Is It Really Impossible to End Homelessness?
Turns out, no! It can totally be done!
Homelessness is a problem here.
When I visit my provincial capitol, I see them. There are always people sitting on the fringes, wrapped in jackets or sweating in the summer heat. They have bags with them, sometimes old beat-up duffels and sometimes just garbage bags in a cart.
They travel by hopping buses, making their way around town depending on the time of day, whether the soup kitchen or the shelter is open.
Some have been here forever, long enough for me to know their names. I’ll sometimes buy a coffee for a familiar face, seeing the older man smile and reach out his hands, saying “Thanks, Angel!” as I fork over the sugar packets to go with it.
There’s another woman who won’t say anything at all, apart from asking if you have a pack of cigarettes to share. If you try to start more of a conversation, she averts her eyes and closes down.
I know her name, thanks to some of the other people on the streets. But she won’t talk to me. She won’t talk to anyone.
I haven’t seen either of them since Covid started. I don’t know if they’re okay.
There’s another older woman who I bought a meal for once when she lost her last bit of cash to a bad gust of wind. I spent as long as I could spare trying to help her find it while she cried, and then I gave her what cash my mother and I could scrape together between us.
I bought her a meal so she could sit indoors out of the cold. She hugged me and told me her story. I don’t think she had a lot of people to talk to.
Then there are those who aren’t with us anymore. I remember a man who was quick with a smile, reading poems from a little notebook with his hat held out for coins.
Mr. Penny is what people called him because that was what he asked for. A poem for a penny. Anything more was a bonus.
I apologized to him once, not having any on me to give. He just laughed, threw his arms out and cried, “Why would you be sorry about that? It’s a beautiful day!”
He took his own life a few years back. I heard some people laughing about it as if relieved he wouldn’t be out in the downtown area anymore. A few people joked that someone kicked him off the bridge because they were sick of his poems.
I wondered how his kids were feeling about his loss.
I wondered if any of these people had ever bought his poetry; I knew he was the genuine article, a man who took classes at the local university to improve his craft. A heartfelt, talented writer and poet. He was published.
He was an ill man, not a bad one. The reason he stood in the street where he did was because he was watching out for shoplifters coming out of the nearby stores. He’d caught one or two in his time.
I know all of these people’s names. I haven’t their permission to tell their stories, at least not the ones that aren’t public knowledge, so I won’t.
But my point is that they’re all human beings, with lives and loves and dreams and hopes. They all deserve dignity and respect.
They’d be better served by a helping hand rather than a derisive eye.
Homelessness is treated like a fact of life.
It’s taken for granted that people will always fail; that they won’t do enough, earn enough, or be ‘worth’ enough to succeed at life in our capitalistic society. The idea that our system screws people over is often ignored.
The idea that human beings have intrinsic worth—and that their value is not tied to the number in their bank accounts—is also often ignored.
Homelessness in Canada is a growing problem; economic issues, the rising cost of living and other systemic problems contribute to the rise, as does the mental illness epidemic that every country has struggled with since the pandemic began.
In the United States, the problem is just as bad, and often for the same reasons. They can add medical debt onto the pile, which is something most of us here can thankfully avoid.
Except for mental healthcare, which is sadly not fully covered in my province. We could stand to improve our system a lot.
Regardless, people become homeless for many different reasons, and not everyone has the benefit of family and friends who can take them in while they get their life back together.
My mother and I had to do that when I was little; we lived with my grandparents. They took in friends, too, and later on we did the same when we were able to buy a house. Friends and family have always been able to stay in our guest room as long as they need.
Most of us are one bad week away from being homeless ourselves. Look at your bank account—what’s the amount you’ve got saved up? How quickly and easily could you lose it? It’s said that most people in North America would be ruined by a $300 emergency.
Then you’d be just like them. On the street, overlooked, or treated like you’re worthless.
I vividly remember one woman telling me not to go to the local farmer’s market. She told me, utterly aghast at such an idea, that it’s where the ‘bums’ go to busk.
She was wearing very nice gold jewellery. I doubt she’d ever been anywhere near the market. Her loss; you meet the most interesting people there. The art and food is fantastic, too.
But someone like her would never lower herself to hang out with us ‘poors.’
So, homelessness is a problem here. But what if I told you it didn’t have to be?
What if I told you there was a way to solve it? To get everyone off of the streets, into housing, and get them help?
There is. And once again, we have to travel to the Nordic countries to find our solutions.
In yesterday’s article, we talked about how Norway has drastically reduced its crime rate by reforming its justice system from the ground up. They chose to shift away from viewing prison as a punishment and instead use it as an opportunity to help people get their lives back on track.
As a result, they took their recidivism rate—the likelihood of a person being arrested again after leaving prison—from 70% down to 20%. They currently have one of the lowest crime rates on the planet.
It turns out that treating people like human beings and helping them can improve society as a whole. Who knew?
When you prioritize taking care of your citizens, meeting them where they are and helping them get better, they go further than if you demand they improve before you assist them.
That’s one of our big problems here; we don’t help people in need. We help people who demonstrate their ‘good work ethic.’
Our housing assistance organizations demand people get their shit together on their own before we’re willing to give them housing aid. They need to get ‘housing ready’ via treatment and psychiatric care. While they’re homeless, and struggling without money.
Sometimes, they’re even required to secure employment as well. Again, without money, reliable transportation, a place to shower or wash clothes, or even a permanent address. How? Well, that’s their problem.
We treat drug addiction, mental illness and poverty as moral failings that should be judged, rather than issues that need help to heal.
That’s what’s called the ‘treatment first’ strategy. It isn’t working great.
Finland, the country we’re visiting today, found a different solution. They use the ‘housing first’ model.
It’s exactly what it says on the tin. Get people off the streets and into safe, permanent housing, then work on getting them help.
By taking people off of the street and getting their material living conditions in order, you remove a massive stressor that contributes to mental illness and substance abuse. A lot of people on the street self-medicate as a way to cope with their situation; living homeless makes it harder to kick the habit and feel better.
And by giving them a place to live—subsidized housing, where they don’t have to depend on shelters—you allow them to better their lives.
They have showers, laundry machines, and a warm bed to sleep in, and they no longer have to live in fear of losing what little they have or dying out in the cold. They have a permanent address that they can put on a resume, and a home phone number—a way for prospective employers to contact them.
Once they’re housed, then they can seek psychiatric care and addiction counselling if they need it. But they’ll be doing it from a place of safety and security, knowing they don’t risk losing their home if they slip up.
And best of all, the stigma is removed. Remember the lady who told me to stay away from the farmer’s market, and the people laughing about Mr. Penny’s death?
They talk like that because, to them, people living on the streets are less than equal humans. They’re beneath them, not worth caring about. That’s why the homeless exist on the fringes of society, ostracized and ignored.
In Finland, they work hard to make sure that everyone lives within a supportive community. Nobody has to be cast out. Nobody is ‘less than.’
In the 1990s, there were around 18,000 homeless people in Finland. By 2022, with the Housing First model in place, that number had dropped below 4,000.
Finland has a population of 5.584 million. Less than 4,000 of those people struggle with homelessness. And since they still have homeless shelters for those who aren’t in housing yet, very few people ever need to sleep outside.
Now, lots of people doubt that this can work. A big part of that comes down to the stereotypes we have about the homeless.
“Can these people even live indoors? Can they function?”
“Won’t they just destroy the space and use it as a drug den?”
“They’ll just be living off of the government, like leeches on the system!”
And yet, we have proof that this does, in fact, work. So, perhaps we’re the ones who need to change the way we think. Maybe, instead of sneering and looking down our noses at people in need, we should get our collective heads out of our backsides and consider how we can implement solutions—instead of just shooting them down.
Clearly, it can be done. And I think it’s a worthwhile goal.
After all; every human being has a life, loves, dreams and hopes. And we all deserve dignity and respect.
Solidarity wins.
What many people don't realise is that almost anyone can suffer a sudden change of circumstances and end up homeless, or disabled and homeless. When I was working for the adult mental health service as a social worker in triage I heard so many people tell me their stories of how their circumstances had suddenly changed leaving them alone and with almost nothing.
My grandmother used to have a saying, 'There but for fate goes thee and me', and I've always remembered that.