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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
See also: New Zealand's response to assault rifles within 2 days of a mass shooting.
Different take on the bench. The dividers allows for the pregnant and the disabled to sit. Which I believe is more important than letting some homeless sleep on that particular bench.
You can have those arm handles at the ends of benches without being dividers, accommodating both, people with movement problems and homeless people who need a spot to sleep.
Where would an extra thicc bbw sit on that bench? It's a hate crime, I say!
What happens when those people leave the housing provided and leave because they want their freedom to move around and be on the street again?
Well we do have that. Not everyone wants to take the housing offered to them. Usually it's addiction or mental health related.
That is perfectly fine. You don't need to force people to live in a house if they don't want to. But kinda hard not to want to be in a warm house during freezing Finland winters.
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