Not to mention the time and money it took to construct them in the first place. Cities spent millions of dollars on a lot where they placed a couple of garden sheds. Most of the budget was spent corrupt government officials and contractors. Only a fraction was spent on the housing itself.
Correct- Michael Shellenberger's "San Fran-Sicko" is a great read that covers a lot of the corruption and waste that comes from the "housing first" activism.
I live here. It wasn't a terrible idea, having your entire life ruined with a felony because you get caught with personal use amounts of molly is a little ridiculous. The thing is, public intoxication laws only applied to alcohol, which is such a glaring flaw that it's amazing it wasn't caught sooner. If you got caught possessing drugs at all, you were supposed to receive a fine or have to receive treatment in lieu of the fine, but the police weren't allowed to physically enforce it. People quickly learned that if the police caught them smoking some meth on the side of the road, they could just walk away and nothing wound happen to them. That's why tweakers and shit became completely unafraid of police and started using openly.
So yeah, they took a half decent idea of not ruining people's entire lives over a personal use amount of drugs, and fucked it up royally via sheer incompetence.
Why would they directly decriminalize it instead of bumping it down to a misdemeanor? I agree that being caught with some molly or coke shouldn't cause you to be blacklisted from 99% of well-paying jobs (and 60% of jobs in general, even the shitty McDs jobs), but it should still be a crime, just not with the same severity as drug trafficking or sexual assault.
It still disturbs the peace and creates a public safety issue
Ideology seems to have been a major component. Region bought heavily into the rhetoric of "addiction is a disease, not a crime", and concluded that removing legal penalties would result in all those people seeking help.
Surprise surprise, addicts aren't always eager to become functioning members of society again.
Baby, that ideology seeped into other things besides posession.
From being lenient on first-time offenders (Not just having or using drugs), to mental asylums are inhumane and should be shut-down because patients don't "consent," to repeat offenders being repeat offenders because the system failed them.
to mental asylums are inhumane and should be shut-down because patients don't "consent,"
I mean, that particular matter dates long before Oregon's little experiment with drug law.
One of the major proponents of asylum closure was John F. Kennedy himself, who'd seen his sister Rosemary lobotomized (Kennedy Sr. feared she was a political liability).
The problem is there are people who need to be institutionalized.
Can't put them in prison because that's actually far worse.
Can't put them in a hospital as beds/rooms need to be available for patients.
Some have had success in supportive housing; heavy emphasis on the "some," as they are prone to damaging the apartment/room, assaulting other residents/staff, or harming themselves.
So you have what's going-on in a lot of the big cities: mental health problems, easier access to drugs that exacerbates things, a greater danger to themselves and others around them.
I think there's a huge difference between personal use and dealing. I've personally been through it, and quitting is the hardest and most painful thing I've ever done, and I've been through some painful shit. I can understand why people don't want to quit when they're homeless; I wasn't able to even think about quitting until I was housed, which the criminal charges are a barrier to. What, you go to rehab and then end up on the street again without the only thing that makes such as shitty existence bearable? Or you go to sober living, whilst the whole recovery community goes on about how "Relapse is a part of recovery", and then kicks you out when you fuck up? The vast majority of people relapse; I know I've been through it. Getting a criminal charge for that is just even more insurmountable barriers to getting your life on track.
For opiates, there's something called post acute withdrawals, which can make you miserable for years after you quit, which turns it into a battle of attrition. You don't sleep, you don't eat, you're constantly uncomfortable, and it gets to you eventually. This leads a lot of people to get their ass kicked back on the street when it wears them down due to sober living being the only option for them.
People say "Help is out there", but for those in such dire straits the options are not great. The whole rehab industry is fucked, it's a revolving door. I knew people who had been to rehab 20+ times. I'm not sure what the solution is, but it's more complicated than trusting for profit businesses with a whole lot to gain from having a repeating customer base to actually help people.
I do think that some people are essentially unhelpable, and that we need asylums for those so profoundly mentally ill.
I think that a solid middle ground would be to lower it to a misdemeanor, and then allow the records to be sealed upon completion of a rehab program or entering into a MAT program. Having no punishment emboldens tweakers to do the ridiculous shit we saw on the streets here, but having it be a barrier when someone is trying to get better sucks too.
I mean it's not that great an idea. Maybe a felony is what a tweaker needs to get their life in order. Their life is already ruined, prison is an improvement. Making shooting heroin on the side of the road de facto consequenceless for them is not exactly going to help them stop using.
At least in prison they aint stealing catalytic converters or mugging randoms for drug money.
A felony isn’t going to help anybody get their life in order. In fact, it’ll make it 10x harder since then it would make it much more difficult to get a job and apartment.
Sometimes people need a kick in the ass. Getting off smack is infinitely more important than having a clean record for finding a job. If theyre already homeless and publically shooting up than a kick in the ass is the only thing left. They ain't gonna just one day to decide to go to therapy, gotta hit rock bottom.
Dude, I'm the one being a realist here lol. It's got nothing to do with "shades of gray" or whatever, if anything saying they could all be fixed if not for jail is the short sighted and naive approach. But either way that's not really a relevant platitude here.
Island way out at sea? Drug drops once a month in crates out of airplanes. Can do whatever they want except fuck up mine and every other law abiding persons life.
I was homeless and addicted to fentanyl. I'll tell you, a felony on my record would have made getting an apartment and a job nearly impossible. Sure, your shit is already fucked, but it makes it nearly impossible to get out of it.
There's a local homeless guy around me who spent so much time at the hospital they actually funded an apartment for him. Within a month he trashed the place and still spent all his time being drunk on the green. I feel bad for the guy but the lack of a home is not his big issue and buying him a home didn't help anything.
People that think housing with fix the "unhoused" issue fail to understand the people they are trying to help. Its a lifestyle. I have no problem with programs that help people off the streets but there needs to ba checks and balances.
Our issues are different from that of small relatively homogenous wealthy European countries. I'm not sure why such a concept is so difficult to get through your skull.
Finland is smaller than 22 US states in population. We have nearly 60x the population nationwide.
Imagine what would happen if when Finland instituted these policies, people came from all over the continent to gain access to those services until they were utterly overwhelmed, with multi-year wait-lists. Do you think they would be as successful?
State independence is fairly important to Americans, it always has been. It creates some complications, and has been eroded by the fed since the beginning of time, but I think it's better than the fed dictating everything.
That emoji is a crude and lazy response for sure, but if you can determine a mans character from a single reddit comment, your powers of perception a greater than mine!
Does the comment I responded to deserve more respect than Im giving it? I mean surely even anti homeless bigots can access higher quality data than that sloppy nonsense.
How accurate are our unemployment rates? Because it feels way higher than 4.4% right now.
I do know our previous president fucked with the numbers to make himself look better. I've been told anyone unemployed for more than a month wasn't counted.
I've been unemployed for 3 years now. It seems like no one is hiring and not a lot of people are employed.
Food is super cheap in the US, wtf are they talking about. And yes, that's also European quality stuff too not just EZ cheese or whatever they think we eat. Housing is worse in Canada, but they don't criticize that because ummmm.
i never hear these people complain about canada's housing market which is unarguably MUCH worse than ours. my cousin who moved to canada had to come back after a few months cuz he couldn't find anywhere to stay
Native Canadians regularly complain that Indian immigrants are moving to Canada and taking jobs from natives, driving up the housing costs, and failing to assimilate (e.g., leaving trash in the parks and lakeshores).
That's exactly the reason why immigration is beneficial, they take occupations and industrial/commerical sectors the native population doesn't want, are automated or can't fund, which boosts the economy
Our GDP has been boosted by immigration for several years now in spite of stagnant productivity due to a lack of business investment. Immigration helps us immensely but people blame immigrants for their problems because it's easier.
lol. GDP doesn’t equal a quality of life increase.
It’s a fact that Immigrants are imported by large corporations to undercut native populations because they will work for less. Company makes more money = bigger GDP = native population continues to suffer because “muh GDP big!!!1!!”
The Canadian government should be fighting for native Canadians and hold these corporations accountable for what they’re doing, but instead we see the government siding with these businesses.
The same thing is happening in America and all over Western Europe. I never thought I’d see the day lefties would simp for billionaires.
“Jobs natives don't want to do” translates to “jobs natives don't want to do for $7.25 an hour, but immigrants will be willing to do for $4 under the table”.
Corporations love immigration because it’s a race to the bottom to see who will do a job for the least amount of money, and it’s a race natives will always lose because the immigrants are always coming from countries that have worse off economies so the money is worth more to them when they inevitably send it back to their home country.
Oh, I'm not arguing for or against immigration to Canada. I'm just repeating what I've heard/read from Canadians themselves.
(Re: the assimilation- I think the US does a much better job than most other countries of balancing assimilation and cultural preservation when it comes to our immigrants. It's very deeply embedded in our country's DNA.)
I realize it's not representative of the entire country but I'm baffled my village has boarded-up abandoned buildings when people talk about a housing crisis.
I honestly wouldn't cry if the government told the owners "either you fix up the building and use it or we seize it from you with compensation and make it useful to society.
It is because you are the loudest about everything thats why the US is made fun of, there are loads of countries worse than the US but they are in the shadows so to speak and doesn't get looked at much.
It is because you are the loudest about everything
Yes. We are the world's only Superpower. Cultural proliferation and world politics go hand in hand. ofc nobody knows enough about places like tajikistan or the cook islands to talk shit about it. america is the most important and most famous country in the world so more people will have an opinion about us
Yeah- I like Finland, but they have a small/homogenous population and a very low tolerance for corruption. That means they govern drastically differently than a very large, very diverse population with corrupt politicians and lobbyists.
Careful with the "monoculturalism" claims, regardless of how much sense they make. The Reddit hates them.
The usual reaction is, big surprise, the classic racism accusation. Even though racism by, definition, doesn't remotely apply, it's the default safety net when there's no other argument to make.
It was very split and tense population after civil war, but the second world war unified it. The veterans came home and started to create the welfare state.
Not really. Having a small population means it’s more manageable. Not to mention the demographics. It’s much easier to implement social programs with one small group of people.
Why? Some people genuinely do not want to help themselves and we as a society still put resources out for them. Some of that comes from the government and some of it comes from nice people in the community. Some people have bad luck and poor circumstances and that is sad, I agree - but food banks existing certainly isn't.
Don’t you know, looking out for your fellow human is bad actually. The government should provide all of that, nevermind the fact a government is realistically nothing more than an organization composed of your fellows leveraging the collective power of an entire group of people towards unified goals.
Problem is, large organizations often struggle with pinpoint efforts, since they have to juggle the interests of many different people.
Unfortunately Governments seem to be rewarding the unemployed and financially destroying people who contribute to society, especially small businesses, so more and more people are unemployed and having lots of children and living a more financially comfortable life from the benefits they get from the Government. Terrible circumstances indeed
So it's a good thing when the government spends billions to try to get people food, but it's a bad thing when private charities actually accomplish it?
So if we can't afford food that means we will lose weight. Then we won't be the fattest country (according to Europoors) anymore. They can't afford Healthcare either since they have to steal from their richer side just so they can "afford" it. Sad really that they've turned to barbarism to be able to have tax payer funded Healthcare.
Obesity dropped 3% in the USA. Also, if they bring up obesity just remind them that communities of color, poor people, and indigenous people are disproportionately obese and they are racist and classist if they mock them.
its crazy how their holier than thouness is thrown out the window anytime its an American brown person suffering. They're actually psychotic racists. they would say victims of colonialism deserved it since they live in America.
The solving homelessness by giving people apartments idea is interesting to me. I’ve been a Social worker with adults with mental illness for years. Many of my clients have been homeless. Countless times I have a found a place for somebody to live that they could afford only to watch them mess it up by trashing the place, harassing neighbors, threatening landlords over completely reasonable requests, letting numerous friends stay with them in violation of the lease, doing drugs and other illegal activities in the apartment etc.
Having more housing resources would be nice of course but from my experiences people are usually homeless due to behaviors which are often caused by mental illness.
So either one of two other things is happening in Finland. Either they are letting people do whatever they want in these apartments or they have made it easier to involuntarily commit people and force treatment.
Treatment is not forced or condition for housing. I know addicts who have trashed their apartments and yet recive new or stay in that trashed apartment
Interesting. What about threatening, assaulting, or sexually harassing neighbors or staff? I’ve had numerous clients stop their meds, start behaving erratic and start harassing, threatening or even assault others. Are they not evicted for these behaviors? I’m legitimately curious. In just the last year I had one client who would just whip it out in front of people and piss all over the building he also smeared feces over the door of another resident that he didn’t like, another client punched a maintenance man who stopped by for routine maintenance, another fondled the property manager . How are these behaviors managed in this situation? In some cases I’ve been able
To commit people but it’s usually after the damage has been done and they ended up being evicted . It’s should also be noted that the incidents that led to the commitment were after months of borderline behaviors .
we put various professionals and services in place to help people. They have opportunities to rehabilitate if they cooperate . A certain percentage refuse to comply with anything willingly and end up chronically homeless. So I wonder if in countries with very low homeless rates if it’s easier to involuntarily commit somebody of force them into rehab.
So I wonder if in countries with very low homeless rates if it’s easier to involuntarily commit somebody of force them into rehab.
From what I've read, that's exactly the case. In at least one of those nations, the oft-talked about "decriminalizing" of drug use technically isn't. Sure, the user doesn't go to prison, but using in public means you can be compelled to go through rehab.
Also, government housing is infamous, across the world, for being terrible places to live.
America has projects, we have Council Estates.
I don't know what Canada calls them.
A lot of people aren't actually pro-homeless, they just have a shallow, uninformed image of what homeless people are. If you say "a lot of those people have drug and alcohol problems", the idiots go "so you support free healthcare?"
Well technically they just said proposed. Of course that doesn’t mean shit but they didn’t exactly lie, they just don’t understand that Europe doesn’t pass everything the poster wants.
Finlands former Prime Minister Sanna Marin mentioned a 4-day workweek on Twitter 5 years ago and the internet took it as fact.
AP News
Fair to say Finlands aim to stop homelessness is an awesome idea on paper. However it would be difficult to do the same housing first approach in the USA once we consider that we have 50 separate state governments and an estimated population of 341+ million compared to 5.6 million.
Finland has the highest rates of detention per 100 000 inhabitants, about 214 compared with 93 in the UK and 11 in Italy (Reference Salize, Dressing and PeitzSalize et al, 2002; Reference Zinkler and PriebeZinkler & Priebe, 2002). A high percentage of compulsory admission relative to all psychiatric admissions (21.6%) has also been described by Salize et al (Reference Salize, Dressing and Peitz2002). One could speculate that these figures may be partly a consequence of a medically orientated approach to detention of those with mental illness.
And instead of taxing all of the corporations and billionaires that reside there, they hiked the tax on the middle and lower class. Talk about hypocrisy
What makes you say that? Finland consistently ranks near the top of quality of life indices. I feel like saying you’d rather be homeless in America really trivializes the suffering of our fellow Americans living on the street.
Pretty big assumption there. I have been homeless and making a lot of money. I worked 7 days a week, slept in my truck and showered daily at planet fitness.
I think the other person is talking about the crackhead fent zombie type of homeless, not the "I have somewhere to live but its not a house or apartment"
You definitely can be homeless and respectable. But respectable don't talk bad about another country who actually made an effort to solve their homelessness issues while living in a country who couldn't care less about the homeless
I dunno, I've seen some video content in Finnnish cities and they seem to have their own share of antisocial people/problems and people who sure looked homesless and were lounging around all day on benches and hanging out on the street - no doubt not far from their homes, /s. And I don't think I personally know anyone currently who actually works two jobs, though I have known a couple of high-energy individuals who did it to keep busy and for extra money and not necesarily to survive. And US median income is significantly higher than it is in Finland...like about 50% higher. Even that nonwithstanding, different histories, different demographics, far different scale, different sociodynamics. Apples and oranges.
We have been trying this Housing First program in Washington DC over the past few years. A close friend of mine has been on the front lines of outreach placing homeless folks in these apartments. The result has been bleak. Turns out when you give addicts a quiet secluded place to use drugs, they don't have their community there to keep an eye on them and administer Narcan/call for medical attention. He told me more than half of the people he has placed in these apartments end up dead within the first couple weeks.
I hate this. It’s such a classists way of looking homelessness. As if homelessness is always caused by one’s inability to afford housing. There are MULTITUDES of reasons why people are homeless, no matter where you live and those who live unhoused and who actually work for solutions know this.
The only people bragging/criticizing like this are those who can’t see the world outside their own sheltered pov
Well, the last part isn't necessarily wrong, depending on the state. Growing up, my mom had to work 2 jobs with my dad working one, and we still struggled to keep food in the house. Thank God my dad's employer did and still does give us insurance, otherwise we'd be fucked
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Didn't some state start a bunch of tiny homes for the homeless and they all got trashed in like the first month.
Not to mention the time and money it took to construct them in the first place. Cities spent millions of dollars on a lot where they placed a couple of garden sheds. Most of the budget was spent corrupt government officials and contractors. Only a fraction was spent on the housing itself.
That's really sad
Correct- Michael Shellenberger's "San Fran-Sicko" is a great read that covers a lot of the corruption and waste that comes from the "housing first" activism.
Portland tried to copy Amsterdam's decriminalize every drug idea, and well you can imagine how that turned out lol.
I live here. It wasn't a terrible idea, having your entire life ruined with a felony because you get caught with personal use amounts of molly is a little ridiculous. The thing is, public intoxication laws only applied to alcohol, which is such a glaring flaw that it's amazing it wasn't caught sooner. If you got caught possessing drugs at all, you were supposed to receive a fine or have to receive treatment in lieu of the fine, but the police weren't allowed to physically enforce it. People quickly learned that if the police caught them smoking some meth on the side of the road, they could just walk away and nothing wound happen to them. That's why tweakers and shit became completely unafraid of police and started using openly.
So yeah, they took a half decent idea of not ruining people's entire lives over a personal use amount of drugs, and fucked it up royally via sheer incompetence.
Why would they directly decriminalize it instead of bumping it down to a misdemeanor? I agree that being caught with some molly or coke shouldn't cause you to be blacklisted from 99% of well-paying jobs (and 60% of jobs in general, even the shitty McDs jobs), but it should still be a crime, just not with the same severity as drug trafficking or sexual assault.
It still disturbs the peace and creates a public safety issue
Ideology seems to have been a major component. Region bought heavily into the rhetoric of "addiction is a disease, not a crime", and concluded that removing legal penalties would result in all those people seeking help.
Surprise surprise, addicts aren't always eager to become functioning members of society again.
Baby, that ideology seeped into other things besides posession.
From being lenient on first-time offenders (Not just having or using drugs), to mental asylums are inhumane and should be shut-down because patients don't "consent," to repeat offenders being repeat offenders because the system failed them.
I mean, that particular matter dates long before Oregon's little experiment with drug law.
One of the major proponents of asylum closure was John F. Kennedy himself, who'd seen his sister Rosemary lobotomized (Kennedy Sr. feared she was a political liability).
It was further compounded with places like Willowbrook:
https://youtu.be/5F7CrMAwCw4?si=AMkmbRyCtQyJEMyA
The problem is there are people who need to be institutionalized.
Can't put them in prison because that's actually far worse.
Can't put them in a hospital as beds/rooms need to be available for patients.
Some have had success in supportive housing; heavy emphasis on the "some," as they are prone to damaging the apartment/room, assaulting other residents/staff, or harming themselves.
So you have what's going-on in a lot of the big cities: mental health problems, easier access to drugs that exacerbates things, a greater danger to themselves and others around them.
I think there's a huge difference between personal use and dealing. I've personally been through it, and quitting is the hardest and most painful thing I've ever done, and I've been through some painful shit. I can understand why people don't want to quit when they're homeless; I wasn't able to even think about quitting until I was housed, which the criminal charges are a barrier to. What, you go to rehab and then end up on the street again without the only thing that makes such as shitty existence bearable? Or you go to sober living, whilst the whole recovery community goes on about how "Relapse is a part of recovery", and then kicks you out when you fuck up? The vast majority of people relapse; I know I've been through it. Getting a criminal charge for that is just even more insurmountable barriers to getting your life on track.
For opiates, there's something called post acute withdrawals, which can make you miserable for years after you quit, which turns it into a battle of attrition. You don't sleep, you don't eat, you're constantly uncomfortable, and it gets to you eventually. This leads a lot of people to get their ass kicked back on the street when it wears them down due to sober living being the only option for them.
People say "Help is out there", but for those in such dire straits the options are not great. The whole rehab industry is fucked, it's a revolving door. I knew people who had been to rehab 20+ times. I'm not sure what the solution is, but it's more complicated than trusting for profit businesses with a whole lot to gain from having a repeating customer base to actually help people.
I do think that some people are essentially unhelpable, and that we need asylums for those so profoundly mentally ill.
The problem is its still a crime in that scenario, ie, its still on record. This still effects you future employment and housing opportunities.
It greatly lowers the chance of someone getting out of an addiction if they can't get a decent job or place to live.
Maybe no crime the first time, then legal penalties for any further offenses?
I think that a solid middle ground would be to lower it to a misdemeanor, and then allow the records to be sealed upon completion of a rehab program or entering into a MAT program. Having no punishment emboldens tweakers to do the ridiculous shit we saw on the streets here, but having it be a barrier when someone is trying to get better sucks too.
Most of the ridiculous shit they do on the streets is already illegal, arrest them for that.
Its illegal to camp on city/state property, and do drugs, including alcohol on that property almost everywhere.
Edit: awesome name BTW
You have a point there. The drug charges are usually thrown on top of everything else.
Thank you btw
I mean it's not that great an idea. Maybe a felony is what a tweaker needs to get their life in order. Their life is already ruined, prison is an improvement. Making shooting heroin on the side of the road de facto consequenceless for them is not exactly going to help them stop using.
At least in prison they aint stealing catalytic converters or mugging randoms for drug money.
theres loads of drugs in prison they arent going to stop
A felony isn’t going to help anybody get their life in order. In fact, it’ll make it 10x harder since then it would make it much more difficult to get a job and apartment.
Sometimes people need a kick in the ass. Getting off smack is infinitely more important than having a clean record for finding a job. If theyre already homeless and publically shooting up than a kick in the ass is the only thing left. They ain't gonna just one day to decide to go to therapy, gotta hit rock bottom.
Bingo. The poverty cycle is very real
Take a look into the poverty cycle. Get what you’re saying but there should be multiple options for these people not just prison/jail
If they were gonna willingly decide to go to therapy or rehab they wouldnt be shooting smack right in front of cops.
The world isn’t as black and white as you want it to be
Dude, I'm the one being a realist here lol. It's got nothing to do with "shades of gray" or whatever, if anything saying they could all be fixed if not for jail is the short sighted and naive approach. But either way that's not really a relevant platitude here.
You aren’t you just seem ignorant
It's ignorant to not just trust heroin addicts to quit on their own?
Youre not throwing out any actual argument to the contrary youre just going nu uh and saying vague and irrelevant platitudes lol.
Island way out at sea? Drug drops once a month in crates out of airplanes. Can do whatever they want except fuck up mine and every other law abiding persons life.
Incompetence, or intentional sabotage?
I had a similar thought, but I really have no evidence for it.
If you're smoking meth on the streets homeless your life is already ruined.
I was homeless and addicted to fentanyl. I'll tell you, a felony on my record would have made getting an apartment and a job nearly impossible. Sure, your shit is already fucked, but it makes it nearly impossible to get out of it.
As bad as most other metro areas. I haven’t seen a major city without a fentanyl and homeless problem yet.
Better than criminalizing it?
There's a local homeless guy around me who spent so much time at the hospital they actually funded an apartment for him. Within a month he trashed the place and still spent all his time being drunk on the green. I feel bad for the guy but the lack of a home is not his big issue and buying him a home didn't help anything.
People that think housing with fix the "unhoused" issue fail to understand the people they are trying to help. Its a lifestyle. I have no problem with programs that help people off the streets but there needs to ba checks and balances.
So you're saying the US citizens aren't good enough
Our issues are different from that of small relatively homogenous wealthy European countries. I'm not sure why such a concept is so difficult to get through your skull.
Finland is smaller than 22 US states in population. We have nearly 60x the population nationwide.
Imagine what would happen if when Finland instituted these policies, people came from all over the continent to gain access to those services until they were utterly overwhelmed, with multi-year wait-lists. Do you think they would be as successful?
America is the country rejecting and opposing the use of nationwide NGOs
State independence is fairly important to Americans, it always has been. It creates some complications, and has been eroded by the fed since the beginning of time, but I think it's better than the fed dictating everything.
States' rights don't mean anything today.
We do not have the same population or population mindset lmao
How did you come to that conclusion?
Wow such a highly detailed recall! Duuuhhh, didnt a baaad thing happen that from that one story.
Always returning here for the sophisticated analyses 😂😂😂
I love laughing crying emojis. It always tells me what I need to know about the poster.
That emoji is a crude and lazy response for sure, but if you can determine a mans character from a single reddit comment, your powers of perception a greater than mine!
Does the comment I responded to deserve more respect than Im giving it? I mean surely even anti homeless bigots can access higher quality data than that sloppy nonsense.
I love Finland, but I don’t think we should be trying to emulate the country with a 10% unemployment rate.
Yeah don’t emulate that part, the 4day work week is a common lie or misunderstanding people seem to circulate
Doesn’t matter if it’s true to them. As long as it sounds plausible and is “Le Scandinavia is a utopian socialist paradise”, they’ll spew it
Maailman onnellisin maa....
A 4 day, 10 hour work week would be nice if I still had a M-F schedule.
How accurate are our unemployment rates? Because it feels way higher than 4.4% right now.
I do know our previous president fucked with the numbers to make himself look better. I've been told anyone unemployed for more than a month wasn't counted.
I've been unemployed for 3 years now. It seems like no one is hiring and not a lot of people are employed.
1) Maybe your experience is not representative of the larger nation 2) You can’t get a job at McDonald’s?
Food is super cheap in the US, wtf are they talking about. And yes, that's also European quality stuff too not just EZ cheese or whatever they think we eat. Housing is worse in Canada, but they don't criticize that because ummmm.
i never hear these people complain about canada's housing market which is unarguably MUCH worse than ours. my cousin who moved to canada had to come back after a few months cuz he couldn't find anywhere to stay
In case you wonder why Indians are despised in Canada
Why are they despised?
Native Canadians regularly complain that Indian immigrants are moving to Canada and taking jobs from natives, driving up the housing costs, and failing to assimilate (e.g., leaving trash in the parks and lakeshores).
That's exactly the reason why immigration is beneficial, they take occupations and industrial/commerical sectors the native population doesn't want, are automated or can't fund, which boosts the economy
How would you even know? This is the ‘who will pick our crops!’ Argument and it’s so full of holes.
It sounds like a pro slavery argument.
Oh yes
Our GDP has been boosted by immigration for several years now in spite of stagnant productivity due to a lack of business investment. Immigration helps us immensely but people blame immigrants for their problems because it's easier.
I’m not anti immigration contrary to most of these protectionist types, but I do laugh at the horrid arguments ‘pro immigrant’ people make
lol. GDP doesn’t equal a quality of life increase.
It’s a fact that Immigrants are imported by large corporations to undercut native populations because they will work for less. Company makes more money = bigger GDP = native population continues to suffer because “muh GDP big!!!1!!”
The Canadian government should be fighting for native Canadians and hold these corporations accountable for what they’re doing, but instead we see the government siding with these businesses.
The same thing is happening in America and all over Western Europe. I never thought I’d see the day lefties would simp for billionaires.
Oh great. More racist bullshit.
“Jobs natives don't want to do” translates to “jobs natives don't want to do for $7.25 an hour, but immigrants will be willing to do for $4 under the table”.
Corporations love immigration because it’s a race to the bottom to see who will do a job for the least amount of money, and it’s a race natives will always lose because the immigrants are always coming from countries that have worse off economies so the money is worth more to them when they inevitably send it back to their home country.
Oh, I'm not arguing for or against immigration to Canada. I'm just repeating what I've heard/read from Canadians themselves.
(Re: the assimilation- I think the US does a much better job than most other countries of balancing assimilation and cultural preservation when it comes to our immigrants. It's very deeply embedded in our country's DNA.)
I realize it's not representative of the entire country but I'm baffled my village has boarded-up abandoned buildings when people talk about a housing crisis.
I honestly wouldn't cry if the government told the owners "either you fix up the building and use it or we seize it from you with compensation and make it useful to society.
It is because you are the loudest about everything thats why the US is made fun of, there are loads of countries worse than the US but they are in the shadows so to speak and doesn't get looked at much.
Yes. We are the world's only Superpower. Cultural proliferation and world politics go hand in hand. ofc nobody knows enough about places like tajikistan or the cook islands to talk shit about it. america is the most important and most famous country in the world so more people will have an opinion about us
Now you listen here I will not tolerate slander of the Cook Islands
That’s not a good thing
It's not European quality, statistically its higher quality and more safe then all but 2 other countries
I buy 16oz of pasta and 32oz of flour each for $1
Doesn't sound like a balanced meal but I'm no chef.
Well he only spent $2 on it
3$ for a pound of ground beef, 1$ for a pound of pasta, like 2$ for a jar of tomato sauce. That’s like 5 meals
God, $3/lb ground beef sounds great. Ain't like that over here.
I’d hope a country with 50 people would be able to accomplish this…
Yeah- I like Finland, but they have a small/homogenous population and a very low tolerance for corruption. That means they govern drastically differently than a very large, very diverse population with corrupt politicians and lobbyists.
Careful with the "monoculturalism" claims, regardless of how much sense they make. The Reddit hates them.
The usual reaction is, big surprise, the classic racism accusation. Even though racism by, definition, doesn't remotely apply, it's the default safety net when there's no other argument to make.
It was very split and tense population after civil war, but the second world war unified it. The veterans came home and started to create the welfare state.
Corruption still exists as long as humans exists
This is pure cope
Not really. Having a small population means it’s more manageable. Not to mention the demographics. It’s much easier to implement social programs with one small group of people.
Small population that's not too diverse.
Luxembourg can’t even do it LOL and they run diamond cartels
USA has foodbanks if you cant afford food
That's sad
Why? Some people genuinely do not want to help themselves and we as a society still put resources out for them. Some of that comes from the government and some of it comes from nice people in the community. Some people have bad luck and poor circumstances and that is sad, I agree - but food banks existing certainly isn't.
Don’t you know, looking out for your fellow human is bad actually. The government should provide all of that, nevermind the fact a government is realistically nothing more than an organization composed of your fellows leveraging the collective power of an entire group of people towards unified goals.
Problem is, large organizations often struggle with pinpoint efforts, since they have to juggle the interests of many different people.
Lol you have to frame it in a more friendly way to some people on Reddit.
"USA has socialized independent nutritional programs that gathers then will provide food to any citizen that requests it."
It's sad when people can't and it's sad that other people don't
Just wait until you see Europe’s unemployment rates!
Unfortunately Governments seem to be rewarding the unemployed and financially destroying people who contribute to society, especially small businesses, so more and more people are unemployed and having lots of children and living a more financially comfortable life from the benefits they get from the Government. Terrible circumstances indeed
So it's a good thing when the government spends billions to try to get people food, but it's a bad thing when private charities actually accomplish it?
SNAP was way more effective than private charity but ok
It's sad that people need food banks
Even when those people are responsible for their own problems? Plenty of people end up spending their grocery money on the ponies or clothes.
No civilization in human history has ever ended hunger.
Some people need them through no fault of their own. Take some time to listen to people's stories and sympathize with them
Sad because there’s efforts to get people food on the table?
Sad that people need it. And I mean that it in a show of sympathy
It's not the government's responsibility to provide en masses to the people.
So if we can't afford food that means we will lose weight. Then we won't be the fattest country (according to Europoors) anymore. They can't afford Healthcare either since they have to steal from their richer side just so they can "afford" it. Sad really that they've turned to barbarism to be able to have tax payer funded Healthcare.
Obesity dropped 3% in the USA. Also, if they bring up obesity just remind them that communities of color, poor people, and indigenous people are disproportionately obese and they are racist and classist if they mock them.
I've tried that and the usual response is "Its okay to do that. Their American" (used incorrect they're on purpose).
its crazy how their holier than thouness is thrown out the window anytime its an American brown person suffering. They're actually psychotic racists. they would say victims of colonialism deserved it since they live in America.
The solving homelessness by giving people apartments idea is interesting to me. I’ve been a Social worker with adults with mental illness for years. Many of my clients have been homeless. Countless times I have a found a place for somebody to live that they could afford only to watch them mess it up by trashing the place, harassing neighbors, threatening landlords over completely reasonable requests, letting numerous friends stay with them in violation of the lease, doing drugs and other illegal activities in the apartment etc.
Having more housing resources would be nice of course but from my experiences people are usually homeless due to behaviors which are often caused by mental illness.
So either one of two other things is happening in Finland. Either they are letting people do whatever they want in these apartments or they have made it easier to involuntarily commit people and force treatment.
Treatment is not forced or condition for housing. I know addicts who have trashed their apartments and yet recive new or stay in that trashed apartment
Interesting. What about threatening, assaulting, or sexually harassing neighbors or staff? I’ve had numerous clients stop their meds, start behaving erratic and start harassing, threatening or even assault others. Are they not evicted for these behaviors? I’m legitimately curious. In just the last year I had one client who would just whip it out in front of people and piss all over the building he also smeared feces over the door of another resident that he didn’t like, another client punched a maintenance man who stopped by for routine maintenance, another fondled the property manager . How are these behaviors managed in this situation? In some cases I’ve been able To commit people but it’s usually after the damage has been done and they ended up being evicted . It’s should also be noted that the incidents that led to the commitment were after months of borderline behaviors .
Rehabilitation is the answer
we put various professionals and services in place to help people. They have opportunities to rehabilitate if they cooperate . A certain percentage refuse to comply with anything willingly and end up chronically homeless. So I wonder if in countries with very low homeless rates if it’s easier to involuntarily commit somebody of force them into rehab.
From what I've read, that's exactly the case. In at least one of those nations, the oft-talked about "decriminalizing" of drug use technically isn't. Sure, the user doesn't go to prison, but using in public means you can be compelled to go through rehab.
Also, government housing is infamous, across the world, for being terrible places to live.
America has projects, we have Council Estates.
I don't know what Canada calls them.
A lot of people aren't actually pro-homeless, they just have a shallow, uninformed image of what homeless people are. If you say "a lot of those people have drug and alcohol problems", the idiots go "so you support free healthcare?"
Lots of countries have those AND homeless people!
Here in the States there are people that have proven to be pro-homelessness. There is a ton of money in it for NGOs and nonprofits.
Wouldn't exactly be shocked.
https://preview.redd.it/ee7zl9tl7m6g1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=33db9b997b0d0afd3261a069ff0ab8e2b4c1f89f
Fact checking someone on the internet? You aren’t supposed to do that!
Well technically they just said proposed. Of course that doesn’t mean shit but they didn’t exactly lie, they just don’t understand that Europe doesn’t pass everything the poster wants.
fair enough but i was surprised that they work the same hours.
Based for not having 3% battery life 🪫
Haha fr. Every time I see a phone screenshot, that shit is like 1.5%.
AI doesn't know anything
Finlands former Prime Minister Sanna Marin mentioned a 4-day workweek on Twitter 5 years ago and the internet took it as fact. AP News
Fair to say Finlands aim to stop homelessness is an awesome idea on paper. However it would be difficult to do the same housing first approach in the USA once we consider that we have 50 separate state governments and an estimated population of 341+ million compared to 5.6 million.
I don’t know where that 4 day work week with 6hours came from, but it’s not true.
A Social Democratic Party event. The proposal spread like it had actually been implemented.
Finland also leads the EU in terms of involuntary commitment for mental health disorders, so there may be a connection there.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychiatric-bulletin/article/compulsory-psychiatric-detention-and-treatment-in-finland/4757FEDD5BB56849744DDE76A7FEBBE1
.. Actually based Finns?
Never forget California increasing the amount of billions they spent on helping homeless people yet the homeless rate went up
And instead of taxing all of the corporations and billionaires that reside there, they hiked the tax on the middle and lower class. Talk about hypocrisy
Oh to have the mind of a liberal...
How much is Finland relying on foreigners and immigration to prop up it's system and pensions?
Literally no one is proposing a 4-day workweek here???
Finland also has conscription, and I gurantee these fucks would NOT appreciate military life
Who would not?
american liberals
California says they’re trying to fix homelessness but they’re really just using it to funnel money.
I would rather live homeless in America than wealthy in finland.
Idk ab that being homeless anywhere is kind of shit
You underestimate the amount of suck in finland.
What makes you say that? Finland consistently ranks near the top of quality of life indices. I feel like saying you’d rather be homeless in America really trivializes the suffering of our fellow Americans living on the street.
I have been homeless in America. Finland is poor and kind of dirty.
If you're homeless in America, you're poor and dirty
Pretty big assumption there. I have been homeless and making a lot of money. I worked 7 days a week, slept in my truck and showered daily at planet fitness.
I think the other person is talking about the crackhead fent zombie type of homeless, not the "I have somewhere to live but its not a house or apartment"
Turns out you can be homeless and respectable. Houses are expensive.
You definitely can be homeless and respectable. But respectable don't talk bad about another country who actually made an effort to solve their homelessness issues while living in a country who couldn't care less about the homeless
When your home is your rig, then you’re never homeless
Finland*
Vinland
Ooo, making a joke about the chronic alcoholism issue in finland? Nice.
Nah it was some dude naming countries starting with V and he said vinland
That's Newfoundland.
Dumbest comment out there
Obviously they didn't put a source so it's 100% a lie. Hopefully it is because if they actually do that then Finland's economy will crumple.
If you’re on mobile the quick mute doesn’t work anymore. You have to go to settings and manually add the subreddit to your muted list.
I dunno, I've seen some video content in Finnnish cities and they seem to have their own share of antisocial people/problems and people who sure looked homesless and were lounging around all day on benches and hanging out on the street - no doubt not far from their homes, /s. And I don't think I personally know anyone currently who actually works two jobs, though I have known a couple of high-energy individuals who did it to keep busy and for extra money and not necesarily to survive. And US median income is significantly higher than it is in Finland...like about 50% higher. Even that nonwithstanding, different histories, different demographics, far different scale, different sociodynamics. Apples and oranges.
People can "propose" a lot of things. I'm sure some people in the US have proposed a shorter work week as well.
How gullible are people? Do people seriously think the Finns are so different from us? This sounds ridiculous.
It’s something to strive for, though more difficult to achieve in the US
I have so many terrible subs get recommended to me all the time, if I had a nickel for every time this happened I’d have a good chunk of money by now
Finland has the same population as my state so..
G7 countries, yearly price to income ratio (2024)
Canada - 137
USA - 128.5
Japan - 113.8
Germany - 107.8
UK - 105.8
France - 93.4
Italy - 86.9
Alr let 10 million emigrants in and see what happens
Love Finland but they have a huge unemployment situation at the moment
We have been trying this Housing First program in Washington DC over the past few years. A close friend of mine has been on the front lines of outreach placing homeless folks in these apartments. The result has been bleak. Turns out when you give addicts a quiet secluded place to use drugs, they don't have their community there to keep an eye on them and administer Narcan/call for medical attention. He told me more than half of the people he has placed in these apartments end up dead within the first couple weeks.
I hate this. It’s such a classists way of looking homelessness. As if homelessness is always caused by one’s inability to afford housing. There are MULTITUDES of reasons why people are homeless, no matter where you live and those who live unhoused and who actually work for solutions know this.
The only people bragging/criticizing like this are those who can’t see the world outside their own sheltered pov
Well, the last part isn't necessarily wrong, depending on the state. Growing up, my mom had to work 2 jobs with my dad working one, and we still struggled to keep food in the house. Thank God my dad's employer did and still does give us insurance, otherwise we'd be fucked
Why can't these people just boast about their achievement? Why the constant need to bother others?
The difference being that most of our homeless population is homeless because they are also drug addicts.
European homeless are people, American homeless are animals.
That's the difference.