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Somehow, treating vulnerable people with dignity by helping them out without strings attached helps our society overall. Who would’ve thought.
But conservatism requires a lesser people to scapegoat and oppress. Could we perhaps criminalize homelessness, and instead of housing we imprison them, so I feel satisfied that they’re being punished for their god given misfortune?
Couple with racist policies to ensure certain people are poor, that just sounds like slavery with extra steps.
maybe keep the prisons to satisfy those punishment scapegoating types but demand reform so prisons start looking like free housing with counseling and come and go as you please but there is still barbed wire somewhere to convince them that its still a torture dungeon
It is ironic that you are scapegoating republicans for this political failure of liberals, who also support the policies that are the cause of these issues.
Liberals also support prioritization of private property laws over personal living standards.
Only socialists support prioritizing human well-being and socialism is a bad word in the US.
To be fair, their said conservatives. And the U.S democratic/liberal policy is base on neoliberalism/conservatism.
Aw shoot you went there… eats🍿
That, and in Finland someone falling through the cracks ends up as a littleral meat popsicle. The climate is pretty unforgiving outside summer.
I helped an older lady change her flat tire 🛞 today, and guess what, 😱 she didn’t pay me….
Did you not mail an invoice so you could send her to collections? Amateur smh my head
USA: Spends billions on hostile infrastructure to keep homeless people out of sight from the rich
Scandinavia: Just builds lots of free apartments, turning the homeless people into productive workers, thus injecting a lot more money into society
Capitalism only makes sense if you’re exclusively looking out for yourself, and if you happen to be at the top.Unfortunately the situation isn’t solved in Scandinavia or Finland either. I’ve seen plenty of homeless looking people in Sweden sleeping around Stockholm. Many of them seemed like immigrants, not sure what the situation is there. I doubt they’re all those pretend homeless beggars. And with Finland we have our own homeless. Even with housing and all kinds of programs to help people and whatnot, some don’t take the housing, want to go into programs and so on. Usually it’s addiction (often alcohol, drugs have become more common though) or mental health related. I’m not sure what could be done about that that isn’t being done or tried already.
We’re capitalist countries too, we just have extensive social safety nets. But there always seems to be people who fall through the cracks, for one reason or another.
That’s just the way of life I think, not everyone needs or wants help - like you pointed out a lot of this is linked to addiction and mental health. But as long as everyone can access help when they’re ready your government seems to be doing as much as they can right now. More than most countries including the US.
When it comes to the beggars in Sweden, they’re generally not Swedish citizens, and as such I don’t think they qualify for the housing assistance programmes we have here. There definitely are homeless people in Sweden, according to this report from Socialstyrelsen there’s more than 27000 homeless people in Sweden.
There are a couple of definitions of homeless here though.
Situation 1: Acute Homelessness
Individuals sleeping outdoors or in stairwells, cars, tents, etc., and also those staying in emergency shelters, hostels, or similar temporary accommodations.Situation 2: Institutional Stay and Supported Housing
Pertains to individuals in prison, healthcare institutions, or supported living who will leave within three months but do not have a home to go to.Situation 3: Long-term Housing Solutions
Refers to living in special housing solutions provided by social services, where the accommodation is linked with supervision and specific conditions or rules, like trial apartments, training apartments, and social contracts.Situation 4: Self-arranged Short-term Housing
Living temporarily without a contract with friends/acquaintances, family/relatives, or under a temporary lodging or subletting arrangement with a private individual.This page on Boverket claims that in 2017 there were 32400 homeless people, 18% of those (5900) were classified as acutely homeless.
It’s not just addiction, though that always plays a part. For many it’s also about trust. I may be reaching as my knowledge is mostly for here in the U.S., though lack of trust in institutions is a learned reaction. They do not accept help because it has ended badly in the past, and badly may have been as simple as given some hope and had it swept out from under them.
I support aiding homelessness not through the creation of programs alone. Those programs should also come with trained specialists willing to work over time to gain the trust of these people. Who act as mobile case workers and intake personnel into these programs, and keep tabs throughout the process. Now I am sure some personnel exist, and perhaps it is being done this exact way. If it isn’t though, some changes should be made. Elimination is unlikely, though there is a huge difference between perfection and incompetence.
The lack of trust in institutions is kind of in the American DNA. The country was formed by a revolt against institutions, natives who trusted the institutions were killed or forced onto reservations, when it looked like slavery was outlawed a bunch of people took up arms. The labor movement didn’t have pleasant protests - they got shot and bombed by the government. More recently you’ve got things like COINTELPRO and the Tuskegee experiments and the war on drugs that had the CIA importing drugs.
If you know enough US history you learn that the institutions are not to be trusted.
Trust in institutions is really high here in Finland. Anecdotally, from what I’ve seen and heard from people who have struggled with issues (including addiction and on-off homelessness) they seem to regard those people well. Social workers, police, healthcare workers, volunteer people, those people from the “system” or close to it that interacts with them a lot are usually held in high or at least moderate regard. Of course miffed if the police “hassle” them by making them leave or stop drinking in public or something like that, but still respected and considered at least alright.
Not to say that the lack of trust couldn’t exist. If we believe that most seem to have some level of trust, then it would fit in with the numbers in that Finland has fairly low levels of homelessness.
I used to think this was a great idea and was confused why it wasn’t implemented in the states until I realized the capitalist class doesn’t want to convert more people into labor and that the goal is to split the profits of the company with the least amount of people as possible.
Homelessness and benches you can’t rest on, it’s by design.
Finland is a capitalist country, like the rest of the Nordics. Social safety nets = socialism/communism is a tired old propaganda meme.
(Yes, I know we’re technically a mixed economy like 99,99999% of the rest of the world)
I hope your capitalism doesnt progress to a terminal stage in your lifetime. You deserve peace.
I realized the capitalist class doesn’t want to convert more people into labor and that the goal is to split the profits of the company with the least amount of people as possible.
Not quite. They DO want more workers but they also want to pay them less, which is why they’d rather let millions of illegals into the country before they’ll take care of their own citizens.
Touché
I don’t see why people have to make things into dastardly schemes. Systems have negative externalities, it can still be a bad thing without having a person trying to cause a bad thing behind it.
Who invented the systems, bacteria? 🦠
I mean, you’re not wrong, but it’s the choices the humans make when those externalities become dastardly:
Exxon scientists in the 1970s accurately predicted climate change
They are not for nothing the country with the happiest people on the planet.
Of course our country is the happiest when all the severely unhappy people kill themselves. Also our current government is garbage and has several Nazis among its ranks. There is a brilliant editorial about the subject in English, this is the first that came to my mind: https://www.mtvuutiset.fi/artikkeli/david-mac-dougall-about-press-freedom-is-finland-sleepwalking-into-orbanisation-crucial-moment-for-orpo/8733706
The garbage government seems to be not exclusive to Finland though. Concerning nevertheless.
And regarding homelessness in Finland: here it takes actual effort to be homeless, as in living in the streets. I knew one person several summers ago who lived in a hammock because of a complicated scheme involving violence and money. One female friend broke up with her BF and lived with her friends until she got an apartment from another city, so she didn’t have to live on the streets.
Unfortunate none the less. Finland is great overall, even with the current government.
There is no good government. You either have direct democracy or bad government.
What’s your opinion on switzerlands mixed system?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#Switzerland
Better then representitve democray, worse then fully direct democracy.
Of course our country is the happiest when all the severely unhappy people kill themselves.
This is such a tired and old take. We’ve advanced miles in getting suicides down and even with them they don’t represent anywhere close to big enough group to move our ranking one way or another.
To be honest, when you have half of the year filled with such long nights and it is generally cold, depression isn’t really going to be as rare as in some more sunny countries.
As for the nazzis, yeah, there is a trend in that. I think many voters get racist because of capitalism gets them in difficult economic situation and they fear migrants will take their jobs. And migrants are there in the first place because their regions got destroyed by wars for oil and CIA funded terrorist groups and global warming. So both wars and global warming are due to oil companies .And both difficult economic situations of the citizens and prioritization of profit for oil companies are due to capitalism. So overall, this is simply how capitalism works. It is a feature, not a bug. Without getting rid of capitalism, we will never be able to solve these issues.
Yeah gotta love the American approach.
Have a problem?
Don’t talk about it! 🤫 Hide it! Pretend it doesn’t exist! Shoot it, arrest it, prosecute it, imprison it. Make a profit from it! Blame political party for it!
Wonder why the problem never goes away 🤔 fashion elaborate conspiracy theories. Complain about it!
Repeat.
American society and governance is thoroughly dysfunctional and that’s why it’s a failure.
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.
India: let’s just pretend they don’t exist. and when someone visits, let’s build big walls to hide them.
I’ve been to India, they know they can’t hide it.
For what it’s worth, they have cut down the number of public/park benches in some places in Finland too. Or at least that’s what I noticed when I started developing foot problems and needed to sit down more. In the 2000s a lot of the benches in near area got replaced by railings you could lean on. Real benches might have been slowly starting to do a comeback in recent years though, and at least murderbenches were never in fashion.
Isaiah 3
14 The Lord will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
15 What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord God of hosts.
“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 5%3A1-6&version=NIV
Also Deuteronomy 15:
7 If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.
8 You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be.
9 Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought, thinking, “The seventh year, the year of remission, is near,” and therefore view your needy neighbor with hostility and give nothing; your neighbor might cry to the Lord against you, and you would incur guilt.
10 Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake.
11 Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.”
If you’re going to follow the Bible, make sure you’re not picking and choosing the parts you want to follow. If the commands from your god are that important, you can’t ignore half of them.
2 Kings 6:28-29 But then the king asked, “What is the matter?” She replied, “This woman said to me: ‘Come on, let’s eat your son today, then we will eat my son tomorrow.’ So we cooked my son and ate him. Then the next day I said to her, ‘Kill your son so we can eat him,’ but she has hidden her son.
Psalm 137:9 Blessed the one who seizes your children and smashes them against the rock: the children represent the future generations, and so must be destroyed if the enemy is truly to be eradicated
Leviticus 25:44-46 “Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.”
1 Timothy 2:11-12
“A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.”I don’t follow the Bible and I agree with you. Just pointing out the same hypocrisy from the other side of the equation.
Also, I would argue it would be a very good thing for those who do follow the Bible to selectively follow the parts that say to be nice to people, help those in need, don’t hurt or steal from others, etc. even if it is hypocritical.
I would argue that there’s no longer a reason for religion to exist, but at the same time, as long as it’s not being pushed on those around them, or harming others, I generally just ignore it. It’s absolutely possible to be a good and kind person, who isn’t religious at all. It does bother me though, that people claim that their religious text is unadulterated from the original, and quote it to others as a way to tell them they are bad, and should change their ways, while ignoring anything that’s inconvenient to what they want to pretend their religion is. All 3 of the Abrahamic religions pretend they are about peace and love, but if you read their respective religious texts, there are multiple calls to violence, killing, slavery, misogyny, racism, etc, all of which most of them pretend they are against. Their religions are based on violence and hate, while they pretend they are following a loving god. I grew up in a very religious household, my dad being a pastor, but if you actually pay attention, they’re shit religions, who are based on some pretty awful things. I wish more of the people who embrace the Abrahamic religions would actually pay attention to how awful they are told to be, and realize how bad it is. So many wars and conflicts could be avoided if people realized they were just following violence based on a belief of a non existent deity.
Your quotations seem to be heavily paraphrased, and are really taken out of context from the original stories. These are also not commandments, but rather things that happened in history and were a part of the culture at the time, thus there isn’t really any moral law to “follow” in these verses in the first place.
Not really looking to argue, just adding context.
Leviticus 26: 14-18.
God of wrath and murder. /S
We still have those benches because there’s still homeless and honestly them taking over those benches ruins it for everyone else. Not because they’re homeless because they’re almost always addicts and drunk people or people on drugs who might also have mental issues are a bit threatening and unpleasant to others.
hey! so it turns out you can treat people with mental illness and addiction. it also turns out that untreated mental illness often contributes to addiction. it also turns out that untreated addiction can exacerbate mental illness. oh! AND it turns out that homelessness can exacerbate mental illness and addiction!
but you know. those people are also unpleasant, so we should probably just make sure they can’t lay down anywhere. i mean, eff those assholes.
hey! so it turns out you can treat people with mental illness and addiction
What a novel idea, we’ve never tried that here in Finland. If we had heard about that we might’ve made a lot of programs to help them, house them. Surely that should’ve solved the issue completely. But alas, we never knew about such things.
but you know. those people are also unpleasant, so we should probably just make sure they can’t lay down anywhere. i mean, eff those assholes.
It would be unfair to them to make the public spaces, meant for all public, unpleasant for most people to cater to those who are hostile and threatening to others. Which is unfortunately the case with drunk and high addicts. You don’t want to exclude homeless but you also can’t allow them to exclude others with unacceptable behaviour. And public transit stations for example aren’t meant for living or sleeping in, the benches are for temporary use, often for those with trouble standing. Someone using the bench to sleep on is taking it away from others. It’s a tough situation. And housing is provided for everyone. Not everyone takes the offer, often for addiction and mental health issues. You can’t exactly force them either.
I feel like you live in a much more magical world than I do, with much simpler solutions to what others consider big and difficult issues.
i assumed i was responding to the typical hateful conservative american here (and yes, i have made the typically american error in that) who pretty much has the attitude of “eff those losers, why should i care, etc.” hostile architecture in a country that does not universally offer alternatives (some cities/states are better than others as far as offering services) just seems like an extra kick in the shins for people who may not have alternatives. our country is not as progressive as yours in this regard (and many others).
so i stand corrected in my understanding of the context behind your statement.
as for my magical world? i doubt it. many of my clients are homeless or mentally ill. and i do, in fact, have such a person in my family. i understand that it’s not at all easy to help some people.
Simply start a business and you’ll become wealthy just like the others.
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.
But they didn’t solve it. They are doing something but there are still homeless people. Looks like their plan of action is definitely better though.
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.
If you look at the bench you can see aside from the ghoulish “handles” it is perfectly shaped for laying down on. It looks as if who ever made it wanted to rub in the fact that people are not allowed to lay on it.
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.
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Do they actually have enough housing to provide immediate housing to the homeless in Finland? If anyone spends the night on the street in Finland, during winter, they’ll die. How much of their homeless population dies waiting for that housing? I’m just curious. I’m not trying to be argumentative. If there is no wait time, I applaud them. America needs a housing solution for the homeless.
Nobody will freeze to death waiting as temporary shelters are always available for everyone, exactly for that reason.
We do still have around 3500 homeless, around a thousand of who are categorized as “long term” and not just someone that’s couch-surfing at their parents or friends while waiting for an a new apartment, but as everyone in Finland is eligible for enough social assistance that they could always pay rent and buy food, the majority of those 1000 are people who either refuse out of principle or have such bad drug addictions or mental health issues that they spend all that money on those or trash the places they are given and get kicked out.
And for those there isn’t much anyone can do, as unless you commit enough crimes to get jail time you can’t be forced to go to rehab, get treatment, or stop living on the streets either.Here’s an info page about it in English from the “No Fixed Abode NGO”.
For the people who don’t want the help or trash the place:
Get a old airplane hangar or pole shed and let them be homeless inside. Every month or two make them move their stuff outside so it can be cleaned.
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.
treated the same way they do with pigeons to stop them from nesting… sad.
Sooo, we ship our homeless to Candy Island? Yes? 🎈
Calm down Ron.
