West Coast baby
The only thing I don’t see is how it would fix people being homeless. Many homeless are unable to be properly housed because they have mental illnesses, trauma, etc. If you put them in an apartment without extensive further help, many will get back on the street and/or destroy the apartment. You can’t solve their problems with just providing housing.
Are you familiar with the “Housing first” model? It posits that even for people who need medical or living assistance, having shelter, a bed, a bathroom, a refrigerator, and a permanent address will allow them and whoever is providing support to deal with compounding factors and receive regular visits, Conversely, attempts to treat something like dementia or substance abuse on the street are next to impossible.
Yes I know. And all housing projects I know about pre-select the people they give a home to, often only take in those who are already in the welfare system and all these projects offer extensive additional help.
I feel like some people deliberately interpret stuff into my post just so that they can get angry (not you but, I got some really angry messages).
So to make it extra clear: Giving people a home is great! There definitely should be a home for everyone, it’s a human right!
But just giving people a home will not solve the problem with homeless! Putting people with severe mental illnesses, debt, etc. simply into a home does not work.
is that truly the case, or just a pervasive urban legend?
which studies support this theory?
I think between their argument and your own, yours is the one in more need of citation. Which is more likely, that giving a house to everyone will solve homelessness or that some people have problems beyond just being homeless? He’s not saying that it wouldn’t help some people, he’s just saying that there would still be some number of people who need help beyond this.
giving a house to everyone will solve homelessness
Pretty much yeah. This is what Finland did.
No, there aren’t statistics about these people. Just experiences and the experiences of others who work with them.
Many homeless people refuse to take up help like housing because they do not want to cooperate with helper organisations. And they also don’t want to get interviewed: https://idw-online.de/de/news765112
We don’t even really know how many there are because there are no reliable statistics. How would you count them anyway?
All housing first projects pre-select the people they give a home to. The reason is clear. They don’t have homes for everyone, so they take those which will give the best results. In Berlin, Germany they literally have to write applications for the project: https://www.berlin.de/sen/soziales/besondere-lebenssituationen/wohnungslose/wohnen/housing-first-1293115.php
https://housingfirst.berlin/aufnahme
And they need to already be in the welfare system!
The same goes for Finland, which is the model country for a housing first approach. Putting people who already are in the welfare system in homes with help offers has the best results. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/cityscpe/vol22num2/ch4.pdf
Best results means it works for about half of homeless people.
For the other half, they need a step-by-step approach to have them able living in a home again (or for the first time in a long time). You can’t just put them in an apartment with an address for counseling and that will work out.
Source: you can read about that in the PDF above, for example. Or any other study about the homeless which usually mentions at least the many who fall through the cracks.
These are migrants without refugee status and people with severe drug and alcohol abuse issues or other mental illness. It won’t work to “put them out of sight out of mind”.
Homeless people aren’t a homogeneous group of people. And while it works for some, housing first is not the solution. Because it leaves an estimated half of them behind. It also omits that there a still a lot of help going on in the background. It’s not just give them a home and that magically solves all their problems. Far from it …
Even if it has issues, housing first solves far more problems than any other solution. If you are so opposed to housing first initiatives, then propose an alternative solution that will work better.
I’m waiting.
You can’t.
I’m on mobile and can’t read German, I’ll have to wait until later to run those articles through a translator to see what they’re getting at.
But I do wonder about you saying we can only halve homelessness instantly, and the next quarter needs some help, and the next 10% needs a lot of help and after that things get more diffocult: that means it doesn’t work and isn’t worth trying at all
Wouldn’t halving homelessness be pretty damn successful?
There’s multiple groups of homeless people.
There’s the long term homeless, who often suffer from issues like mental illness, and short term homeless, who usually don’t.
High housing prices absolutely causes people to become homeless when they lose their job, become addicted to drugs, etc.
Being homeless is itself traumatic, and exacerbates most issues homeless people have. Affordable housing and giving homeless people an apartment aren’t a panacea, but it does prevent a ton of issues for newly homeless people.
when you said…
The only thing I don’t see is how it would fix people being homeless.
Many homeless are unable to be properly housed because they have mental illnesses, trauma, etc.
If you put them in an apartment without extensive further help, many will get back on the street and/or destroy the apartment.
You can’t solve their problems with just providing housing.
That says to me, four times, that you are against giving people homes. Could you clarify how each of those points is a positive?
