West Coast baby
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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The only thing I don't see is how it would fix people being homeless. Many homeless are unable to be properly housed because they have mental illnesses, trauma, etc. If you put them in an apartment without extensive further help, many will get back on the street and/or destroy the apartment. You can't solve their problems with just providing housing.
There's multiple groups of homeless people.
There's the long term homeless, who often suffer from issues like mental illness, and short term homeless, who usually don't.
High housing prices absolutely causes people to become homeless when they lose their job, become addicted to drugs, etc.
Being homeless is itself traumatic, and exacerbates most issues homeless people have. Affordable housing and giving homeless people an apartment aren't a panacea, but it does prevent a ton of issues for newly homeless people.
I don't know if they're included in the groups you mentioned, but there is also a vehicle dwelling homeless as well. Last I checked, there are over 3 million Americans living full time in a vehicle, whether it be a car, a bus, a van, an RV, or another type of vehicle. Some of them, it's by choice, but for some of them, that's all they can afford because housing prices have skyrocketed in so many places.
I don't see how or where I said I am against giving people homes.
when you said...
That says to me, four times, that you are against giving people homes. Could you clarify how each of those points is a positive?
Literally none of this says: don't give people a home. My point is giving them a home is not enough, it won't solve the problem.
Is this a weird English language thing? Is this a Lemmy or an internet thing? People seem to deliberately put stuff into posts that aren't said.
It's even in the text you quoted from me that my opinion is just giving them housing won't solve the problem.
How the fuck does that say "don't give them a home"???
I think the missing context is that when you write with majority negative phrasing, people assume your argument is against it.
Consider: "You have to cover apples in sugar and put them in pastry, and then add custard to make me want to consider eating them!"
This sounds like you hate apples, not that you like apple pie.
I thought the situation was more like: "If you got apples you can make an apple pie". And I was: "No, just apples make a bad pie, you also need the other ingredients". And then people wrote: "How dare you hating apple pie!"
Are you familiar with the "Housing first" model? It posits that even for people who need medical or living assistance, having shelter, a bed, a bathroom, a refrigerator, and a permanent address will allow them and whoever is providing support to deal with compounding factors and receive regular visits, Conversely, attempts to treat something like dementia or substance abuse on the street are next to impossible.
A big issue with different social workers and such trying to reach and help homeless people is trying to find them. If they have a fixed address, you know where they will likely be. This makes services to take them to doctor appointments, get them welfare cheques, disability service notifications etc. all become reliable.
Yes I know. And all housing projects I know about pre-select the people they give a home to, often only take in those who are already in the welfare system and all these projects offer extensive additional help.
I feel like some people deliberately interpret stuff into my post just so that they can get angry (not you but, I got some really angry messages).
So to make it extra clear: Giving people a home is great! There definitely should be a home for everyone, it's a human right!
But just giving people a home will not solve the problem with homeless! Putting people with severe mental illnesses, debt, etc. simply into a home does not work.
If someone's a jerk, don't forget that there's a "report" button for a reason.
I don't think it's fair to paint homelessness as an urban planning issue just because housing is a part of the solution to both problems.
is that truly the case, or just a pervasive urban legend?
which studies support this theory?
not that I don't believe you, but the reason I asked for studies/sources is I expect to be flooded with stories about how people knows someone who knows someone who knows someone where it didn't work once or twice (respectfully, this is what your story boils down to), and I hope you won't be insulted if I can't consider that a good representation of a much-maligned part of society.
the study you mentioned, but refused to link to, or quote, agrees with me and not yourself, I quote:
you buried the "extensive further help" clause a little, and your use of "extensive" makes it sound onerous, which is why I responded assuming you were dead against it.
If you had said something like "While I agree housing can help, but there does need to be some support as well" - I probably would've taken it differently.
You are right that I could have been more generous in interpreting your use of the word "extensive" as negative.
Well yes, that much I do agree with.
I think between their argument and your own, yours is the one in more need of citation. Which is more likely, that giving a house to everyone will solve homelessness or that some people have problems beyond just being homeless? He's not saying that it wouldn't help some people, he's just saying that there would still be some number of people who need help beyond this.
I mean, to me, "if someone gives them a house they won't be homeless" makes way more common-sense than "if you give someone a house they will not live in it"
but asked and answered:
edit to say: I want to get ahead of "gotchas!" like "it doesn't solve this problem of this one guy my mate's Da's landlord's daughter heard about through a crack in the wall about a homeless guy who set fire to his free housing!" as you can't legislate or plan for one whackjob who may not even exist.
It's not a gish gallop, it's a demonstration of a wide range of applications and environments has a net positive impact.
My original question was "which studies...?" (note plural) which sets the context for a reply with multiple sources
If you demand that anyone produces one, single study that solves the problem: impossible, regardless of topic, field and context. Nothing is provable by that standard.
Secondly, that one CNN article mentions that it was on a subset of people does not destroy the entire premise.
I am still waiting on counterexample studies, if you think providing several is beyond a reasonable ask, two would be acceptable.
We're not talking about beggars we're talking about the homeless. it's ironic to change topic while accusing me of logical fallacies.
I'm sorry you're not interested in how these ideas have actually been implemented and the level of success they show, but to me that's the only interesting part. It's all well and good saying "this solution will/won't work" but it's, to me at least, only the testing that matters.
As I just asked someone else: do you really believe that a single failure in a system means the whole thing isn't worth it? the example I used above is penicillin. As at least one person is allergic, and at least one person experiences no effect: does that mean that penicillin is considered ineffectual to bacterial infections? That seems silly to me, which is why I ask what your threshold for success is here.
Pretty much yeah. This is what Finland did.
No it did not. Finland helped about half of the homeless people. And that's a very generous estimate because it's only those homeless people who are actually accounted for.
https://www.ara.fi/en-US/Materials/Homelessness_reports/Homelessness_in_Finland_2022(65349)#:~:text=At%20the%20end%20of%202022,a%20decrease%20of%20185%20people.
This is because they only select those who can be housed and are already part of the welfare system. It's also not just putting people in an apartment. There is still a lot of drug and debt counseling and mental help provided in the background.
And that's for the model country for the housing first approach.
Homelessness in Finland is bit different to most countries. You are counted as homeless even if you are living at friend's place or in an institution.
There are only around 300 actual homeless people. Everyone is given a place to sleep and live at.
No, there aren't statistics about these people. Just experiences and the experiences of others who work with them.
Many homeless people refuse to take up help like housing because they do not want to cooperate with helper organisations. And they also don't want to get interviewed: https://idw-online.de/de/news765112
We don't even really know how many there are because there are no reliable statistics. How would you count them anyway?
All housing first projects pre-select the people they give a home to. The reason is clear. They don't have homes for everyone, so they take those which will give the best results. In Berlin, Germany they literally have to write applications for the project: https://www.berlin.de/sen/soziales/besondere-lebenssituationen/wohnungslose/wohnen/housing-first-1293115.php
https://housingfirst.berlin/aufnahme
And they need to already be in the welfare system!
The same goes for Finland, which is the model country for a housing first approach. Putting people who already are in the welfare system in homes with help offers has the best results. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/cityscpe/vol22num2/ch4.pdf
Best results means it works for about half of homeless people.
For the other half, they need a step-by-step approach to have them able living in a home again (or for the first time in a long time). You can't just put them in an apartment with an address for counseling and that will work out.
Source: you can read about that in the PDF above, for example. Or any other study about the homeless which usually mentions at least the many who fall through the cracks.
These are migrants without refugee status and people with severe drug and alcohol abuse issues or other mental illness. It won't work to "put them out of sight out of mind".
Homeless people aren't a homogeneous group of people. And while it works for some, housing first is not the solution. Because it leaves an estimated half of them behind. It also omits that there a still a lot of help going on in the background. It's not just give them a home and that magically solves all their problems. Far from it ...
Even if it has issues, housing first solves far more problems than any other solution. If you are so opposed to housing first initiatives, then propose an alternative solution that will work better.
I'm waiting.
You can't.
Why do you think I am against housing first? I never said that I am against that. I said it does not solve homelessness. You need additional systems in place to solve it.
I'm on mobile and can't read German, I'll have to wait until later to run those articles through a translator to see what they're getting at.
But I do wonder about you saying we can only halve homelessness instantly, and the next quarter needs some help, and the next 10% needs a lot of help and after that things get more diffocult: that means it doesn't work and isn't worth trying at all
Wouldn't halving homelessness be pretty damn successful?
Of course it is great but it won't solve homelessness. Which is what the image suggests. And obviously it doesn't.
What's your tolerance threshold for a solution? One source I quoted elsewhere said it would solve up to 75% of homelessness.
People are allergic or immune to penicillin, that doesn't mean that its not a solution to bacterial infections.
If someone said "Penicillin solves bacterial infections" I would also say this is not true. There are bacterial infections which can't be cured by penicillin and some people can't take it at all.
Understood. How should one phrase a vast majority success with a tolerance of a minority of failures in casual conversations?
I am not sure a vast majority success is correct if people interpret the concept literally (like in the meme).
Finland is the country with the best results, afaik.
These are the numbers of those homeless who are accounted for and got help (so missing those who are not in welfare for example and therefore the numbers are estimates): https://www.ara.fi/en-US/Materials/Homelessness_reports/Homelessness_in_Finland_2022(65349)#:~:text=At%20the%20end%20of%202022,a%20decrease%20of%20185%20people.
They started the housing first approach in 2007. There is a steady decline in homelessness, so I would say it's an important part of the new solution.
But if you look at the organisations which allocate the housing you see they also hired hundreds of extra personal, invested heavily in the help networks, anti-drug abuse and other programs.
Many of the housing complexes have staff on site or they visit the scattered apartments.
And Finland invested additionally into prevention methods to counter people getting homeless in the first place. They changed laws and built teams and places to help people not get homeless.
What do you call it than? It just seems wrong in the way it was put in the meme.
You can't solve all their problems with just providing housing, but it would some.
One thing I think people fail to see often when considering programs like this is the generational effect. A program to provide people housing might be considered a failure to some people because many may still choose to do drugs, will ruin their apartment, be violent to their neighbors, etc., some honestly valid concerns. But consider the shockwave 60 years down the line, for the next generations.
Homelessness and drug abuse are generational. Think of a person who would have been homeless who has a child. Was mentally ill and didn't take very good of the apartment, but not enough to not raise the child. Despite this, that child now has astronomically better chances at a decent life than if they had been raised on the streets or put into foster care just because they had housing and stability
You continue generation after generation, and though many people will be considered "failures" of programs like this, the rate of them continues to decrease because the success stories are now out of the system, out of the cycle.
The problem is half measures, which is what we have today. Bandaid fixes that don't get to the root of the issues homeless people deal with, keeping them in the cycle but doing... Something? So they can say look we care...
This assumes you kick them out after putting them into it.
No, you need to provide additional help to keep homeless people off the street. I only have experience with homeless in Germany, though. The reasons for homelessness can be different depending on the country.