Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)
89 comments
·January 10, 2025rossdavidh
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Scoundreller
And don’t “fix” the problem at the expense of the paycheque-to-paycheque lower-working class.
Otherwise it’s zero sum and you create a homeless for every homeless you remove and disincentivize work.
TinyBig
How would it be possible to fix the problem at the expense of the lower working class?
thePhytochemist
This issue is very relevant for me since I have been homeless since May. It's been a bad run of being a target of criminal activity, unemployment and just running out of money during my job search. I cope with a mix of volunteering, overpriced housing (think $1200/month for a room in a rural area before I ran out of money for that), catsitting, house-sitting, staying with family and sleeping in my ancient car. Although I'm a citizen I don't qualify for any government support or programs, even though we have employment insurance here which I paid into for years.
I'm from Ottawa where the cold is obviously deadly, as it is in Finland. I do feel that we need to take shelter more seriously in public policy compared to warm areas because of that. Last week someone froze to death overnight a few blocks away from where I was crashing on a couch with family. Walking through downtown Ottawa and seeing the huge empty, lit, warm buildings with people freezing to death right outside is striking. Any practically minded person can see the problem is political and philosophical, not practical.
I can tell all the posters who think people choose to be homeless that I'm certainly not one of them. The comments about the importance of avoiding a downward spiral are certainly correct. Searching for work is hard enough normally and becomes increasingly difficult without access to things like a kitchen and toilet.
What I see in this Finnish policy is the starting assumption that doing nothing is not a good option. After reaching that point there can a rational discussion about what to do with whatever money is being spent - do you pay more people to hand out blankets and conduct surveys or just use it to buy housing units? As a homeless person I would really like to see Canada have a policy like I'm reading in this article instead of what we are doing now. The crappy temporary shelters and bureaucratic spending strategy obviously isn't working.
Even just economically, to have a government pay for years of schooling and subsidize advanced degrees then just be ready to let that person die on the street when they are ready to work but can't happen to find something seems like a waste. I'd rather see a functioning "social safety net" as described in this article.
peab
The housing situation in Canada is insane and is so obviously due to not building enough housing and bringing too many people into the country via immigration. The fact that it costs 1200$/month for a room in a rural area is incredibly damning.
I went to college in Ottawa, and now I live in Austin Texas. It's similar in size, although Austin has been growing more lately. Curiously, they are also both capitols, college towns and they have a river flowing through them.
A major difference is that Austin has a new development with 200-400 unites on every block it seems. Cranes are everywhere downtown, and even in random neighborhoods they have huge new developments. Ottawa has no shortage of land, there's a huge amount of available land to develop in either direction, but they evidently aren't building nearly as much.
The result? I'm looking at 2 bedroom apartments, and they are 1000$ cheaper than they were 3 years ago when I first moved here. Rent has gone down and continues to go down. I'm seeing studio apartments in the middle of the city renting out for 800$ now!
octopusRex
The US chooses not to end homelessness. We have the highest GDP in the world. We could end it if we wanted to.
I was in Japan recently. A choice was made there as well.
nostromo
It's funny how every westerner visits Japan and comes home thinking we can "solve crime" or "solve homelessness" or "have clean subway stations."
Japan's culture is why those things are the way they are. It's not due to funding. It's because people raise their children differently than we do in the west. The family's obligations are also greater.
And, yes, there are homeless people in Japan. But they typically are invisible by choice because of their cultural norms around discretion.
PaulHoule
Homelessness in Japan and the invisibility thereof is a theme in this game
https://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/1235140/
I can't help but think that homelessness in downtown San Francisco is a spectacle.
For one thing, there has been a decision to concentrate people there, which is why people think homelessness is worse in SF than LA, whereas I understand there are more homeless per capita in LA. If you tried to "live outside" in a residential area I think the authorities would deal with you as harshly they would deal with anyone who tried to build more housing.
The messages are: (1) you'd better not stand up to your jackass boss because this could be you, (2) you'd better not ask politicians for a more generous welfare state (especially in the bluest state in America) because we'll never give it to you.
peab
Even if it's cultural, it can be fixed. Culture can change and can be changed by choice
dyauspitr
It’s definitely cultural. I’ve been to every major city in the US and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a homeless Indian. Some groups have broken familial cultures that does not churn out good citizens. Did the US in the past play a major role in breaking down those groups and surrounding them with abject poverty that makes it hard to escape from? Absolutely.
PaulHoule
Mental illness is a major factor that makes it hard to help people. A majority of homeless people don't have mental illness, but a large fraction do, but those are the hardest to help.
I have a friend right now who is in a precarious housing situation who has schizophrenia but does not have a DX and has no insight into her condition. If my wife tries to set a time to pick her up and take her out to our farm, odds are 1/10 that she will really be there, will really get in the car, will not get out of the car for some hare-brained reason or otherwise not make it out. You've got to have the patience of a saint to do anything for her.
If she had some insight into her condition she could go to DSS and get TANF and then get on disability and have stable housing but she doesn't. No matter how I try to bring up the issue that she does have a condition she just "unhears" it.
Indians and other people from traditional cultures have stronger "family values" and won't wash their hands of intractable relatives the way people who grew up in the US monoculture will. (Or if they do it, they'll do it in a final way)
brendoelfrendo
> I’ve been to every major city in the US and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a homeless Indian.
1) I have.
2) There are plenty of homeless or impoverished people in India, they just don't come to the US. Immigrants need a visa or permanent residency, and that usually comes with a requirement to maintain a job or have some level of financial security. Later generation Indian-Americans are, hopefully, kept out of poverty by the work their parents and families put in to establish a foothold in the US. But none of this is guaranteed; homelessness can happen to just about anyone if they have the right run of bad luck, and one's culture is only a small part of that equation.
NoMoreNicksLeft
How could the United States end homelessness? It is a mix of federal government, state governments, and local/county/municipal governments. The level of government best suited to do the actual work is hamstrung... if any one city fixes homelessness (somehow), more homeless will show up. If they do that again for the new arrivals, more homeless show up.
The first to solve it is punished with tens of thousands of newly arriving homeless who, as you might imagine, will find a way to get there if it means not being homeless anymore. But budgets are finite and the cost per homeless must he higher than zero, but in a practical sense the number of homeless aren't entirely finite.
If you start from the other end, with the feds, then you might as well hold your breath. Homelessness is so far down the list of priorities, that even if it somehow did bubble to the top, the polarization in Congress will sabotage any effort, and we'll end up with boondoggles that both sides can criticize and that won't really help any homeless at all.
This isn't a choice being made, it's just the complexity of the real world that some are still blind to even after graduating college and (theoretically) turning into grownups.
There's actually a technical solution too, but since it's dry and boring, most leftists (and quite a few of the rightists) find it too boring to ever want to try. Obviously the solution is either love and compassion (from the left) or maybe "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps" (from the right).
wormlord
This argument is so lame. "Actually the overall structure of the USA is designed so that its basicalyl impossible to solve the crisis".
You're not wrong in the fact that America is a shit country designed to intentionally to use homelessness as an implicit threat against the working class. You are wrong in the sense that all the things you listed aren't reasons, just excuses to cover up the intentionality of homelessness, and that homelessness could be solved if there was the political will to do so. Which there will never be in the USA because again, the homelessness crisis is intentional.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
bryanlarsen
70-80% of homeless people are local. Fixing homelessness in your community does not attract large numbers of additional people.
segasaturn
Create a federal jobs program to build apartments in large quantities, not just in cities but in rural, suburban and exurban areas as well. Anybody who's an American citizen and able bodied (including ex-convicts and felons) can apply and get a good paying job with health insurance. Use the federal government's power of eminent domain to override zoning laws and seize land that's being sat on, and finally pay for it by heavily taxing the tech giants, cutting military spending and legalizing (and taxing) cannabis.
Will politicians ever do it? No, they're in the pocket of the military and the 1%. Will voters ever vote for it? No, they're fed a steady stream of propaganda that tells them that this would be "socialism". But that's how the problem would be solved.
ipaddr
The US could end homelessness but would need to stop immigration and change the constitution which could force people in shelter. Not sure it's the outcome we all want.
JumpCrisscross
> US could end homelessness but would need to stop immigration and change the constitution which could force people in shelter
Immigrants are a tiny fraction of the homeless [1]. And we’ve tried criminalising homelessness; incarceration is forced shelter and incredibly expensive.
stevenicr
according to that 'adults participating in the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions' .. It also says foreign born is 1% vs native at 1.7% - so they are both 'a tiny fraction'
Whether or not a large percentage, or a large number or small number of immigrants are homeless or not,
one must assume that if 11 million people left the US next month, the price of rent in many places may go down a bit, and some currently unhoused people might be able to afford a cheaper place.
Of course another side is that wages in some industries will rise, and that may put more people into a position where they can afford an apartment.
What I'd like to see is how inexpensive optional housing can be made.
JamesLeonis
There are 10 million empty homes [0] and ~700,000 homeless. No matter how you slice those numbers you still have more empty housing stock than homeless right now.
[0]: https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf (page 4)
stevenicr
My first read of this document leads me to believe that there are only about 341,000 housing units available for rent, there are some for sale at an average price of $373,000.. but many or most of the empty housing units are like second homes and such and not 'available'.
So we have 350k open units and 700k people without homes, average rent is around $1500..
just looking at the data my guess is that we have about 700k people who don't have an extra 2 grand every month to put into housing. (and I think it's way higher personally, maybe not counting the couch surfing relatives who can't afford their own place, and others who are living in over crowded situations of basements )-
I'm sure there is much more to it than the averages, like a lot of the homeless are in areas where the average rent is much higher and 1500 - and the few places where rent is $800 likely has less homeless, (and also has less other things like jobs and public transit) -
and really if it is 10 million or a quarter a million empty places, I don't see how that matters if no one can afford any of them.
s1artibartfast
What does that mean for the next steps?
Does the government eminent domain the houses, arrest the homeless, and then ship them out to Detroit or wherever the surplus houses are?
EA-3167
You're assuming that the major challenge is the lack of a home, because the term we choose to use as an umbrella implies that. For some people it's even true, but they tend not to be CHRONICALLY homeless, and that's the population of major concern. Chronically homeless people have extremely high rates of mental illness and substance abuse; depending on how you slice it, a third or more are schizophrenic or something similar.
Those are not people you can just stick into a house and wish them well, they need serious help for many years. In most cases that help isn't there, or comes with strings (no drugs, no alcohol) that they refuse to accept. Homelessness in the US is in many respect a mental health and substance abuse issue, exacerbated in the post-Reagan era when our mental health system was gutted and weakened.
If you want to reach those people and keep them off the streets, you need more than just empty houses.
barbazoo
That's your assumption. Instead, mine is that it would require some kind of wealth transfer to pay for the social services.
marssaxman
Simpler than that: just roll back the restrictive zoning codes which have been making sufficient development infeasible for many years, thus creating a steadily growing housing deficit. When laws have turned the housing market into a game of musical chairs, someone is guaranteed to be left outside.
mywittyname
I'm often skeptical of simple solutions like this. They tend to assume that the regulation causes the problem, but when looked at more critically, it's clear that the regulation is a formalization of a combination of consumer & business preference.
For example, Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations. If you get into the gritty details, you'll find that they have a whole bunch ofloopholes that seem to favor larger trucks & SUVs. Many people will point to these regulation as causing people to buy light trucks & SUVs, but the data seems to suggest consumers prefer to buy these vehicles and auto manufacture prefer to sell them (they are extremely profitable). I postulate that, if CAFE requirements were eliminated, the best selling vehicle in the USA would continue to be the F-series and other trucks and SUVs would continue to dominate the top 10, because the regulations are influenced by consumer preference, not the other way around.
I think the same logic applies to zoning. People largely want to own single family homes (SFH) in the suburbs; builders largely want to build SFHs in the suburbs. There's no reason to believe that changes in zoning will cause a meaningful shift in consumer and business preference. In the handful of ultra expensive metro areas, sure it might move the needle because economics trump preference, but in most of the USA, there's plenty of space to build housing. It's hard to imagine a developer in Pittsburgh choosing to build housing in an industrial area in the city over some empty land on the outskirts.
Carrok
> In the United Kingdom, for instance, people who had been living on the streets or in shelters were housed in individual accommodations in a matter of days.
So it was always possible. We just didn’t care to do so.
kelseyfrog
And then we told ourselves it wasn't possible so we could sleep at night.
mistrial9
it was striking to see Hong Kong in the British-law phase.. there used to be social layers including homeless and "boat people" but the British changed that .. under the British law, every single person and every single place to sleep was counted, numbered, licensed and taxed.
deanc
Helsinki, at least is an interesting place. Much like any other capital if you go to certain neighbourhoods you can see drug dealers, drug users (many which are living in shelters) - even in downtown. They kind of blend in, are part of the scenery and on the whole only interact with their "own kind". You might hear some grumbling, shouting, smelly folk on the tram - but they aren't treated with the same contempt at existing as I've seen in other countries.
emh68
1. Build a house for each homeless person
2. Remove them from the homeless count, because they now have a house.
3. Reach zero homelessness!
4. There are still people living on the streets... But we don't call them homeless!
erehweb
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. From the article, basically no one was sleeping on the streets in Finland in 2020.
127
Also -40C winters might have something to do with it.
pyuser583
If you’re going to use -40, why include the “C”?
pinkmuffinere
It’s a fun fact that -40 c == -40 f, but if you leave off the units people who aren’t ‘in the know’ would be confused. Also they might (adversarially) wonder if the units are in a lesser known scale like rømer
tencentshill
Note this is a country where you cannot survive without shelter for most of the year. It's much "easier" to remain unhoused somewhere like California.
jltsiren
There used to be homeless alcoholics living in shacks and WW1 bunkers in the forests around Helsinki. Many (most?) of them were WW2 veterans. Older kids still told stories about them in the 80s, but most of them had actually died or found shelter by then.
ge96
It's funny I've considered going there when my life imploded. Just get dropped off and live there Venice beach but yeah I get how annoying that would be to a non-homeless.
I have family who are poor (3rd world) and I think about how it's fair for me to b here and they are over there but yeah etc etc idk. Why does it feel bad to be. I do help (virtue signal) donate but I'm also in a shit ton of debt but I'm not technically poor/homeless. I have a car/apt/toys. Still thinking about it.
Oh yeah giving money isn't a fix it turns out because people fight over it/demand more. Next thing you know everyone is your relative hunting you down online. My gmail chat pops up "hey man..."
It does piss me off when I pull up to a light and there's a guy right there with a sign. How do I know he's homeless? I'm coming out of a grocery store at night somebody's like "sir, sir, sir..." trying to get my attention. I guess it shouldn't be a problem to just hand em a dollar. But then they say "that's it?".
Again I donate to a local food shelter, NHA, etc... just funny is altruism real idk. I can't even ask people for money without feeling shame but other people don't care. Alright rant over I am privileged I know.
giraffe_lady
The winter climate is comparable to, even milder than, large parts of the US including large cities like Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis that have significant homeless populations.
Homeless people are not necessarily completely shelterless, in a survival sense. They're associated with tents for a reason.
rs999gti
In the article, I did not see anything about mental illness or addicts. How did FI solve for those people?
Both groups have people who want to be homeless, so they can be left alone.
JumpCrisscross
> Both groups have people who want to be homeless, so they can be left alone
Why can't they be left alone in a home?
s1artibartfast
disruptive behavior
A working mom with a 2 year old doesnt want to live next door to violent actors and drug dealers.
More specifically, I think the US is unwilling to distinguish between lawful and unlawfully behaving poor, and segregate them accordingly when providing shelter.
kansface
They destroy it.
giraffe_lady
Probably close to zero people want to be homeless per se.
What happens is that people are unwilling or unable to accept the terms of housing offered, like for example strict sobriety, or not allowing pets. Family housing is also rare, and I don't think it's fair to say someone choosing to be homeless with their spouse over housed separately miles away from each other "wants to be homeless."
If people are consistently declining the aid we're offering, that's a problem we can address. It is our fault, not theirs.
samspot
"unwilling or unable" is extremely key. I recall a US Senator talking about his son who has schizophrenia. The father would pay for an apartment for his son, no strings attached, and still find him sleeping in the street.
It may be possible to "solve" homelessness for some majority of people. But I doubt 100% is ever humanly achievable. At least, not without some massive breakthrough in understanding and intervention for mental illnesses.
metalman
So we build semi-automomous free zones, where the infrastructure is essentialy indistructable,anyone can get a lockable secure space, and the violent sociopaths, are picked off. Facets from other proven models could include, a work for drunks program, like in some german areas, they get to clean the streets they hang out on, and are a sort of invisible "watch". Free "heroine" , for any and all who check into a controlled access facility. The real ferrals are just a fact, but are very easy to spot so the threat level is lower, but as they dont have adequate shelter, see point #1, they congregate in more southerly areas, and or, get into trouble trying to survive in northern areas. I have lived on the edge, for most of my life, seen a lot of wild things, in a lot of different places, and the story is that people just want to be seen and accepted, there, in the moment. Those moments are impossible to predict or create with any kind of predictability or repeatability. All ww can do is build the places, where that can happen, or not, and its "even", everybody can walk away, If nothing works, then there is the road, and that needs to be ok, and no one is a "vagrant" as they got a place to go. nobody is stuck.
barbazoo
> a “Housing First” approach, which provides people experiencing homelessness with immediate, independent, permanent housing
Could timing have something to do with it? Maybe if the cycle is broken right at the start, when one becomes homeless, it prevents some of the mental health issues and addiction issues that come from living without support for too long. People here in NA often have lived on the streets for years or decades. That's so much trauma, many say it's impossible to heal at that point.
JumpCrisscross
> Maybe if the cycle is broken right at the start, when one becomes homeless, it prevents some of the mental health issues and addiction issues that come from living without support for too long
What fraction of the homeless addicts or mentally ill started out that way?
PaulHoule
It helps to have a winter.
philip1209
Worth pointing out that Finland is one of the most ethnically homogeneous societies in Europe - only ~10% of the population is of foreign origin and background [1]. So, like Japan, it's easier to have a high-trust society if you eschew immigration.
Edit: Just to be clear, I'm very pro-immigration. I just think that studying rich homogeneous societies doesn't result in many useful takeaways for countries like the USA.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Finland#:~:tex....
magixx
Romania has very similar ethnically homogenous population at 89.3% [1] and I can definitely say that this factor does not directly lead to a high trust society. I suspect there are quite a few other countries with similar makeups that don't result in outcomes similar to Finland/Japan.
While homogeneity may play a factor I think it's dwarved by other things. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Romania
philip1209
Finland has almost 3x the GDP per capita as Romania [1]. I think being rich (i.e., good social programs) accounts for the trust gap.
https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/finland/romania
jltsiren
Finland was traditionally a very homogeneous society, and immigration before ~1990 was negligible. But then there was a burst of immigration from the former USSR and Somalia, followed by a gradual increase over the decades. And in 2023 (and likely in 2024), net immigration was >1% of the population and exceeded births.
jas39
This is extremely relevant. Finland is basically Sweden without mass migration. The cracks in our society that the multi-culti ideology has opened up is difficult for an American to comprehend, because you never experienced the benefits of a true monoculture.
morbicer
No idea how it's relevant. For example in USA, I bet the overwhelming majority of homeless are citizens born in USA, not immigrants.
In my central European country with high ethnic homogenity the unhoused are also stemming from majority population. There is a Roma minority who are often struggling with poverty but are rarely unhoused.
JumpCrisscross
> in USA, I bet the overwhelming majority of homeless are citizens born in USA, not immigrants
Correct.
"There was no significant difference in rates of lifetime adult homelessness between foreign-born adults and native-born adults (1.0% vs 1.7%). Foreign-born participants were less likely to have various mental and substance-use disorders, less likely to receive welfare, and less likely to have any lifetime incarceration." ("The foreign-born population was 46.2 million (13.9% of the total population)" in 2022 [2].)
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30739834/
[2] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024/foreign-...
01HNNWZ0MV43FF
So are there other techniques for fixing homelessness that work in these so-called "low-trust" societies?
JumpCrisscross
Controversial, but worth considering. I believe societies have different capacities for assimilation (changing immigrants) and appropriation (changing themselves), with the hallmark of any era's great societies being their ability to maximise both.
That said, the evidence is mixed [1], with fairness and economic inequality [2][3] seeming to matter more than racial homogeneity. (Lots of tiny, racially-homogenous societies–high trust or not–bordering each other also have a one-way historical track record.)
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/000169931772161...
4gotunameagain
A very often ignored fact is the cultural homogeneity. I do not thing racial homogeneity is of any benefit whatsoever, but I do believe that cultural is.
When someone raised in a culture where cheating to win by any means is acceptable (most of India) or where bartering, persuading and microfrauding in trade (most of Middle east and sup-sahara Africa) is not frowned upon, it is not a stretch to imagine that the introduction of such cultural elements will lead to dilution of the overall interpersonal trust in let's say, Swedish society.
throwaway48476
Putnam found a linear correlation between diversity and social trust.
barbazoo
> it's easier to have a high-trust society if you eschew immigration.
citation needed
ipaddr
You need a citation for you to understand people with similar customs/religious believes, similar dna have a higher trust society than a cities of unknown elements?
itishappy
Yes. It sounds right, but many subtly wrong things often do. At the very least, a measurement of the effect strength would be nice. For instance, is a homogenous society a stronger or weaker signal than GDP?
null
rs999gti
[flagged]
JumpCrisscross
> you are getting downvoted
"Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
ipaddr
Is it boring reading about the meta or how something works. Understanding the inner workings of a system or society is something we can use as an outsider to the system.
Hearing that these opinions get downvoted helps explain why these comments were judged this way.
"Building flats is key: otherwise, especially if housing supply is particularly rigid, the funding of rentals can risk driving up rents (OECD, 2021a), thus reducing the “bang for the buck” of public spending."
So, yes, if you want low homelessness, you build a lot of housing and make sure that rents are low. This is true, and a good strategy.