Quebec City looks to Finland's successful approach to ending homelessness
Quebec City looks to Finland's successful approach to ending homelessness
QUEBEC – As Quebec faces a worsening homelessness crisis, some politicians, including Quebec City Mayor Bruno Marchand, have suggested the solution may be a Finnish model that aims to give every...
The approach is to quit moralizing and give them a fucking home already and worry about the rest after that
It needs an unknown option.
I propose we terminate that option with "house them".
Homelessness is caused by a lack of home. Housing first is the only approach that has a shot at working.
It doesn't matter what your political leaning ... giving people a home just makes good economic sense when you think about it.
Be a conservative and don't give people and a home and you'll end up spending public money on more policing, security, prisons, legal systems, judiciary, health care (especially emergency health care), and bureaucracy / government services all dedicated to managing the homeless ... and all that extra spending will be spent by the public and by private companies and individuals as the crime rate increases.
Be a liberal or socially minded politically and give people a home and the money will be spend on housing people which will lead to less crime rates and less of a need for policing, security and dealing with people in desperate situations. It won't cause an automatically utopia, there will still be a percentage of individuals who will fall into crime and terrible situations, the difference will be that there will be fewer of them and fewer of them will be easier for existing policing / judicial / health services to manage.
No matter how you cut it ... be right wing or left wing ... money will always be spent on those less fortunate.
Do we want to spend money on them now and prevent them from falling further down into desperate situations ... or do we want to spend money later dealing with hordes of desperate people with nothing to lose.
Economically, prevention is always cheaper in the long run than in dealing with the problems you ignored because you thought you were saving money by not doing anything.
I think people across the spectrum would a be a lot more comfortable with public spending when people like this are held accountable.
It isn't about the spending with the conservatives. Someone needs to suffer. It's a sadistic ideology.
It's interesting how the provincial and federal governments have been eager to adopt European solutions to substance abuse, as long as those solutions don't require funding.
Decriminalization? Sure! That's cheap, and we can even save on enforcement and incarceration. Mental-health services? Best we can do is block grants that we might not renew next year, forcing only shoestring plans Housing. AYFKM!?
This is a good idea, but it should be Canada-wide and perpetually funded, not on a municipality's frail budget. That's the difference between a "Quebec City" and a "Finland"
I think overall it's a really good idea.
However, I knew someone that just didn't care about its place. Everything was filthy in his appartment. He ended up in jail for abusing his girlfriend and the landlord had to fix everything that was broken (door smashed out, hole in walls, water damage, overall filth).
How would that be adressed?
I think this is an inevitable reality and you do need to have a disciplinary measure in place for when it does happen but I think it's important to note that it will likely be the exception and not the rule.
I don't think many people without a house are going out of their way to ruin their chance of happiness and yes while some of them may be mentally or emotionally unwell the cost to society from these situations will be less than that caused by homelessness.
Warnings, fines, expulsion from the program/jail time for severe cases?