Why do Finland the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, Estonia have fewer homeless people than other Western countries, such as Ukraine, the UK, the USA?

In this answer I will try to find some reasons for the success that my country, Finland, has had in decreasing homelessness.

Our homelessness statistics look like this:[1]

Who are the homeless people in Finland?

They are more often men than women; 21 % of them are people with immigrant background; 21 % are long-term homeless people; 18 % are young people under 25; and 11 % are families and couples. Most (77 %) of the 159 homeless families are single-parent families.

The overwhelming majority of these people (65 %) live temporarily with friends or family. 8 % live in different institutions. 4 % sleep in dormitories, and 6 % spend their nights outside or in emergency shelters.

According to the European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless Feantsa,[2] Finland is the only country in Europe where homelessness has decreased recently.[3]

The countries in which homelessness has decreased marked with blue, and the ones where it has increased marked with red.

So clearly something has been done right in the past twenty years.

What is it?

Feantsa’s interpretation is simple: here in Finland, a home is seen as a basic right, while in other countries it is seen as a reward for good behaviour.

In the UK, for example, there has been a social experiment testing whether resolving the problem can be left to markets. It turns out that that doesn’t work: there are at least 320,000 homeless people in the UK, and the number increases by 4 % yearly.

Last year, 6.400 state-financed apartments were built in the UK. In Finland, the number was double, and our population is only about 8 % of that of the UK.

The Housing First program[4] was launched in Finland in 2008.

It was funded by different Ministries and municipalities as well as the Funding Centre for Social Welfare and Health Organization STEA and the Housing Finance and Development Centre of Finland Ara.

The idea of the program is originally American.[5]

According to its principles, housing is prioritized above everything else. You don’t need to resolve your other problems in order to be given a home. You will rather have the chance of settling in a home first and receive help to resolve the rest after that.

In Finland, the program has been able to offer a home to a thousand homeless people. It may not seem that much, but the impact has been the greatest among the people who have traditionally been the most difficult ones to help: the people who have slept outside or in emergency shelters.

Looking at the statistics, it seems to work. And I don’t wonder why: I have read articles about the long-term homeless people who have been offered a home, and their motivation to resolve their problems has increased remarkably as a result.

It boils down to inclusion.

If you are seen as someone who doesn’t and cannot belong, someone who is unable to resolve their problems, it is very hard to become a productive member of society. As you can imagine, it’s not easy to be your best self in a job interview if you have spent the night in a park, without a shower. If life is constant struggle from one moment to another, without any idea of how to pay for the next meal or where to go to sleep in the evening, all your energy easily goes to handling the most urgent challenges.

Long-term planning is luxury.

And if each step along the path towards a home has to be reached with considerable effort, you may end up losing your temporary apartment if you are not able to reach the next step as expected, and be forced to return back to the square one.

Housing First aimed at resolving this problem.

There have been several public projects that have focused on offering homes for homeless people.

A night café for the homeless, Kalkkers. (Photo source)

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According to the professor of Social and Health Politics Juho Saari,[6] homelessness was for a long time such a hard problem to resolve, since it changed constantly, it was not always clear where homelessness ended and other problems, such as substance abuse or mental health problems, started, it didn’t have an obvious start of end, and there was no self-evident solution within the existing political framework.

He lists three important perspectives of the Housing First model:

• The moral point of view: Do people have the right to be supported by society, even when they are unable to live a life that that society considers to be respectable?
• Economical point of view: How should we handle private service providers that do business, when the way of making use of those services is not business as such?
• Social point of view: Is independent housing and the Housing First principle likely to increase wellbeing and health?

When we deal with homelessness, we end up asking important questions about ourselves as a society and as human beings. As Juho Saari puts it, the most marginalized members mirror their society by manifesting whom that society takes care of.

What happens in the outgroups, among the people who are considered in some way alien and observed from a distance?

The Housing First principle is a good way to decrease or even abolish homelessness.

However, homeless people are a very heterogeneous group that consists of people with very different backgrounds and skills. The quality of life of homeless people is, above all, dependent on the way in which they are treated in society.

Juho Saari. (Photo source)

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In the streets of Helsinki, there are still homeless people.

Many of them are Roma people from Romania and Bulgaria. As EU citizens, they have the right to spend three months in Finland without working or studying, and they earn their living mainly by selling magazines and begging. Some are also buskers.

In addition, our immigration policies have been tightened considerably within four years, which has increased the number of undocumented immigrants, some of whom are forced to live in the street.

And despite the generous Finnish safety net (which I have described e.g. here), some Finns are still marginalized. Homelessness has diminished and changed its shape, as Juho Saari observed, but to those who suffer from it Finland is not an easy place to sleep in the street.

We still have some work to do.

Ja parēķinam, tad redzam, ka Somijā uzcelti aptuveni 2 dzīvokļi (12800/5482) uz vienu  bezpajumtnieku, bet UK – uz 50 cilvēkiem viens (320000/6400) dzīvoklis. Varbūt, ka uz to pusi arī ir, bet stāvokli labi raksturo bezpajumtnieku skaits uz vienu iedzīvotāju. UK tas ir 5 cilvēki no 1000 (320 milj./66 milj.), bet Somijā to skaits ir 1 cilv./1000 iedzīvotājiem. (5482 tūkst./5,52 milj. iedz.). Kāpēc? viņi jau pasaka: The Housing First program[4] was launched in Finland in 2008. Vai arī: here in Finland, a home is seen as a basic right, while in other countries it is seen as a reward for good behaviour.

Kāpēc tie bēgļi visi nedodas uz Somiju? Iespējams, ka: neskatoties uz to, ka viņi paziņo, ka mājoklis ir cilvēku pamattiesība, viņi prot ieraudzīt arī otru pusi. Bēglim ir tiesība uz dzīvi normālā valstī, bet tās iedzīvotājiem, kuru ir vairāk, un kuri šo valsti ir uzcēluši, ir tiesība šādā sakārtotā labklājības valstī turpināt dzīvot. Tā vien šķiet, ka Vācijā viņi bieži redz tikai vienas puses – mazākuma tiesības. Un tad rodas necieņa un naids vienā pusē, un pazemojuma un pāridarījuma sajūta – otrā pusē. Un dzīves kvalitātes pazemināšanās, kas izpaužas kā noziedzības pieaugums. Vācieši par to daudz stāsta savos TV raidījumos. Man ir zināmi cilvēki, kuri Vācijā izliekas par lielākiem nabagiem, nekā ir patiesībā, saņem pabalstus un atvieglojumus, un lepojas ar to.