1) that is a political news piece (not anything rigorous) written in Canada for Canada that is breathless about victory in Finland, and where the primary source appears to be the primary political activist for the policies in Finland. Aka, good luck getting a solid idea of real trade offs or problems. When you read it there is almost no actual data. Where the head political advocate for the policy provides some data, it shows progress, but as quoted, not victory or a solution, see
“ A lot of progress has been made. We now have the lowest number of homeless. Our present government has decided that the rest of the homeless should be halved within the next four years and completely end by 2027”
So we’d need 5 years before even the most gang busters assessment could say if it was solved or not. And it seems to be because it was decided, not because that is what projections show will happen? So if the last 10% don’t co-operate, then what?
2) Finland has only 5.5 million people in a massive land area, and one of the lowest population densities in the world. They also are remarkably ethnically consistent. They also have a incredibly hostile climate that will strongly discourage (or outright kill in the first month of winter) anyone who is unsheltered homeless. They also have socialized medicine. They are also very wealthy because of natural resources which almost no other country has.
For comparison, the San Francisco Bay Area discussed earlier on it’s own has approximately 50% larger population than all of Finland all on it’s own in only 5% of the land area, and none of those other factors helping (add scare quotes depending on the factor).
That is pretty much the definition of a ‘toy population’ in this case, and even they aren’t saying it’s actually solved in that case yet, just that it totally will be at some point in the future.
While I think SF advocates have stopped trying to claim victory is possible or they’ll have it under control at some point in the future, there was a time that is what they said too.
1) Cleary the policy is massively successful and the trends are pointing towards it being solved in the next few years. I don’t read Finnish so I can’t provide a better source, but you could probably find one looking online if you don’t like the Guardian
2) Low population density seems like something that would make solving homelessness harder, not easier, as you seem to suggest. I don’t see how ethnic homogeneity has anything to do with this but I’d be interested in hearing why you think it does. I agree that a strong social safety net helps a lot with this problem and we need it in the US also. Your assertion that a smaller population makes the problem easier doesn’t make sense. Less housing needs to be built but the Finnish government also has much fewer resources than the US.
Well, clearly the person and government in charge of getting it started thinks it is massively successful? I don’t have data to contradict or support otherwise, but lots of folks in those positions say things are great when they don’t look good on the ground.
Regarding your other questions - Smaller populations are much easier to work with, and organizations that are working with them are easier to manage to a high quality. Socio-Religo-Ethno consistent groups also tend to be aligned more consistently on cultural values and behaviors among individuals, which allows doing interventions or even understanding patterns of problems is easier and more doable. There is also less ‘us vs them’ and more ‘we’ involved. So fewer diametrically opposed factions, less infighting, less corruption of core social infrastructure, less jockeying for position vs other factions required. The set of stakeholders is fundamentally lower and easier to deal with. For a counter example, see Lebanon, Bosnia-Herzegovina, etc.
Low population density is also a huge help with any sort of homelessness issue because there is little to no pressure on housing availability. If someone previously owned a house and lived there, as long as it didn’t burn down, buying out any loan (going to be a smaller amount) is just as effective as anything else probably because 1) it’s not going to be a huge amount of money, 2) there won’t be as much moral hazard as there would be in a less cohesive and higher density location as it’s less money, and the neighbors all know you and there is an incentive to not abuse it, 3) no one is moving in to just take a house and then doing whatever with no connection to the land or the area or the culture before hand.
And also since it’s a smaller population, your overall number of folks being involved is much smaller, and there are fewer really problematic outliers.
Also because of the smaller population, more homogenous groups, and stronger ethnic identity, it’s not as likely someone is going to be able to even start throwing wrenches in the works for whatever disingenuous reason like happens here in the cities very often. Judges would just go ‘what are you doing, get out’ if someone tries.
Here, it would tie the agencies involved or property owners up for years or decades.
Does that answer your question?
It’s also why New Zealand was able to stop Covid coming in (for awhile) and others couldn’t, that and a lot of ocean. There was strong buy-in across the population, and a consistent set of values folks could agree on and feel like they were working together with others on.
I can’t really tell if you’re saying it’s not possible to solve homelessness by giving people homes or if doing that is politically difficult. I would agree very much that it’s politically difficult to do, but a solution being politically difficult doesn’t make the problem unsolved. Especially considering there are governments that have acted to solve the problem in this way and seen positive results. Im not talking about what policies are easy to get passed, I’m saying there’s no reason what Finland did couldn’t be repeated in a larger country with vastly more resources other than lack of political will.
