this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
259 points (98.1% liked)
World News
31540 readers
654 users here now
News from around the world!
Rules:
-
Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc
-
No NSFW content
-
No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Fixing homelessness by giving people a home! I'm not sure that's going to work.....facepalm
If you go on reddit threads for topics like this you will always see some people echoing conservative think tank talking points like how homeless people are homeless because of their own not only shortcomings but also volition. They will say that homeless people being put into homes will trash the place and leave for the streets despite every housing first experiment showing a very good sticking rate. In fact one dude is doing this in this very thread.
Almost every developed country has the resources to solve the homelessness "problem" for good. The problem is the lack of political will. The property owning parasite class are scared of what easily available homes will do to property prices. The employers are scared labour not being docile without the threat of homelessness. It's just vampires all the way down profiting from keeping people destitute and on the streets.
You're absolutely right, to add a bit more depth to the conversation, providing a home is the first step. Those homes need to be dispersed throughout a whole community so no single neighborhood has to handle the influx. As opposed to project housing. They need to be near services like welfare, public transportation, food banks, etc, and occupational opportunities to break the cycle of poverty. In many places that means a job but it doesn't necessarily have to be.
I think the cause of all this is simple, a system where ultimately your only value is the wealth you generate instead of valuing the person we all are. I also think that the solution will be complicated. I've been fooled too many times by the simple solution to fall for it here.
You just need to go 5 posts from yours in this very thread to find one saying "homeless people didn't agreed to the rules". And one post beside yours "homeless will flock from all over the world".
Yeah I saw that. Unsurprisingly it's someone from a nordic "socialist" country.
Downvote the shit out of me, but explain how this works in the above case where one (let's even expand it a bit and say) nation chooses to do this, and everyone homeless around the world with the means to make the journey, decides to head down there and enter the country by whatever means? We're not talking about a taxpayer base, just a whole ton of people that want homes, and of course some small subset of those people that want free homes. People seems to scoff at the "it's a complex problem" thing because they don't think of the solution to homelessness within the confines of reality.
Im curious how you think they get to these nations, and you know theres immigration policy, you cant just move somewhere and take a house, you'll get deported back
Not knowing how anything works is the key to having those takes.
How is housing a domestic homeless person and different from housing an immigrant, from a national economics point of view? It's not like the former paid any taxes so far.
I'm curious if this is what happened in Finland?
It’s almost like the only solution is to de commodify housing everywhere, globally, and provide everyone shelter because it’s a human right and so clearly works to fix many mental health problems.
It’s almost like C A P I T A L I S M does not inherently provide a good living standard to everyone, and allows the very wealthiest to pit us against each other in a rat race to the bottom. “Decommodification means someone will take your house!” No. It means you’ll always have a place to live and enough housing will be built to support the entire population. It means that billionaires will have to give up their extra homes.
Housing is a right, not an investment vehicle. The entire industry from building, selling, buying and renting needs a reset. Short term rentals need their own zoning type at a minimum, residential zoning should remain residential. There are some really papers out of McGill and university of Uppsala on financialization of housing and it's effect on affordability. There is so much shit to do on this topic and everyone is stuck at bleeting "build more homes" on the internet.
Every homeless around the world with the means to make the journey... Is a number thats only irrelevantly larger than 0
Unfortunately as I expected, the replies are just more questions.
You only got questions because your original post was inane. On a news item about a country providing homes to their homeless citizens, you asked how a country could do this without being flooded with migrants. You posed it as a gotcha, and demanded we come up with solutions to this problem that you, the most intelligent man in the room, found.
Finland had to close their borders recently due to a migrant influx, which they have since opened. Wonder where they'll live, and who will pay for it, what services will the funding be redirected from, and what magical insta-build housing they'll live in (it takes 18 months to build a 20+ unit complex after a quick Google).
My response was to Quebec city, expanded to "how could a nation even manage this from start to finish, nevermind a city". I like this sarcastic attack on my person, though. This is precisely why I didn't engage. If one says anything but "homelessness bad, housing good", the internet megaminds come out and try to apply their critical thinking skills. I like your use of "we" here as well.
Finland's recent closing of the eastern border had nothing to do with homeless flocking to available housing, and everything to do with attempts at destabilization by Russia. Do not use this as ammunition for your arguments, as they come from an obvious place of ignorance.
Finland's housing first policy has been in place for over 15 years. You talk about it as if it just started. A country can not only manage just fine with these policies, but can thrive.