Solving homelessness

That, and in Finland someone falling through the cracks ends up as a littleral meat popsicle. The climate is pretty unforgiving outside summer.

American society and governance is thoroughly dysfunctional and that’s why it’s a failure.

Covid transformed into a pandemic because the US, like many other “western countries” have reached a breaking point of dysfunction in policy making, billionaire capture of the government, and general quality of life for average people.

In that sense a disease like Covid was inevitable, the stage was set and all ready to go before Covid even showed up.

In the wake of Covid becoming a massive pandemic there was a moment where American society eased up grinding people to dust with covid relief checks, eviction bans, work from home accommodation, childcare support, free vaccines and other policies. It was a chance for American society to realize how insane a for profit healthcare system is, but the door was slammed shut by the ruling class as soon as they could.

We are in a weird moment before a broader societal collapse, the ruling class is telling us the economy is doing great and that we are out of the pandemic but the average American is extremely beat up right now and not doing good but nobody is really acknowledging that on a broader level. Everybody is suffering in their individual lives not being able to afford rent, healthcare and any number of other necessities not to mention they are too tired to socialize with friends and family. It is a mercy we have smartphones to zone out on at the end of the day after a long day of work when we are too burnt out to participate in our lives….

We are at a moment where Americans are drowning and just physically can’t tread water for that much longer and centrist democrats like Biden are completely unfit to meet the gravity of it (republicans even less so).

We just have to hope that when we reach that breaking point that it creates the opportunity for progressive change and it doesn’t just send us spiraling into deeper levels of hell.

I've been to India, they know they can't hide it.

"Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you."

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James%205%3A1-6&version=NIV

Leviticus 26: 14-18.

God of wrath and murder. /S

It's true. Even with the extensive social safety net, programs for mental health, addiction, income assistance, housing provided etc, there is always people who fall through the cracks. A lot of it seems to be addiction (alcohol, drugs) or mental health related, often a combination of the two. Some don't take up the programs, housing, assistance. I don't think the situation can be entirely solved ever, without of course literally forcing people to live in a house or something. That's actually something that used to be done up to fairly late in the 1900s. "Vagrants" could be locked up and made to do forced labour or forced to join the military. I suppose it'd be one way to make the statistics prettier, though even with our current right-wing government, it might be a bit extreme these days.

I don't know the exact way they are enforcing this, but if there are still homeless people then either there are some preconditions to apply or people want to be homeless or government can't afford to house everyone.

In the first case, preconditions shouldn't exist, everyone deserves to not freeze to death. In the second case, there is no real problem, if someone doesn't want to live in a house, than they should be allowed to not live in a house. And in third case, you can't have millioners and billioners and tell the country you just don't have money to house the homeless, tax them and build homes.

All I did was ask my parents for a loan, and next thing I knew, I was so successful! That's the definition of self-motivation and hard work. Too bad everyone else is lazy. /s

God the number of people I know who "just" inherit a house or a business from their family as a young adult, is sickening because they never understand the tremendous advantage and privilege this gives them in navigating the world.

Exactly, why pull your own bootstraps when others can do it for you.

How much of their homeless population dies waiting for that housing?

None. Used to be that happened, back in the 60's and whatnot. Puliukkos dying under bridges. But not anymore.

https://yle.fi/aihe/artikkeli/2020/05/16/50-vuotta-sitten-helsingissa-kuoli-kymmenia-ihmisia-kadulle-pakkaseen-vasta-se (you'll need to translate but it often works pretty well)

Most people never even go homeless. Even if you're a schizophrenic drunk, you'll usually have your own apartment or if it's really bad, perhaps live in assisted housing.

While we do have a homeless population, we don't have people living on the street. Period. Yes, it's also to do with the fact that overwintering would be somewhat challenging. The small homeless population we have still have shelter, they just don't have an address to call their own.

The ones I knew were mostly basically hippies living in communes and some hc alcoholists who basically don't want to leave the shelters, because their social life is there.

I've perhaps once or twice seen a hobo sleeping on the street. And I've lived here over 30 years and driven a taxi at night for several of those years.

Our shelters are never full, so if you actually got thrown out onto the street willy nilly, you could just ring up the closest shelter and go there. Or if you're suffering from addiction, check yourself into rehab, where they might help with both issues.

Don't take me wrong, these systems have several significant issues, and often fuck up in practice, but mostly when it comes to the point of actually being under ghe threat of homelessness, the bureaucracy somehow magically does start working pretty well. (The bureaucrats realise how much more issues it causes.)

I've got loads of complaints about Finnish bureaucracy in practice, horrible shit, but the systems are good on paper, and others should definitely try them.

I know for the exact reason you said they've had housing shelters that all homeless people can sleep at for free. I got the feeling they were very barebones. As for locations for homeless people idk about the stats but I would bet my ass the percentage of Finlands population that's homeless is miniscule because it's so hard to be homeless there. Also, the total population is so small, but Finland is pretty huge, I'm sure they have more than enough room to house a bunch of people.

Nah, I'm almost positive that those handles were welded on after the fact. A lot of these types of obstacles get tacked onto existing architecture to make "unauthorized" use of that architecture harder or impossible - the fact that they usually make it hard or impossible for other segments of the population to use them NORMALLY (like obese people or disabled people who might need more space to get up and down for whatever reason) is only an afterthought at best.

Calm down Ron.

Well we do have that. Not everyone wants to take the housing offered to them. Usually it's addiction or mental health related.

That is perfectly fine. You don't need to force people to live in a house if they don't want to. But kinda hard not to want to be in a warm house during freezing Finland winters.

Housing isn't prison. You can go out on the street, come back home to sleep/shower/eat/warm up/play Night Crawlers or whatever you want to do at home. I hope we aren't getting confused how houses work.

But the main point is that some need housing because of their condition, and some need it to even get a starting chance at life, getting a job or go to school and later get a job, etc. We as a society benefit from both. And as for the very very few that want to be homeless or just became homeless, there are shelters (which I think USA actually kinda does have or has had a lot).

All of the above also makes financial and economical sense.

Sounds like coping mechanism to me

Where would an extra thicc bbw sit on that bench? It's a hate crime, I say!