West Coast baby
is that truly the case, or just a pervasive urban legend?
which studies support this theory?
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 …
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?
Of cours it is great but it won’t solve homelessness. Which is what the image suggests. And obviously it doesn’t.
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 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.
I mean, to me, “if someone gives them a house they won’t be homeless” makes way more common-sense than “if you give someone a house they will not live in it”
but asked and answered:
- https://nlihc.org/resource/new-study-finds-providing-people-experiencing-homelessness-housing-has-positive-impacts
- https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/homeless-shelter-housing-help-solutions
- https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/22/home-free
- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36092852
- https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/09/418546/study-finds-permanent-supportive-housing-effective-highest-risk-chronically
- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/27/canada-study-homelessness-money
- https://phys.org/news/2017-03-housing-homeless-cheaper-society.html
- https://endhomelessness.org/resource/ending-chronic-homelessness-saves-taxpayers-money-2/
- https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/09/americas/direct-giving-homeless-people-vancouver-trnd/index.html
edit to say: I want to get ahead of “gotchas!” like “it doesn’t solve this problem of this one guy my mate’s Da’s landlord’s daughter heard about through a crack in the wall about a homeless guy who set fire to his free housing!” as you can’t legislate or plan for one whackjob who may not even exist.
giving a house to everyone will solve homelessness
Pretty much yeah. This is what Finland did.
No it did not. Finland helped about half of the homeless people. And that’s a very generous estimate because it’s only those homeless people who are actually accounted for.
This is because they only select those who can be housed and are already part of the welfare system. It’s also not just putting people in an apartment. There is still a lot of drug and debt counseling and mental help provided in the background.
And that’s for the model country for the housing first approach.
not that I don’t believe you, but the reason I asked for studies/sources is I expect to be flooded with stories about how people knows someone who knows someone who knows someone where it didn’t work once or twice (respectfully, this is what your story boils down to), and I hope you won’t be insulted if I can’t consider that a good representation of a much-maligned part of society.
