What if everyone without a home was given one?

[True Dough]

It seems to be working in Finland...

Link to tweet

Brent Toderian
@BrentToderian
Jan 2

“In Finland, the # of homeless people has fallen sharply. Those affected receive a small apartment & counselling with no preconditions. 4 out of 5 people affected make their way back into a stable life. And all this is CHEAPER than accepting homelessness.”

[CentralMass]

1. Republican heads would spin.

[FM123]

2. Wow.

To have a government that cares like that and is willing to try, that is really something.

[RobinA]

3. It Would Help Some People

How many kind of depends on what's behind the homelessness in general.

[bamagal62]

4. Wouldn't that be wonderful.

Our country is too selfish and greedy for that to happen. Everyone should have a warm place to live.
Kudos to Finland.

[jmbar2]

5. Some homeless folks are too mentally unstable to live on their own

Alcoholism and/or drug addiction can cause long-term changes to the brain. Some folks would not make good neighbors.

These folks need more than a roof. But they do need a roof to have any hopes of recovery.

[ChazInAz]

7. That's where the counseling comes in.

[friend of a friend]

9. Not just mentally unstable, I would have been considered homeless for 3 years.

I wanted to travel around the country and so I did. This was in the 60s.

[jaxexpat]

12. Yeah, and you should'a been euthanized.

It's humor, people. Darkish maybe but there's no law against it.

I did a bit of cross-country thumb-sailing in the late 60's myself. Learning can be scary sometimes. Wouldn't want to do that today. I've grown to prefer hot running water and clean fitted sheets.

[friend of a friend]

31. That's funny.

[jaxexpat]

33. Great response. Sometimes people can take things so wrongly. It's a world of traps in show biz.

[gopiscrap]

47. welcome to DU

[The Jungle 1]

17. Yes they need mental health treatment.

We also ignore that.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

6. Housing first is the way.

[duhneece]

8. Utah is trying same-provide home with no conditions

With a home, with no conditions, and with services offered (counseling, medical, substance abuse treatment, employment, etc), it appears that with both Finland AND Utah, about 80% find stability. Those are pretty good odds at a lower price than accepting homelessness.

[Scrivener7]

13. This has been working in Utah for quite a while now. I cannot conceive of why

we aren't rolling it out.

But I guess that's liberteh. Cut off one's own nose to spite someone else's face.

[maxsolomon]

27. the results of that program are vastly over-hyped.

Utah housed about 600 "chronic" homeless.

Seattle alone has over 6,000 unsheltered people. It doesn't have 6,000 spare apartments.

[AllaN01Bear]

10. indeed. but here its called greed. the land mafia is really working hard on that .

[JI7]

11. There are some homeless that prefer to live in the streets

In places like Los Angeles the weather isn't as difficult to be outdoors as in many other places.

I have seen people that refuse to accept help including from their own family .

The homeless that will most be helped by these type of things are people that aren't in the streets. They accept and seek any shelter they can find . They are still considered homeless as they don't have their own regular home and have to keep moving around and are in temporary places .

[WhiskeyGrinder]

16. When people refuse shelter that's offered, it's usually because the shelter comes with conditions

people don't want or are unable to meet without support -- they can't be with their partner, they have to stop using, they can't bring their pet, the shelter is unsafe or dirty, etc. People know what they need to be safe.

[Wounded Bear]

21. Not to mention many shelters in the US are more dangerous than living on the street...

[duhneece]

40. Or they have to be 'clean and sober'

I hate that term but it describes the condition that keeps many from getting housing.

[JI7]

14. In Liberal Los Angeles people protest against housing like this. Just recently residents protested

against a guy that bought some old sears building . They protested against turning it into a new concept apartment building because they say it will lead to gentrification . And they also protested against turning it into a place to provide housing and other services for homeless people because they don't want those people around there.

[appalachiablue]

25. +1

[duhneece]

41. NIMBY

Not In My BackYard.

[The Jungle 1]

15. BUT BUT BUT

These people will all be fat lazy socialists and do no work.
Just look at America where we have all this socialist corporate welfare. The CEOs are all fat and lazy. They never do a days work.
Trump is the perfect example. He gets up in the morning and spends an hour fixing his hair and putting on his makeup. How lazy can you be. What a waste of time. Lipstick on a pig!!!

Alright I am gonna get ahead of ya. Pigs are the smartest animal in the barn yard. Right up their with dolphins. I have nothing against pigs. Ya just don't put lipstick on them. Pigs are cutely, ugly. Trump is just ugly through and through.

[judesedit]

18. That's awesome. That's all I will say right now.

[orangecrush]

19. As JFK said, "Why not?"

Whatever we're doing now sure as hell doesn't work.

[Loki Liesmith]

20. What's the effect on inflation in housing market?

Woukd be good to know that.

[markbark]

22. SATW had a strip about this a while back

You get some dignity

[Farmer-Rick]

23. Socialism at its best.

Another problem solved by socialism.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

24. That's not socialism. It's a social safety net -- government of, by, and for the people.

[Farmer-Rick]

34. Yeah, sort of

A well running and fair democracy is almost indistinguishable from socialism. The problem is if you allow capitalism to run amuck, you have no democracy and are left with an oligarchy looking out for only the filthy rich. Like what we got in the US.

Giving homes to those who can not afford to buy homes is definitely Not capitalism. It's exactly what socialism would do.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

35. Socialism is society owning and administering production and distribution of goods.

It's a liberal idea to use government to house the homeless, just as it's a liberal idea that we should use the power of government to take care of the elderly.

We form a government by democratic means. Liberals think that government should exert its power to benefit all the people it is formed to govern. That's not socialism -- we regulate industry instead of taking ownership of it.

(Conservatives used to believe we should not move faster toward liberal goals than the public can accept. At some point that changed to simply opposing liberal government entirely).

[Farmer-Rick]

37. No, what you describe as socialism is more like communism

Where the community owns everything.

Socialism is more about equality and making sure everyone has the basics to succeed.

Capitalist are all brainwashed into believing that the good brought by socialism isn't really socialism. That way they don't have to admit how useless capitalism is in solving most any social ills.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

38. No, what I described is the very definition of socialism.

[Elessar Zappa]

30. That's not socialism.

It’s part of a generous safety net. Finland and other Scandinavian countries are capitalist.

[Farmer-Rick]

36. Of course it's Socialism

It's not capitalism, feudalism, slavery or communism. All you got left is socialism.

Yeah democracy and socialism work really well together. Not like capitalism and democracy that's alway at odds with each other.

Capitalism works best in a dictatorship or oligarchy like in the US. Unless you hamstring capitalism with really tough regulation to keep the filthy rich from corrupting everything. But to my way of thinking why go through all the bother to tie up and regulate capitalism when you could have socialism that doesn't need all those tough regulations.

[appalachiablue]

26. Bravo Finland, they also have one of the top education systems in the world. And

Forest Schools that are held outdoors for teaching children, like other progressive countries.

[maxsolomon]

28. I encourage everyone to look at the article to see the scale of Finland's program.

Per the article's chart, Finland's homeless crisis peaked in 1987 at just over 18,000 homeless. Finland's population in 1987 was approx. 4.8 million (it's only 5.6 million today).

In January 2022, King Co. Washington (where Seattle is) ALONE has >13,000 homeless.
https://kcrha.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/PIT-2022-Infograph-v7.pdf

In the last 10 years, the “Housing First” program provided 4,600 homes in Finland. While in 2017 there were still about 1,900 people living on the streets, the program could reduce this number to less than 1000 long-term homeless by 2019 – but there were enough places for them in emergency shelters so that they at least didn’t have to sleep outside anymore.

that's 460 homes/year. America's non-profit housing providers produce many times that number of homes every year, but the crisis still grows.


It's a fine model. I don't see that America has the will to adopt it. I've said this before: it will take a massive FEDERAL investment to address the crisis, and that is not forthcoming. Especially in the next 2 years.

[Kid Berwyn]

29. Great idea that should be implemented at once.

Nationwide.

[Hortensis]

32. We've been providing subsidized housing to homeless for...ever.

Why not read about the many different kinds of housing programs for the homeless here in the U.S.? Many wonderful people make it their life's work and know a lot, articles discussing what works and doesn't literally every day in journals.

Fwiw, we're a far larger nation than Finland, and even if at some magic point we got "a house" for everyone, the next day tens of thousands of newly homeless in tens of thousands of places across the nation would need help. Plus, some dysfunctional people can get along living alone but also need consistent help with more than housing to be able to continue.

This is not a problem with a solution, and it's one that gets bigger with population growth and new national emergencies, but we can do what we find works well both more efficiently and for a lot more people who want it.

Vote Democratic religiously at all levels of government if you believe we should and to make that possible, of course.

[Meowmee]

39. Good

I am glad it is helping people there.

[betsuni]

42. Finish population less than 6 million, U.S. more than 334 million.

[True Dough]

43. Conversely,

Finnish GDP = $300 billion (U.S.)

American GDP = $23 trillion

It's all relative! The resources are there. What about the will?

[betsuni]

44. Different culture, country size, population, politics, history.

Will what? If the U.S. had very large Democratic majorities and still wasn't progressive then you'd have a case. It hasn't and doesn't.

[True Dough]

46. There will always be naysayers

finding excuses why things cannot work. The right people in leadership could develop a similar model. It doesn't have to be "copy and paste," but something along those lines could work with the right vision and support.

[myohmy2]

45. "4 out of 5 people affected make their way back into a stable life."

...Socialism works...