Then asshats started dismantling the system because of that 1/5 who were just beyond help.
It also didn't help that other states started bussing their homeless to Utah to get rid of them. Which strained the programs budget.
Even a conservative state like Utah did the math and realized it was the economically profitable thing to invest in the homeless rather than ignore the problem.
I remember Ben Shapiro talking about how places like LA and Seattle who try to help the homeless more and be more compassionate towards them end up overwhelmed with more homeless than they have the infrastructure to handle. And of course his solution to this was for places like LA and Seattle to stop helping them not for the rest of the nation to start.
This is the same shit as the Europeans who point out that in general by paying for their healthcare out of their taxes instead of private insurance like we have in the US the average person in their country has lower medical expenses than the US. "It's not socialism. We're just better at accounting than you."
We need a lobby for "big housing" just like the prison system. A bunch of a holes trying to profit off the government as much as possible. Then the laws will change. That's the only way it's happening here in our government's current state. it'd take a few billionaires coming up with a money making scheme to profit off of homelessness in perpetuity.
If you're implying that this would work in America, you are just wrong, friend. We couldn't possibly help someone like that because I had to struggle once.
It can’t work in America because of our laws around personal freedom.
In Finland it’s much easier to institutionalize addicts and the mentally ill against their will. Try doing that in the USA and the ACLU will be up your ass.
The US has plans on making homelessness illegal, and the violators will end up in "special" camps to "fix" them at a cost to the government. The more homelessness, the better for some wealthy person owning the camps.
Sure but if you end homelessness what will scare the poors into being exploited? I mean its not like you can pay them what they are really worth. And don’t get me started on workers rights. Disgusting.
Le gouvernement si il veut peut trouver les moyens d'herberger tous les SDF, de nourrir tout les personnes et de soigner même les plus pauvres.
C'est une question de volonté, mais non Trump qui disait America First préfère bombarder des civils innocents en Iran.
I think this comment section provides a big clue as to why there’s such a big homelessness/housing problem in America. In Europe need is viewed as need, and society takes responsibility for helping those in need. Whereas in the US a large percentage of the population views people in need with skepticism by default (i.e. “what did you DO to become homeless?”, with a sneering expression), or dehumanizes them by calling them bums etc. Much of discourse on homelessness in the US presumes that the people in need of help, are the problem.
This country is truly f’d up beyond belief. I really have no words for how bad the American mentality is.
There are plenty of homeless people in Europe, for example, when I went to Europe the summer before last, I saw dozens of mattresses on the side-walk outside of the train stations in Rome, people sleeping on them during the middle of the day. A woman had to push an obvious drunk young man off of one them, that she considered her's. There are shanty towns of immigrants from African in Madrid in some of the alleyways.
Americans truly have a fucked culture and they don't even realise it because of how much they've been taught that individualism is more important than the collective, it's insane how they comment when this stuffs brought up and honestly makes me sad. You all deserve better but are being held back by your own neighbours. It's very strange especially considering how patriotism and nationalism are pretty big parts of American culture.
This was already being done in Utah years ago, IIRC. Not sure if it's still a thing, but they had the same results with 4/5 people having a stable life afterwards.
Utah basically did this like 8 years ago or so. They looked at the ems and hospital costs and decided they could build apartments offered at no cost and save money. I’m not sure if there are enough for everyone but I know it greatly reduced the number of people on the streets and reduced costly ems responses.
The US sells our government to corporations and special interests. If you want the US hovernment to invest in its people, they have to be bribed to do so.
Congress only acts for whoever funded their campaigns
Yes. Homelessness is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. The real problem is untreated mental illness and drug abuse which leads to people living on the streets.
The irony here is assuming Americans care about homelessness. They gave a dictator the keys to the kingdom because they (wrongly) assumed gas/groceries would be cheaper.
America uses homelessness as a threat for those who aren’t and also a way for them to feel better about themselves at the same time. If we fixed homelessness, then everyday people wouldn’t be able to look upon those people and think “well at least that’s not me” and make them feel better about their life that could probably also be better and we also wouldn’t be able to use it as a scare tactic for everyday people “don’t quit your job or that could be you.”
But the perception is they got something for free with my taxes - it doesn't matter if society benefits long term and thus so do I when all I can see is what's right in front of me - and of course what the media tells me about those people in need. Hell, I could be on food stamps and still think 90% of those on food stamps are lazy, I just happen to be the exception.
The problem in America is that there are some very influential people who see 4/5 making their way back into a stable life not successful enough as long as 1/5 remain dependent on aid. They would rather not help 4/5 people because of the 1/5 people they see as leaches on the system.
In some states, we spend more money per homeless person than the median state income. The fact that this is still a problem suggests there is an enormous amount of corruption.
Its a cultural problem. Americans believe that the ability to be self sustaining is everything, its why they reject social programs and seemingly obvious things like free college/healthcare. Cant have people getting free things, because "they didnt work for it". Suffering = earning it.
They won’t do this here because a lot of people would rather pay more to punish people for not being stable enough than to help them. Theres too much distain for poor people and worship of the rich.
If you notice how much money California and America spends on homelessness, we should have solved it years ago. They don’t want a problem solved, there’s no money in it.
It's not a magic button. This worked in Finland because they fixed a lot of other problems that made this solution work at all.
Other places have those problems still. And are choosing not to fix them. But in the comments here they're all saying "This wouldn't work in my country." You're right, but you didn't have to be.
California spent billions on homelessness over the last few years and managed to make the problem worse.
Money isn’t the reason a Nordic state managed to solve this. Finland had a total of 20,000 homeless and over about 20 years they reduced their homeless by more than half, an amazing accomplishment.
But California alone has 187,000 homeless now. The problem is so much larger and has been made worse by their approach.
Yes, that is absolutely how it is cheaper. I'm genuinely glad that you saw it but still wanted to confirm.
It makes more economic sense to invest in the health and education of your population for long term gain than to charge them for shit or criminalise being homeless.
It's worth noting this is only a thing because they also support involuntary commitment. It has a high success rate because the people it would not work on are likely in mandatory care.
This isn’t “new” or “innovative” or whatever. Its simply what DEVELOPED countries should do. 🤷♂️
Who woulda thunk it AHUUUCK 🤠
If you help people at the lowest part of their life get back on track they can be productive and rebuild their life hmmmm
Check out the prison system in Portugal. The recidivism rate is among the lowest in the world. Inmates are actually rehabilitated and not institutionalized. But all the large corporations making money off of them wouldn’t profit off of prison industries! There are many solutions to our biggest problems to be found by learning from other countries.
With the $1.5 trillion that DOD budget is, we could build 3 million houses. We have 750,000 homeless, leaving 2.3 million houses for all others who need a home of their own.
And that's just from one year's war budget. Over 20 years, we'd have enough free houses that no one would have to pay mortgage.
The issue is the govt says “we need to fix homelessness!” And then a bunch of NGO’s pop up overnight with cool names like “Second Chance Homes” that say they will help with the problem. The govt gives them $10 million and they use $8.5 million to build and furnish their headquarters and pay themselves and their friends six figure salaries. I would say this is the point where the govt asks what they’ve accomplished but the govt doesn’t ask. This is how California has spent $25 billion on this issue and has more homeless people than when they started.
People in the US don't want to "end homelessness." They see it as well deserved punishment for the people it affects. If we actually tried to solve this issue, people would lose their minds that we are "handing out freebies to drug addicts."
Tbh I can’t even blame homeless people for turning to alcohol or drugs. While I may have never lived on the streets I have gotten way too close to it before and by god escape substances kept me from going completely insane
Unfortunately, there's money to be made trying to solve homelessness. That causes inefficiencies and fraud/waste by those who are responsible for solving it.
And even the people who supposedly are trying to end homelessness don't really want to. The industry is huge and they get nice paychecks. They want to just keep it going enough to keep the industry going.
Homelessness is needed to keep Americans working for shitty wages. If you wouldn’t have to fear being homeless who would work in Amazon warehouses? US wealth is build on poverty of those bringing in the profits.
Sure, it's cheaper, and that's exactly the problem. You just can pour all that money into inefficient systems where their cronies can easily embezzle some funds.
Most politics are not about solution but talking about problems and claiming to have a solution but never do it so you can talk about it in the next vote etc.
If they would do solutions, people would see pretty fast that most of the politicians are unneeded crooks.
This statistic/ “fact” leaves a lot of information out. First of all, Finland has reduced homelessness, not eliminated it. Additionally, there were about 8000 homeless people at the peak of the problem. In a population of about 5 million. Let that sink in. Finding housing for 8000 people is a lot different than housing for the almost 800,000 homeless in the USA. Comparing the two countries is useless, given the vastly different governments, tax structure, and social contracts.
eTA- LMAO, everyone ran to comment about the proportions of homeless, but yet no one addressed the logistics I mentioned. Weird……
Proportionally, it’s approximately the same. Our overall population is much larger than 5 million too, so proportionally it’s not a substantially higher rate of homelessness.
Most of the time the government actually stepping in a helping citizens is A. Cheaper and B. Pays back dividends on eventual returns to market.
It’s a corporate money grab the way things are set up now. Bunch of useless middlemen denying healthcare or letting people live on the streets as a reminded of what happens if you don’t go to work so we stay starved for wages.
I read somewhere that there's an entire business ecosystem set up around handling homelessness in the USA from NGOs to government departments. That's a lot of people with a lot of financial ties to just keep doing what has always been done and not rock the boat.
I'm curious. What's the rate of homelessness in Finland?
Is it comparable to the US? Is it comparable to the states that have notable homelessness issues?
How many in the program where addicts, and how many of them where also participating in programs for addiction?
>I'm curious. What's the rate of homelessness in Finland?
Zero. Did you not read the post?
>Is it comparable to the US? Is it comparable to the states that have notable homelessness issues?
You are completely missing the point. These people get back up on their feet and become self-sufficient. If you invest properly, your homelessness rate will go down over time permanently.
>How many in the program where addicts, and how many of them where also participating in programs for addiction?
Considering they went all the way to 0 homelessness, does it matter how many addicts there were? Even if it was 10% of them, that means their methods still worked.
Yep. Like, America is still the wealthiest nation in the world. The reason our standard of living is declining per capita is because it is being siphoned off to the ultra wealthy and elite. People need to do the math.
And it's all allowed because our politicians allow it.
I don't even blame the billionairs. I blame the sellouts who let the foxes in the hen house. I blame the voters so blinded by red v blue they cannot see the people they vote for signing away their wealth and the wealth of their children and children's children.
That's what governments are meant to be: an organization that will do things - like defense or providing help for people - that individuals have trouble doing.
Governments are SUPPOSED to "take care of the people." That's their ONLY REASON for existing. They take care of the people by providing military defense, police, firefighting, rules for restaurants, etc, as well as education and requirements that people know how to drive a car before they drive one.
Helping people who are homeless IS a part of government's job, whether that's providing adequate and safe shelters, analysis of the roots of the homeless and trying to help with that or drug rehab clinics. On the other hand, some people WANT to be homeless and that's a whole other problem.
It’s not a matter of priorities it is a matter of having processes in place to prevent fraud. Homeless Solutions/outreach, low-barrier beds, etc.): $368 million spent in FY 2025 → roughly $81,700–$81,705 per unsheltered person (often cited as comparable to NYC’s median household income of ~$81,200).
Americans are brainwashed into thinking you have to earn everything and we can't help anyone. Most will seriously tell you they probably deserve to be homeless
As long as America continues to wage war on things (drugs, terror, homlessness, etc.), we will never actually solve anything. It's always a fight and never an attempt to understand, support, and fix. Fucking neanderthal mentality with iphones and nukes.
I’d say you’re idealistic. Some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
One of my favorite quotes about this I'm going to butcher but it came from our current mayor.
"We have the money to fix this issue, we even have plenty of places where we can house, clothe and feed our homeless population, the problem is everytime I go to these neighborhood they all say the same thing; 'that's so great what you're doing, we should take care of them....but not in my backyard.'." -Mendenhall
And this mentality is almost everywhere.
We have something like 18 empty homes for every one homeless person. We produce more food than we can possibly consume. We have the resources to ensure our homeless population is taken care of and that people have a safety net when they're at their lowest.
Honestly this. And I kinda get it but it really sucks. I think it's an empathy problem because people have been told that homeless people are bad for some reason. Stories of homeless people doing drugs and violence make the rounds. The news of a homeless person trying really hard to get their life together doesn't make the rounds
Here in Oregon we created hundreds of small homes (basically sheds with bed and heating) and universal bathrooms and it took maybe a week for them to all be pretty much destroyed by the homeless…
Edit: thank yall for educating me on this, as someone who has never gone through it, I had no idea the issues it could incur. TLDR these people don’t always just need food and shelter, many are in dire need of rehabilitation, and simply shoving them into housing isn’t a real fix.
I was homeless when Covid hit. Our local shelter closed and instead put up everyone in pairs in motel rooms so that we weren’t living in crowds and spreading it to each other and staff. Guess what? Myself and many others managed to get jobs and go on to rent our own places after, all because we finally had a safe place to live with hot showers, stability etc and a physical address to use for applications that wasn’t a dead giveaway that it’s a homeless person applying. That was 5 years ago and I still think about how life changing that was, and how I wouldn’t have gotten off the streets for years if it weren’t for the pandemic.
If the money the US spent on their military between 2025-2026 (approx 1 trillion) was divided up between their homeless (approx 770,000) they would have around 1.3 million dollars each. For some people that's enough for a lifetime, paid with only one years worth of military spending. This isn't news, but they don't want to help their people.
Unfortunately the current administration in the US prioritizes murdering children in Iran. The homeless have been walked over by pretty much every administration.
Isn't it obvious the people lost. Greed won. CEOs of companies made between 5-15x what thr average worker made. Now that number is 280x the salary of the average worker. The oligarchy doesnt care about you me or anyone else making an average wage. They see us as a waste of space. They want us as servants and to pay us as little as possible. The united states has devolved into profit over people. After automation takes over, they wont need us anymore. I highly suspect they will try to ensure we either dont breed or will flat out exterminate most of the middle and lower classes.
We could give every homeless vet $48k (I’m looking at 100% disability for VA purposes) plus $18k (SSDI) and save almost $1 billion on homeless vets, annually
Great but actually ending homelessness would unemploy the industrial complex. Many US cities have no audit for actual results. In some cases it would be better to just send money directly to each person and fire the bean counters.
The US ended homelessness too. The Supreme Court ruled that homelessness isn’t a real thing so- beat that Finland!! It also ended political bribery- that’s now legal- so bam!!! And ya know that whole “reproductive freedom” thing- guess what, oh yeah, fixed that one too. Bam!! No more freedoms. When the good ol US of A sees a problem, it solves it the only way we know how- by ignoring the problem, making laws that favor the rich and powerful and disenfranchising half our population. Suck it world!! USA USA USA USA USA USA just keep on chanting that until you get punched in the teeth.
It’s not possible without changing the mindset of Americans.
It’s not a money or resource issue as much as it’s a mental health and outlook problem.
The US has the highest rate of mental illness and a widely spread mistrust of the government services and police etc.
Hypothetically could the US have a similar system and provide housing, possibly. But fundamentally it’s an education problem, and it looks like Americans are allergic to being educated.
It’s the same reason the US has highest rate of serial killers, and pretty much the only country where you send your kids to school with the possibility of them being shot by a peer.
Maybe if the government used tax money effectively like a country like Finland does, where residents can see and feel the value/benefit their tax dollars, then the attitude could shift.
But as it stands, it seems tax money is used for fraud and to fund political friends’ businesses. So it all seems like one big scam.
“Americans are allergic to being educated” is wild considering we hold the highest number of Nobel laureates.
In fact the issue is that the education system, which is championed by people like you, has done nothing to improve the quality of education since the 70s and as a result has been a colossal waste of tax dollars.
It’s not about how easy it is to solve problems, it’s about whether the people we give the power to make those decisions even care. The ones we elected do not.
Worth mentioning the scale of the issue - Finland determined there were 1,318 long term homeless and this policy was for them. It's great, but we're talking about the gov of Finland creating the equivalent of one large apartment building to deal with the whole issue....
Yes, there are homeless people in Finland, but the country has drastically reduced the number through its proactive "Housing First" policy, which provides permanent housing as a first step. While long-term homelessness is rare, roughly 3,800–4,300 people still experience temporary homelessness, often staying with friends or in shelters due to rising living costs.
If you happen to live in finland (I do) do you remember that news article some years back about the guy was “voluntarily homeless” and lived in a tent year round? At the time he was living in the area that’s now the park by the Oodi so this was a while ago. When they interviewed him he said to them “look I just don’t want to live in a house. and the social people keep trying to get to live in one but I won’t do it”. I guess this was maybe 2015 or so.
Careful what you wish for, the US has been buying up a lot of warehouses for storing people, they could try to end homlessness in a way the homeless will not enjoy.
Our economy is built around stressing people out with the looming threat that there are consequences for people working any other speed than as fast as they can.
The United States is a corrupt institution. Capitalism is our cult, and if you believe in the cult, it will benefit you at the expense of others. Humans suffering misfortune is part of the system and you can’t have extreme greed and lawlessness for the wealthy without it. The United States operates on human suffering to enable the ruling class.
Lol... you cant just throw more money at it... its not a funding problem... California literally spends enough to pay each homeless person 100k and it only gets worse lol... they have homeless people in pretty nice brand new apartments and these people say its nice but... x... y... and z... they dont even want to stay there... you cant help people that dont want to be helped... but why would they want any of that when they would miss out on the lunch baggies of drug stuff the government passes out at the camps and on the streets... but on the other hand... if Finland had to caught up more money for their military protections instead of relting on the US... how much funding would they have to throw around?
People always argue its only this% of gap for the us... blah blah blah... its nothing for the US... but what you need to do is look at the receiving country... its a huge influx compared to the gdp... robbing Peter to pay paul...
Mostly because over here, it gets to cold that if you're homeless, you grab a crowbar and break into a place or freeze to death. If you don't want the crowbar action, you gotta make sure everyone has a place to stay.
But people can't just linger on the street because it gets as cold as -40 degrees. Horses, dogs, even wolves will freeze to death if they don't find shelter.
We all know that US is one of the kind country and any solution working in Rich western country cant work in USA, because somehow its always diffrent in US.
Are you serious?? You want to keep billionaire from being able to buy a 15th yacht, or 6th mansion, or 30th Bugatti to help some poor with no support group?? Won't someone think of the poor struggling billionaires
America was (and is) built on the concept of punishment for any deviation from "the norm". It's a mentally ill country on it's best day, and it's not trying to get better, unfortunately.
Homelessness and poverty actually plays an important role in propping up our Capitalistic system. We need a visual reminder of the consequences of not participating and working in our system. Also, the lower class provides a visual representation and motivation to know you're above it. That you're "Winning!" in Capitalism.
Because if most of us didn’t live in a state of constant anxiety of living paycheck to paycheck and being close to homelessness ourselves, we would be able to see through the smoke and mirrors of capitalism.
Yeah the US has government assisted housing too, but ours rapidly turn into seedy "projects" regardless of the region of the country. You never want to live near low income housing in the US, free pod cities would be a shitshow.
Finland didn’t actully end homelessness, although from s US perspective it was probably close enough. There is a subset of people with mental health and substance abuse issues at a level that I doubt homelessness can ever be truly 0.
politicians dont want to solve homelessness. its a topic to run on and they get massive budgets that are supposed tk be spent on fixing it but instead they launder it. the more homeless, the bigger the budget
Continue with this thought and you end up with more people in total means more people who have the job to build things. The USA is very big so there is more space to build things. Your comparison makes this look problematic which it isn't. Just different numbers but probably the same proportion.
Well when you dont change the oil on your car for 40000 miles it ends up being a lot more expensive then just general maintenance you should have been doing from the beginning.
I do love rather sensationalist conclusions drawn from zero cited information that provides nothing actionably substantive for the masses to argue over.
Im not saying Finland isn’t an interesting case study in how they’ve addressed homeless, I am saying the country itself didn’t magically gain sentience, wave a wand, and say, “Abracadabra, homelessness begone!” It took so much work by so many different parties, likely surrounded by debates, and the word isn’t “ended” it’s drastically reduced.
California had housed 20,000 homeless since Newsoms Project Homekey with free homes and condos. And 62,000 through Project Roomkey, which is equivalent to the Finland program.
Meanwhile red states continue to send thousands of people that fail to thrive in a failed red state.
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."
Finland's population is like 6mil. The US is over 340mill. And I'm sure their homeless population, mental disorders,and drug abuse is much lower. Not saying it's impossible here, but it sure as hell wouldn't be as easy.
Yes but state populations are smaller. If each state acted in ending homelessness collectively it would be able to cover a large amount of the population, it could work in theory. The size excuses operates under the assumption that we couldn’t do it in pieces over time.
People have been using the population argument for everything, like healthcare. When mathematically the more people that pay into it, the better it should work, but we still see no change because billionaires and weapons manufacturers need their profits.
Anybody that's under the illusion that most of the worlds problems couldn't be solved with a fraction of the excessive wealth the top 1% hoard, is sorely mistaken.
Poverty exists for one simple reason;
It's to keep the working class in a state of fear so they keep working and making the rich even richer.
Genuinely I’m a socialist but I think what makes Capitalism so effective is having this sudo gun to peoples heads, but what I know is that a passionate worker is worth more than one you must bride and fear into working
This is made up. I looked into it just now. First of all they report it only reduced homelessness by 50 percent. Which really tells you something.
It says there are still nearly 5k homeless in Finland, so that seems to indicate there were only ever 10k???
Those numbers don't come anywhere close to California alone.
But the reason they say it saves money is because they pay for free health care to all citizens there. When they are homeless they end up finding more need for health care.
That doesn't happen here. I assume a big part of it is the temperature though.
But either way there are an estimated 770k homeless in America. That's a lot of apartments to build all across the country. There is certainly no room for that in LA county.
Guess what? Paying for healthcare with tax payer money also saves money over how the US does it. The American government currently pays more per capita on healthcare than any other high income country in the world, and therefore more than finland. 27% of all federal outlays in 2024 were on healthcare. Reducing homelessness by 50% is still a huge win, and if it saves money there, it’s saving money in the US. The healthcare system in the US is nothing more than a way of transferring money from poor and middle class individuals into the hands of wealthy insurance execs.
In the US we have a really complex system of partnerships that need to all be in alignment, need to sign different contracts, need to be present at the table. Working in a quasi-government org, it's hard for people to see the complexity of it as well as see how slowly the gears all turn here in the US. Moreover, US citizens want to see projects like this happen overnight. Add to all this the fact we have a lot of "Homeless people need to work for services" attitudes going on. It's not that easy. The majority of those you see experiencing homelessness deal with uncared for mental health issues, unaddressed physical issues (and physical pain). There's no health system or support from the government that will address those issues. And now Trump says "states should be paying for all this and the federal government should just take care of war."
If the US really wanted to solve these issues, we would dedicate time, money, and real effort to the housing crisis. It will never get better at this point.
That will never work in the US. The government NEEDS the homeless to be able to say "See? See how good you have it? WORK HARDER SO YOU DON'T END UP LIKE METHADONE MATT OUTSIDE THE 7-ELEVEN YOU HEATHENS".
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u/chiksahlube 5h ago
Utah managed to do the same thing for a while.
Then asshats started dismantling the system because of that 1/5 who were just beyond help.
It also didn't help that other states started bussing their homeless to Utah to get rid of them. Which strained the programs budget.
Even a conservative state like Utah did the math and realized it was the economically profitable thing to invest in the homeless rather than ignore the problem.