't have those!

notahacker3• 11 years ago

The flip side is that many proposals such as Basic Income proposals unconditionally rewarding people with above world-average wages simply for being Swiss citizens, or offers of free, permanent and decent housing for people who find themselves homeless in the right municipality, seem to increase the likelihood of position in life being a consequence of fortune rather than effort to take advantage of it...

There might be a lot of luck in being born rich, and usually a lot of misfortune in being homeless, but there's also a lot of work and effort that goes into being just about solvent but not able to afford granite worktops, and its actually often people in those positions that are most inclined to gripe at perceived profligacy. Whilst few of them would be keen to have to deal with the difficulties of the average [ex]homeless person, particularly for something as trivial as granite worktops, it's also a little hard to blithely dismiss them as overly privileged.

notahacker3• 11 years ago

Not sure what's attracting the drive-by downvotes here? I know BI is popular here, but is there anything actually wrong about my observation that it targets people lucky enough to be born in a particular country rather than unlucky enough to have fallen upon financial hardship? Or that people who think granite worktops are a luxury probably aren't emblematic of the selfish rich?

ryanjshaw2• 11 years ago

'Why should they have granite countertops when I don't.'

Can you explain what's dumb about a statement like this?

People come to believe they deserve their position in life when so much of it is due to advantages/disadvantages outside their control

I read through that entire article. I don't think it's as a cut & dried as they make it out to be. For example, they do not define 'deserved' - do people say they feel they "deserved to win" because they committed to playing well even though they didn't need to, given their advantages? Is it fair to dismiss somebody's high self-esteem just because luck was a necessary component of it - thereby discounting the fact that hard work was also a necessary component? This is no different, to me, from a team winning a sports game and teasing the losers. Maybe the researchers thought of that, maybe they didn't, but the author didn't address it and it's crucial.

It also implies a false dichotomy. It seems to imply people become assholes as they become richer. Perhaps we're all naturally assholes and being poor makes us more aware of our dependence on others because the costs of being an asshole and isolating oneself is too high for poor people. It assumes that being "way more generous, way more charitable, way more likely to offer help to another person" to always be a good idea but neglects to ask why, when our brains are given the option to be less generous, less charitable, less helpful, our brains take it?

attributing your success and their destitution to factors outside anyone's control is scary and difficult.

I don't understand this. I don't deny being fortunate. It's precisely because I'm aware of that, and the role of chance in life, that I don't follow this argument. I live in one of the most unequal societies in the world. Roughly 25-40% unemployment, depending who you ask. The number of 0-4 year olds currently is twice that of the active tax payer base. I already pay ~35% tax, aside from 14% value added tax on products and services. Am I bad because I don't want to share more of my good fortune? I couldn't be where I am without ridiculous amounts of luck - but I also do work hard. Don't I "deserve" a happy and safe life, if I have the opportunity? Why do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?

The economics of my society simply don't forecast very well compared to other societies. Am I a bad person because I save money and find ways to escape to countries with greater equality? I think I'm being quite rational, but it feels like the articles I'm reading here are saying I should feel bad for not wanting to help others more. Sometimes I think things are beyond help, and you need to put yourself first.

rmxt2• 11 years ago

It's "dumb" not in the sense that it's a stupid point. I would say that the quoted person merely feels "dumb," as in "small-minded," after the fact. They were first opposed to it on economic grounds, but as the economic realities became apparent (i.e., it's cheaper to "permanently" fix the issue than to "band-aid" it), I would say that they came around to the moral implications of what it means to help people find some comfort in their lives. Granite countertops and the money that they cost can't change the fact that people live with mental illness or have lived on the streets for years. The metaphoric "granite countertops" are a small price to pay to make the town a better place for all to live, homeless and taxpayer alike.

I don't think that anyone said that you shouldn't put yourself first. I think the bigger point, and the success story from the article, is that sometimes it's actually economically beneficial (to those who pay taxes) for the government to take the apparently more expensive step of giving homeless more permanent housing solutions. If the tax rate stays the same and the ways that the money can be spent can be improved , e.g. $20k on permanent housing per homeless person rather than $100k per person on the street, why not do it?

task_queue2• 11 years ago

You're building yourself a false dichotomy. You can put yourself first. 99.99% of healthy people do. Having such social programs in place doesn't preclude that nor does it impede on your lifestyle.

I would say that with the acknowledgment and understanding of how your circumstances brought you to where you are in life comes another component: how you react to that awareness.

If you can see how you benefit from the disparity and injustice, and that something can be done about it, yet you willingly choose comfort and the possibility of lower taxes, the judgment is cast on you.

Your happiness, safety, enjoyment and advancement in life is not mutually exclusive with ensuring society provides a sufficient safety net.

Lambdanaut2• 11 years ago

Because winners of purely stochastic games believe they deserve the win does not imply that our real game of life is purely stochastic. It has stochastic elements, for sure, but the player himself has an enormous amount of possible moves that you could label "free will".

Success in life is an incredibly complex game, maybe the most complex game. There are strategies one can follow and build upon to up their chances of success in life, and hypothetically if one were omniscient so that they could understand all of the random variables then they could judge whether somebody else "deserved their lot in life". If the player made all the best strategic moves given his input, and he also reaped those rewards, then he truly deserved his lot in life. If he didn't reap the rewards, then it's obvious he didn't deserve his lot. This is apposed to a purely stochastic game in which the omniscient individual would only be able to determine that the game's outcome had nothing at all to do with the player's moves.

In a hostile game in which other players are neck to neck with you(like the government and the capitalist elite in our corrupt game), you still have free will, it's just that exercising it in the most precisely strategic ways has become very, very valuable.

qanael• 11 years ago

I'm pretty sure the largest predictor of your wealth during your life is whether you were born wealthy, regardless of how strategic you are.

greggman• 11 years ago

This reminds of the game Kudos http://www.positech.co.uk/kudos/

It's a game where each game day you get to make 4-6 choices what to do with your time. Like relax and watch TV from 7 to 10pm or take a class. Based on your choices new opportunities open up or don't. It was so in my face to see my life presented like that. Sure it's obvious but more though provking in a compressed time span.

That is not in anyway to imply that everyone has the same opportunities or that people born into poverty don't have serious hurdles that the rich don't. But, there's also a huge middle ground of people in the middle class who choose not to take advantage of the choices they have. I've done the same. I've wasted years playing games or watching TV or reading HN. I'm not judging that to be a bad choice of my life and certainly there's a balance of entertainment, relaxation and other. At the same time, at least for me, someone that grew up middle class, I can clearly look back and see all that time I could have done something that would have made me rich or at least far better off by now that I didn't do.

hnnewguy• 11 years ago

"Because winners of purely stochastic games believe they deserve the win does not imply that our real game of life is purely stochastic."

This is true, but misses the point. The point is that people believe they "deserve" things they've obtained through pure luck- that they've earned it- which has implications regardless of how much of the "game of life" is stochastic or random.

maxlybbert2• 11 years ago

I even said some dumb things like, 'Why should they have granite countertops when I don't.' However, I've come around.

Why do they get granite countertops (assuming they do)? Is it impossible to build a house with linoleum countertops?

eropple• 11 years ago

Solid surface countertops (I'm guessing they're not actual granite) wear a lot better and are cheaper, long-term, to maintain. I'd put them in a place if only to reduce later maintenance spending.

undersuit• 11 years ago

I experience these same feelings occasionally in respect to housing in my city. A number of the new housing developments are only for the low income earners in my town. As a single software developer I make well above my cities average family income, which invalidates me from moving into these new low income units, but the extra money didn't make me any happier that I rented a garage-turned-house for two years.

philh2• 11 years ago

What happens when the homeless from other cities start making their way to Medicine Hat?

I'd like for this to work out long-term, but it strikes me as unrealistic. Here's hoping I'm wrong.

minikites3• 11 years ago

Homeless people aren't as mobile as you think. When someone is homeless they depend on a very specific set of municipal services and it's a huge risk to move somewhere else and not have a way into those services or even a way to find out about them.

To put it another way, why are there any homeless people in Canada or the northern USA at all when they could just move to Florida where it's warm?

mpdehaan22• 11 years ago

While I like the concept of this article, I think there's enough mobility that this may occur. However, I'd much rather someone get a house than move to another city just to live in the street, so ultimately I'd hope more areas adopt something similar if they see this as effective.

San Francisco and Portland both SEEM to have a problem with destination homelessness, in particular, Portland was known to have strong city services and may have led to that.

Given, the job industry there is recovering from a major source of industry, so I could be massively wrong, but it seems like the case.

Ultimately SF and the Bay Area seem to have enough wealthy corporations that, if someone were able to support it, it could totally work. Though I recently remember reading an article from the Slack CEO, where he justified taking a large investment round he didn't need because the VCs were not going to spend it on homelessness.

Unfortunately we still incentize the wrong things in seeking profits. Obviously, we can't call a single case out, but in the end, there's enough funding here to completely fix it if people rallied together and the Medicine Town thing could probably be done at SF or Portland level scale.

It would be crazy expensive, yes, but would also greatly improve those cities.

Raphmedia2• 11 years ago

I know homeless people that migrate from Québec to BC every summer to work in the fields.

There are also a lot of homeless people that moves north from Montréal.

They are quite mobile but only if there is a reason to. Good housing is a big reason and I'm sure many of them will consider moving there.

zo12• 11 years ago

Or when more well off people move to that city, and then magically... become homeless. Just so they could get free housing or whatever.

There will always be people trying to game things, even for marginal benefit.

pjonesdotca2• 11 years ago

I find the people that think this way are themselves the ones who look to game systems

learnstats25• 11 years ago

Thanks for asking this question, it helped me to reach an understanding.

If (although it's quite a big if) homeless people from other cities move to Medicine Hat, that means the problem of homelessness in other cities is reduced.

Is that a bad thing? I claim: not in any way.

Other cities should easily recognise the benefits, in that case. The federal government should be happy to pay for this and similar projects in other cities.

philh2• 11 years ago

Is that a bad thing? I claim: not in any way.

It seems like a bad thing for Medicine Hat, which makes it a bad thing for the future of initiatives like this.

(However, another possible scenario: some homeless people move to Medicine Hat, and Medicine Hat is still better off than it was before because it's better to have the greater numbers in houses, than the smaller number on the streets.)

bayesianhorse10• 11 years ago

Considering that they have to almost force them into these houses, there's a pretty good chance this won't happen in any significant amount...

monk_e_boy• 11 years ago

I'd never heard of Medicine Hat before. What a strange name for a city!

graeham• 11 years ago

As many Western Canadian cities, it has Native origins [1]. The unusual part is that its an English translation, at least instead of an Anglicized spelling or pronunciation.

Its a small city, probably about 6th in Alberta by population. Its probably most famous for sitting right on top of a lot of natural gas, immortalised by Rudyard Kipling as having "all hell for a basement" [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_Hat#Name_origins

goodcanadian• 11 years ago

Some other place names based on translations: Moose Jaw, Battle River

Some other place names based on anglicization: Athabasca, Waskatenau, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

davidw• 11 years ago

"The west" has all kinds of interesting names. There's a "Jumpoff Joe creek" in Oregon, in addition to a "whorehouse meadow", a town called Boring, and a Donner and Blitzen river. And Oregon doesn't even have particularly 'good' names compared to other places, since most of western Oregon was settled by people who wanted to do boring things like farming, raising families, building schools and churches, and trying to stay dry. So you get more pedestrian stuff like Eugene, Springfield (the real one!), Corvallis (look Ma, latin!), Salem, Portland, and so on.

Blackthorn• 11 years ago

There's also a song of the same name by Son Volt.

Raphmedia2• 11 years ago

Ontario means "sparkling" water. Québec means "where the river narrows". Ottawa means "to trade".

Medecine Hat is not that weird. The untranslated name would be "Saamis" (SA-MUS).

gmfawcett• 11 years ago

If you're ever in Alberta, you might want also want to visit the museum at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-Smashed-In_Buffalo_Jump).

ohitsdom2• 11 years ago

Really interesting program. Does it have any effect on the local real estate market? I would imagine it would have at least some impact on renting/purchasing prices.

sospep2• 11 years ago

Does it have any effect on the local real estate market?

- a quick look at real estate sales/prices over the last 4 years from the local real estate board[1], doesnt look like its had any negative impacts

period | # unit sales | avg $

2014 - 1708 - 274,655

2013 - 1446 - 263,223

2012 - 1539 - 255,538

2011 - 1322 - 247,850

1] http://www.mhreb.ca/market_update

EDIT: formatting

ohitsdom2• 11 years ago

Good data, thanks. I'd bet the bigger impact would be on rental prices (which data would be harder to find).

There aren't many details listed about the program in the article, so I wonder how they prevent lower-income people from just taking the free housing instead of paying for rent.

powertower2• 11 years ago

With money chipped in by the province, the city built many new homes.

You can temporarily improve anything by getting an even larger entity or group to pay for it.

The problem is this eventually runs into issues of scale.

ColinDabritz2• 11 years ago

I don't see it. $100k per person costs drop to $20k per person costs, they should want to scale this as fast as they can. They may have had to invest a little up front, or redistribute some of the costs back to where the funding came from before, but it sounds like this scales spectacularly and is a huge win all around.

powertower2• 11 years ago

Estimates of exogenous costs, and the implied savings, are usually highly uncorrelated to any actual savings of costs.

If this was as you claim, then an entire nation or larger region would not have to chip in to pay for a program of a small city.

That small city would just simply balance its own books and ledgers - since they are saving 100K with a 20K investment!

bayesianhorse10• 11 years ago

A city has to come up with the money up front and the effectiveness is not that easily proven to average voters.

ChuckMcM• 11 years ago

I think this is an excellent data point. The article quotes an economic cost of $20,000 vs $100,000 for giving them a home vs having someone homeless. Is there a writeup somewhere on the methodology for doing that calculation? San Francisco claims to have 7,500 homeless people so that would be $750M vs $150M. I'm pretty sure the city supervisors would go for a half billion annual reduction in their expenses.

bayesianhorse10• 11 years ago

Homeless people are very "epensive" for their society, because of the effects of that homelessness. They aren't as productive as they could be, they require a lot more medical attention, they tend to vandalize more, or even steal. I'm not saying they are bad people, it's just the situation nudges or forces them to "cost" more.

Society also can't really choose not to pay the cost. If they break stuff, it may have to be replaced. If they commit a crime, they have to be housed in prison (which is expensive). And if they require urgent medical attention, doctors won't refuse not to help them even if they can't recuperate the cost...

In San Francisco the situation is a bit different. Housing is more expensive, so 20K won't be enough, and homelessness in SF is a bit more of an economically issue, rather than a mainly psychological one.

And even if SF could save money, they would have a hard time creating such a program, for various political reasons. Also it would mean investing tons of money up front, without the cost reductions being easily visible afterwards.

fredkbloggs2• 11 years ago

It's also important to note that SF is already a destination for homeless people from other cities in the US. In some cases that's by choice; in others it's because the local authorities send them there simply to get rid of them (several noteworthy stories have come up just within the past few years). So it's quite likely that such a system would serve primarily to foist the cost of homelessness in other cities onto the citizens of SF, where, ironically, it's most expensive to address. If I were a citizen of SF, this would be my primary objection to such a plan. It's not clear how to prevent this kind of abuse in a fair manner.

This aspect was not mentioned in the article. Perhaps Medicine Hat is viewed as a less desirable place to live than, say, Vancouver, and therefore this hasn't been an issue. It's also possible that the Canadian legal system is more effective at preventing this kind of inter-provincial abuse.

j_baker2• 11 years ago

I think that's comparing apples to oranges. The $20,000 cost is merely the cost to provide housing. The $100,000 cost is the cost to provide court systems, mental health care, and physical health care.

The problem is that the cost of housing is orthogonal to those issues. People who are in homes certainly commit crimes and go through the criminal justice system. They certainly need health care. That $100k figure may go down, perhaps even tremendously, but I suspect the real financial cost comparison isn't anywhere near so great. Otherwise, everyone would already be doing it.

jkot• 11 years ago

Czech rep. had something similar for some time. There are two problems:

One has to prove to be homeless. Have some distant relative or had income a few years ago? Too bad, not homeless.

And some people will demolish their own house. It is expensive to buy firewood, floor and walls can be used instead. House gets eventually destroyed, owner become homeless, gets new house...

learnstats25• 11 years ago

In my opinion these problems are very small compared to the root problem, and so they show that the system is working - they are exceptions that prove the rule.

But we can easily improve this first iteration, for example:

1. Let's instead give everyone an untested basic income that covers usual living expenses.

2. Let's give people who are unable to buy firewood better {financial,medical,mental health,educational} support to buy what they need instead of waiting for them demolish something more valuable.

jedmeyers• 11 years ago

and so they show that the system is working - they are exceptions that prove the rule.

What does this even mean? How do exceptions prove the rule?

bayesianhorse10• 11 years ago

You'd have to have pretty crappy house and a very low income to make that trade-off even economically attractive. Let alone psychological. Most people prefer not taking any social benefits, even if it means losing out on money.

Humans prefer to work for pay, rather than get paid for no work, within reason. So do most other species. Except cats.

quadrangle2• 11 years ago

That's why all these programs that have a cut-off are bad. We need universal Basic Income. We need socialized access to certain things: minimal food, water, shelter. These things cost less than it does to deal with a world that lacks them.

If we could have public housing regardless of income, people with higher income will choose to forgo it to get something better. The problems come with the perverse incentives and bureaucracy connected with proof of status and arbitrary cut-off points.

dllthomas• 11 years ago

I would rather say, "That's a bad thing about all these programs that have a cut-off." I don't think it's clearly such a bad thing as to make every such program net out negative.

bayesianhorse10• 11 years ago

Turns out, less social welfare is often more expensive for society.

I hope that over time, the social sciences will get a better (data based) grip on what works and how beneficial it is, and thus more of these problems can get solved.

abandonliberty4• 11 years ago

I think there are many unknowns that will be revealed through implementation. Yes, it is better and more cost effective when you only consider the homeless individuals. The net impact on greater society could be more positive or negative and is particularly sensitive to implementation details and the specific type of homelessness occurring.

Britain is in the middle of a jobs miracle, attaining their highest employment levels in history. Cutting taxes on low income earners has increased the upside of joining the workforce. [1]

In my city we have youth who refuse to work the available entry-level roles and prefer to beg downtown with signs requesting beer and weed. I imagine the lifestyle would become more popular if it came with free, opulent housing further reducing the incentive to work.

[1]http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9475222/the-coalitions-j... (third paragraph contains figures)

bayesianhorse10• 11 years ago

I think it is very short-sighted to assume that wages (or their taxation) affect the "decision" to join the workforce. It just doesn't work that way. Most people on welfare really don't get jobs paying above the welfare limit, so it can't be that they are refusing to work, get some extra money, and higher social status because the wages are so low.

For that matter, most welfare agencies, and certainly the German one with which I am most familiar, won't let them refuse such a job...

celias• 11 years ago

Reminds me of this Washington Post article about Pathways to Housing founder Sam Tsemberis

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2015/05/...

j_baker2• 11 years ago

I'm skeptical. I mean, it's not as though the idea of public housing is new, and it has been used in places far more liberal than the US who have not eliminated homelessness.

My first question is "Where are they keeping all these people?" Previous attempts to just build enough housing for everyone[1] haven't turned out all that well, and they became cesspools of crime.

Beyond that, are the conditions in Medicine Hat such that they can be replicated everywhere? Perhaps Medicine Hat just has an abundance of housing.

And lastly, it doesn't seem clear to me that they actually have eliminated homelessness. Other news sources claim that they will eliminate homelessness "soon"[2] or that they have "almost" eliminated homelessness[3].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/05/14/medicine-hat-homeles... [3] http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/medicine-hat-has-al...

asuffield• 11 years ago

It's kind of interesting that this is seen as a major achievement. To the best of my knowledge, under the standards set here (no more than 10 days on the street or in an emergency shelter), we've long had this in most of the UK and various other parts of Europe. It's almost true in London, modulo some people with mental health issues. Homeless people get picked up and moved into temporary housing about that quickly. Having everybody able to afford their own housing is a much harder problem - we're nowhere near that. But getting them into council-owned "temporary" housing? That problem's more or less solved. It's crowded, costs more than it should, and most families don't have enough space, and there's all sorts of things about the system which aren't very fair, but it's housing.

(There's a guy who lives under a road bridge, not far from my flat. He's been there for years. He wants to live under that road bridge. He's obviously crazy, but he's not a danger to himself or others, and it turns out that it's not illegal for him to live there. So he's a +1 to the permanent homelessness statistics, but he's perfectly happy with this - the standard as written will never be achieved in London because of cases like this one.)

Medicine Hat becomes the first city in Canada to eliminate homelessness

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