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  #21  
Old Posted May 16, 2023, 12:14 AM
galleyfox galleyfox is offline
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Open drug scenes: responses of five European cities
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentra...71-2458-14-853

Sorry, but the “Housing First” approach described in news articles is disingenuous regarding the full scope of policies regarding homelessness and drug addiction in Europe.
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  #22  
Old Posted May 16, 2023, 1:16 AM
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As others have pointed out the demographics of a country like Finland are completely different, even when compared to Canada. (Let's not even talk about the US.)

Finland doesn't have an Indigenous population for example (well they have the Sami but there are like 1000 of them.) which in our cities tends to make up a hugely disproportionate share of our homeless and destitute population.

Not having to manage that kind of challenge makes a huge difference.

Also, when it comes to not leaving people out in the cold (figuratively) small really is beautiful. At least if you're a wealthy country.

Smaller western countries are generally less likely to have "forsaken" people and areas, whereas bigger countries provide more opportunity, but also have a higher percentage of people on the losing end of life.
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  #23  
Old Posted May 16, 2023, 3:02 AM
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I’m tired of how we keep comparing the US to the “Nordic model". It’s a population of 330M being compared to a Finnish population of 5M. And then everyone asking, “If they manage it, how come we can’t?” There are other countries doing things better than here yet they have a larger population to manage. Those comparisons are more useful.
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  #24  
Old Posted May 16, 2023, 3:53 AM
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I’m tired of how we keep comparing the US to the “Nordic model". It’s a population of 330M being compared to a Finnish population of 5M. And then everyone asking, “If they manage it, how come we can’t?” There are other countries doing things better than here yet they have a larger population to manage. Those comparisons are more useful.
The US also has vastly more resources than any of the Scandinavian countries. We just choose to not use any of them to solve our social problems because we have turned our class system into a morality play where we see the poor as deserving poverty.

We use the size and diversity of our country as an excuse to not try to solve any of our problems even though we have far greater financial resources than any other developed country. We just choose to funnel those resources to the rich.

When people say they are tired of hearing about it what they are really saying is they don't want to do anything about it.
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  #25  
Old Posted May 16, 2023, 4:39 AM
galleyfox galleyfox is offline
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The US also has vastly more resources than any of the Scandinavian countries. We just choose to not use any of them to solve our social problems because we have turned our class system into a morality play where we see the poor as deserving poverty.

We use the size and diversity of our country as an excuse to not try to solve any of our problems even though we have far greater financial resources than any other developed country. We just choose to funnel those resources to the rich.
San Francisco spends billions on homelessness, far more financial resources than most European countries, to no avail.

The U.S. often tosses money at a problem instead of acknowledging some harsh truths and actually addressing the problem using complete International best standards. Not just clickbait blurbs.

European countries arrest and institutionalize the mentally ill who create disturbances. They put drug dealers in jail. They provide housing for the remainder who are in mandatory rehab.

It’s really that simple.
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  #26  
Old Posted May 16, 2023, 5:15 AM
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This is a good, honest take on the Finnish model. They have some great ideas that could be implemented in North America or elsewhere; but it also identifies some of the specifics that don't easily translate to other societies - chief among them that it's not really possible to achieve when there's a national housing shortage:

Video Link
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  #27  
Old Posted May 16, 2023, 2:44 PM
iheartthed iheartthed is offline
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Originally Posted by galleyfox View Post
European countries institutionalize the severely mentally ill.

European homeless are mostly just drunks and the functional drug addicts, and they do use prison to deter stuff like open drug dealing and camping on streets.

American homeless includes a lot of people who are clinically insane, and drug addicts who take advantage of lenient arrest policies.

It’s no surprise that housing works for the first group and fails for the second.
I've been to Europe several dozen times and the visible homeless there mostly look like the visible homeless here.
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  #28  
Old Posted May 16, 2023, 3:27 PM
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Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
I've been to Europe several dozen times and the visible homeless there mostly look like the visible homeless here.
I’ve lived in Europe, and my cousin in Germany works on this issue.

Like I mentioned before, European street homeless are also mostly drunks and addicts, so sure, they look like the American homeless at first sight.

But constant stories of homeless assaulting people or setting up mass tent camps in the middle of downtowns don’t happen, because laws are enforced against the severely mentally ill.

They don’t just let homeless with multiple assault, theft or drug dealing arrests be released back onto the streets. Preventive detention and dangerousness have a much lower threshold on average in the European courts.
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  #29  
Old Posted May 16, 2023, 3:32 PM
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Originally Posted by galleyfox View Post
I’ve lived in Europe, and my cousin in Germany works on this issue.

Like I mentioned before, European street homeless are also mostly drunks and addicts, so sure, they look like the American homeless at first sight.

But constant stories of homeless assaulting people or setting up mass tent camps in the middle of downtowns don’t happen, because laws are enforced against the severely mentally ill.

They don’t just let homeless with multiple assault, theft or drug dealing arrests be released back onto the streets. Preventive detention and dangerousness have a much lower threshold on average in the European courts.
Where is it common for homeless people to be drug dealers?
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  #30  
Old Posted May 16, 2023, 4:42 PM
edale edale is offline
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I've been to Europe several dozen times and the visible homeless there mostly look like the visible homeless here.
There is nothing like LA's Skid Row in Europe, or any other developed nation on earth. It's a complete aberration to have tent villages not just in one area of downtown, but scattered all around the city like you see in basically all the major West Coast cities.

We put up with absolutely terrible, anti-social behavior in the name of misguided compassion. The activist class likes to say that the US refuses to give resources to fight the homeless problem, but that's just not true. Los Angeles and San Francisco spend billions of dollars every year on shelters, provision of services, homeless outreach, and construction of permanent supportive housing. Not to mention all the money spent cleaning up the heaps of garbage and refuse that the homeless leave behind. What do we get for all this money spent? Not much, as the problems continue to get worse.

We need a mechanism to forcibly remove the mentally ill from the streets. We have a group of people who essentially function as toddlers, and yet we think the answer to solve these problems is to just give all of them their own housing, free of charge, no questions asked, forever. That seems absurd to me, and it's clearly not working here.
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  #31  
Old Posted May 16, 2023, 4:44 PM
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Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
Where is it common for homeless people to be drug dealers?
Wherever there are large encampments. That’s what those camps are for. Not all, but a measurable minority are trading drugs, before the more professional drug dealers take over.
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  #32  
Old Posted May 16, 2023, 5:13 PM
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There is nothing like LA's Skid Row in Europe, or any other developed nation on earth. It's a complete aberration to have tent villages not just in one area of downtown, but scattered all around the city like you see in basically all the major West Coast cities.
And the west coast cities get hit particularly hard with this in part because the mild climate forces them to absorb a lot of extra street people from a nation of 330 million people, not some tiny little Nordic nation of only a few million people.
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Last edited by Steely Dan; May 16, 2023 at 5:23 PM.
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  #33  
Old Posted May 16, 2023, 6:01 PM
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And the west coast cities get hit particularly hard with this in part because the mild climate forces them to absorb a lot of extra street people from a nation of 330 million people, not some tiny little Nordic nation of only a few million people.
CA alone has almost 40 million people, so there would be more home grown homeless than a nation of 5 million. There have always been homeless here but they were less visible, because they didn't have a whole house packed into their tent or RV. The most they had was a shopping cart, till COVID or maybe the great recession.
10 new-age homeless with tents are going to take up more space than 10 homeless with nothing.
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  #34  
Old Posted May 16, 2023, 6:04 PM
iheartthed iheartthed is offline
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Originally Posted by edale View Post
There is nothing like LA's Skid Row in Europe, or any other developed nation on earth. It's a complete aberration to have tent villages not just in one area of downtown, but scattered all around the city like you see in basically all the major West Coast cities.

We put up with absolutely terrible, anti-social behavior in the name of misguided compassion. The activist class likes to say that the US refuses to give resources to fight the homeless problem, but that's just not true. Los Angeles and San Francisco spend billions of dollars every year on shelters, provision of services, homeless outreach, and construction of permanent supportive housing. Not to mention all the money spent cleaning up the heaps of garbage and refuse that the homeless leave behind. What do we get for all this money spent? Not much, as the problems continue to get worse.

We need a mechanism to forcibly remove the mentally ill from the streets. We have a group of people who essentially function as toddlers, and yet we think the answer to solve these problems is to just give all of them their own housing, free of charge, no questions asked, forever. That seems absurd to me, and it's clearly not working here.
Creating the need for tent cities is not compassionate lol. We can debate whether it is good policy to guarantee every human their own sheltered space, but it is completely disingenuous to act as if we have actually ever guaranteed that in this country.

We can also debate whether we have the legal structure capable of that guarantee, but I also think it is disingenuous to discount that as a solution because of "culture".
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  #35  
Old Posted May 16, 2023, 6:09 PM
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It is worth pointing out that most states have waiting lists for section 8 vouchers that are years to decades long. We don't fund section 8 at a level where everyone who qualifies for it gets it. That may be a place to start.
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  #36  
Old Posted May 16, 2023, 6:47 PM
edale edale is offline
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Creating the need for tent cities is not compassionate lol. We can debate whether it is good policy to guarantee every human their own sheltered space, but it is completely disingenuous to act as if we have actually ever guaranteed that in this country.

We can also debate whether we have the legal structure capable of that guarantee, but I also think it is disingenuous to discount that as a solution because of "culture".
Who said anything about culture besides you? I think it's completely disingenuous to suggest the government can simply build and provide free housing for anyone and everyone who wants it, and that doing so would take care of the homeless problem we have.

There are 70,000 homeless people in Los Angeles County. If you assume a per unit cost of $500,000 (which is probably a conservative number to use), you're looking at 3.5 billion dollars just to house those people who are currently homeless in one county. And more and more people will then come to LA County to take advantage of the sweet deal, and then we're left with a never ending cycle of spending huge sums of money to provide free housing for people in one of America's most expensive cities.

I support building more government funded housing, but I don't think it's the end all, be all answer to solving homelessness. I think the government's job should primarily be to provide emergency shelters. You have the option of being a normal member of society who figures out their own housing, or you can stay in a shelter. We should provide resources to help people figure out their lives, get treatment for substance abuse, etc. But if you don't have housing, and you don't want to be in a shelter, I don't think cities should allow people the option of setting up camp on city sidewalks. Those people should be removed from the streets, and either jailed or institutionalized. That may sound harsh, but I think it would incentivize people who are mentally able to get their shit together to do so.

Just this morning walking into work, I saw group of able-bodied guys outside their little tent village (which totally blocked the sidewalk) taking apart a beautiful new looking road bike, which I have to assume was stolen. They had several other bikes in various states of disassembly scattered around them. They were running a power chord from a light pole that I guess they figured out how to hack into. The whole area looked and smelled disgusting. This type of behavior just should not be tolerated, imo. And why should those type of guys get free housing for life in America's second biggest city, when I have to schlepp my ass to work and live a fairly frugal lifestyle so I can afford to pay my rent and bills? The government should not be incentivizing bad behavior.

Last edited by edale; May 16, 2023 at 6:58 PM.
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  #37  
Old Posted May 16, 2023, 6:55 PM
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Originally Posted by edale View Post
There is nothing like LA's Skid Row in Europe, or any other developed nation on earth. It's a complete aberration to have tent villages not just in one area of downtown, but scattered all around the city like you see in basically all the major West Coast cities.
.
In much of Europe the police constantly "shoo" (perhaps this is too mild a term) homeless people out of the central historic core because it's so economically important to the city and country to keep these areas pleasant for tourists.

As a result, homeless camps made up of tents and more often scavenged materials of all sorts are a lot more common on the outskirts of European cities and even in the countryside, than they are in (North) America.

The casual traveller doesn't often see these places either, as they are generally along roads that are off the beaten path.
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  #38  
Old Posted May 16, 2023, 6:57 PM
iheartthed iheartthed is offline
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Who said anything about culture besides you?
Read the thread.
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  #39  
Old Posted May 16, 2023, 8:46 PM
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Originally Posted by galleyfox View Post


Institutionalizing the people who are actually crazy probably helps with rehabbing the other homeless much easier.
Knocking on prison’s door: a 10-fold rise in the number of psychotic prisoners in Finland during the years 2005–2016
Local, state and federal governments would have to be willing to reverse the long standing policies against long term involuntary institutionalization and then appropriate funding. This is a problem not just for the homeless but long term care were the mentally ill are warehoused in nursing facilities. Or clogging up the criminal justice system..
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  #40  
Old Posted May 16, 2023, 9:05 PM
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Originally Posted by galleyfox View Post
San Francisco spends billions on homelessness, far more financial resources than most European countries, to no avail.

The U.S. often tosses money at a problem instead of acknowledging some harsh truths and actually addressing the problem using complete International best standards. Not just clickbait blurbs.

European countries arrest and institutionalize the mentally ill who create disturbances. They put drug dealers in jail. They provide housing for the remainder who are in mandatory rehab.

It’s really that simple.
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