Finland has found the answer to homelessness. It couldn’t be simpler
Harry Quilter-Pinner
The Guardian
Thu 12 Apr 2018
“I was born in Liverpool and grew up on a council estate. I had a clean home, toys and nice meals as a kid. When I was nine years old, the sexual abuse started. My abusers made me feel special. They gave me gifts, moneys, cigarettes and sweets. When I was 13 I ran away from home and soon found myself in the murky world of prostitution on the streets. My life was out of control.”
This is how it all started for Simon. I met him 23 years later at SCT, a local charity I help to run in east London that offers support to people who are homeless and face alcohol and drug addiction. He used to make me coffee every morning at the social enterprise cafe we run. In the intervening period he had spent years in and out of hostels and institutions, as well as long spells on the streets.
When I met him, Simon was sober and working for the first time in years. He said at the time that SCT “offered me the opportunity to get my life back on track. Life is worth living now. I’m looking forward to my future.” Tragically, this future wasn’t to be: soon afterwards he decided to return to the streets and died as a result.
I would like to be able to say that Simon’s story is an exception. But in reality it is all too familiar, as new statistics published by the Guardian showed on Wednesday. The number of homeless people dying on the streets or in temporary accommodation in the UK has more than doubled over the past five years to more than one per week. The average age of a rough sleeper when they die is 43, about half the UK life expectancy.
The tragedy is that it’s entirely within our power to do something about it: homelessness is not a choice made by the individual, it is a reality forced by government policy. As homelessness has rocketed in the UK – up 134% since 2010 – it has fallen by 35% in Finland over a similar period of time. The Finnish government is now aiming to abolish it altogether in the coming years.
I recently travelled to Finland to understand how it had done this. It turns out its solution is painfully simple and blindingly obvious: give homes to homeless people. As Juha Kaakinen, who has led much of the work on “housing first” in Finland, explained to me when I met him in Helsinki, “this takes housing as a basic human right” rather than being conditional on engaging in services for addictions or mental health.
This is fundamentally different to our model in the UK, where stable accommodation is only provided as a “reward” for engaging in treatment services. The problem with this is obvious if you stop and think about it: how do we expect people to address complex personal problems while exposed to the chaos of life on the streets?
This is how it all started for Simon. I met him 23 years later at SCT, a local charity I help to run in east London that offers support to people who are homeless and face alcohol and drug addiction. He used to make me coffee every morning at the social enterprise cafe we run. In the intervening period he had spent years in and out of hostels and institutions, as well as long spells on the streets.
When I met him, Simon was sober and working for the first time in years. He said at the time that SCT “offered me the opportunity to get my life back on track. Life is worth living now. I’m looking forward to my future.” Tragically, this future wasn’t to be: soon afterwards he decided to return to the streets and died as a result.
I would like to be able to say that Simon’s story is an exception. But in reality it is all too familiar, as new statistics published by the Guardian showed on Wednesday. The number of homeless people dying on the streets or in temporary accommodation in the UK has more than doubled over the past five years to more than one per week. The average age of a rough sleeper when they die is 43, about half the UK life expectancy.
The tragedy is that it’s entirely within our power to do something about it: homelessness is not a choice made by the individual, it is a reality forced by government policy. As homelessness has rocketed in the UK – up 134% since 2010 – it has fallen by 35% in Finland over a similar period of time. The Finnish government is now aiming to abolish it altogether in the coming years.
I recently travelled to Finland to understand how it had done this. It turns out its solution is painfully simple and blindingly obvious: give homes to homeless people. As Juha Kaakinen, who has led much of the work on “housing first” in Finland, explained to me when I met him in Helsinki, “this takes housing as a basic human right” rather than being conditional on engaging in services for addictions or mental health.
This is fundamentally different to our model in the UK, where stable accommodation is only provided as a “reward” for engaging in treatment services. The problem with this is obvious if you stop and think about it: how do we expect people to address complex personal problems while exposed to the chaos of life on the streets?
Sceptics will argue that giving homes to homeless people is a recipe for disaster. Aren’t we just subsidising addiction? Won’t we end up with huge bills when it all goes wrong? Don’t people need an incentive to get their lives back on track and engage in services?
Actually, no. The evidence from Finland – as well as numerous other pilot schemes across the world – shows the opposite is true. When people are given homes, homelessness is radically reduced, engagement in support services goes up and recovery rates from addiction are comparable to a “treatment first” approach. Even more impressive is that there are overall savings for government, as people’s use of emergency health services and the criminal justice system is lessened.
At the last election, the government committed to pilot a housing first approach in the UK. This isn’t good enough – we don’t need another pilot. During my time in Finland I didn’t see one homeless person. Within a few hours of coming back to London I walked past more than 100 rough sleepers queuing for food in the rain, just a few minutes from parliament. What we need is action. Ending homelessness is eminently achievable if we have the moral capacity and will to take proper action. We must overcome our prejudices and our apathy. The status quo is simply not good enough.
• Harry Quilter-Pinner is director of strategy at SCT, a homelessness and addictions charity in east London. He is also a research fellow at IPPR, the UK’s progressive thinktank. He writes here in a personal capacity
Actually, no. The evidence from Finland – as well as numerous other pilot schemes across the world – shows the opposite is true. When people are given homes, homelessness is radically reduced, engagement in support services goes up and recovery rates from addiction are comparable to a “treatment first” approach. Even more impressive is that there are overall savings for government, as people’s use of emergency health services and the criminal justice system is lessened.
At the last election, the government committed to pilot a housing first approach in the UK. This isn’t good enough – we don’t need another pilot. During my time in Finland I didn’t see one homeless person. Within a few hours of coming back to London I walked past more than 100 rough sleepers queuing for food in the rain, just a few minutes from parliament. What we need is action. Ending homelessness is eminently achievable if we have the moral capacity and will to take proper action. We must overcome our prejudices and our apathy. The status quo is simply not good enough.
• Harry Quilter-Pinner is director of strategy at SCT, a homelessness and addictions charity in east London. He is also a research fellow at IPPR, the UK’s progressive thinktank. He writes here in a personal capacity
Facing the facts: Hundreds of thousands homeless and unemployed
Gerry Georgatos reveals the unemployment and homeless rates in Australia that we're not being told.
Gerry Georgatos
Independent Australia
17 Mar 2018
AUSTRALIA IS FACING homelessness and poverty levels the likes it has never known — nor that it's prepared to admit.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), there are more than 116,000 homeless Australians.
At least, that’s how many they’ve identified.
However, the number is closer to 300,000 homeless Australians, with more than 100,000 of them being children. Since the data released from the ABS in 2011, we’ve identified that nearly one in five of Australia’s homeless are children aged 12 years and less.
Most Australians would not realise that there are currently thousands of children aged 12 years and less on our streets exposed to various violence and sexual predation.
Our governments, various institutions, funded organisations and bean counting statisticians need to scrub up and start telling the truth about the extensiveness of poverty – particularly of extreme poverty – and homelessness. I will not go down the path of why poverty and homelessness are under-reported but suffice to suggest that it is playing with people’s lives.
Australia is a relatively affluent nation, the world’s 13th largest economy with among the world’s highest median wages, but it is also home to extreme poverty, some of it akin to what we find in developing nations. Australia is hiding its growing poverty crisis that – within a couple of decades – I believe may directly affect one in two Australians.
We are told there are approximately 720,000 jobless Australians — but I argue there are more than two million jobless Australians.
We are told that 13.3% of Australians live below the poverty line. If the Henderson Poverty Line was reassessed, as I believe it should, 35% of Australians would be recorded as living in poverty.
We are told that 730,000 children live in poverty but I argue that more than two million Australian children live poor.
We are told that 116,000 Australians are homeless when it’s actually 300,000.
I have written voluminously on the ways forward, but here I will highlight only the fact that the Australian nation, in general, is not being told the truth of the extensiveness of its poor and homeless. Poverty, unemployment, homelessness are pronounced in the suicide toll. The poor, unemployed, homeless fill the prisons.
In my research, I have found that nearly half the prison population prior to arrest were homeless, more than two-thirds prior to arrest were not employed and nearly 90% of the national prison population has not completed Year 12.
I’ll call out the Federal Government data as false. We are being lied to.
Data is produced from premises. For instance, not all the unemployed are being counted. To be counted as unemployed you have to be registered with Centrelink and follow their rules in terms of looking for work.
If you work one hour per week, you are reported as employed.
I argue that there are at least six million Australians living in poverty but we are told that under three million Australians live below the poverty line.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), there are more than 116,000 homeless Australians.
At least, that’s how many they’ve identified.
However, the number is closer to 300,000 homeless Australians, with more than 100,000 of them being children. Since the data released from the ABS in 2011, we’ve identified that nearly one in five of Australia’s homeless are children aged 12 years and less.
Most Australians would not realise that there are currently thousands of children aged 12 years and less on our streets exposed to various violence and sexual predation.
Our governments, various institutions, funded organisations and bean counting statisticians need to scrub up and start telling the truth about the extensiveness of poverty – particularly of extreme poverty – and homelessness. I will not go down the path of why poverty and homelessness are under-reported but suffice to suggest that it is playing with people’s lives.
Australia is a relatively affluent nation, the world’s 13th largest economy with among the world’s highest median wages, but it is also home to extreme poverty, some of it akin to what we find in developing nations. Australia is hiding its growing poverty crisis that – within a couple of decades – I believe may directly affect one in two Australians.
We are told there are approximately 720,000 jobless Australians — but I argue there are more than two million jobless Australians.
We are told that 13.3% of Australians live below the poverty line. If the Henderson Poverty Line was reassessed, as I believe it should, 35% of Australians would be recorded as living in poverty.
We are told that 730,000 children live in poverty but I argue that more than two million Australian children live poor.
We are told that 116,000 Australians are homeless when it’s actually 300,000.
I have written voluminously on the ways forward, but here I will highlight only the fact that the Australian nation, in general, is not being told the truth of the extensiveness of its poor and homeless. Poverty, unemployment, homelessness are pronounced in the suicide toll. The poor, unemployed, homeless fill the prisons.
In my research, I have found that nearly half the prison population prior to arrest were homeless, more than two-thirds prior to arrest were not employed and nearly 90% of the national prison population has not completed Year 12.
I’ll call out the Federal Government data as false. We are being lied to.
Data is produced from premises. For instance, not all the unemployed are being counted. To be counted as unemployed you have to be registered with Centrelink and follow their rules in terms of looking for work.
If you work one hour per week, you are reported as employed.
I argue that there are at least six million Australians living in poverty but we are told that under three million Australians live below the poverty line.
Relative poverty is a measure contextualising annual income to cost of living demands and therefore has to do with low-income levels and the accumulation of cost of living stressors.
Absolute poverty describes individuals and families that are not able to provide basic necessities such as housing, food and clothing.
Classism will become this nation’s most hurtful sore and, though it will intertwine, it will subsume all the other "isms". Poverty is mounting and, as a catastrophic crisis-in-waiting, it will tear at this nation.
Australia’s pensioners will comprise a significant proportion of Australian poverty. Today, a pension averages annually about $22,000. It’s already tough going if that is all one has. Poverty is the biggest issue.
I believe that the pension is trending to be worth the equivalent of $70 in present value in just 20 years time. That means the pension alone will mean dirt-poor living. Unless Australians have their home paid off by their retirement and $1 million saved in superannuation, they will live their last stretch of life in poverty.
Australia provides more than 400,000 social houses while around 170,000 families remain on the waiting lists. If social housing were to disappear, there would be millions more homeless Australians. In the decades ahead, millions more of such dwellings will be needed — but there is nothing to indicate that they will appear.
Future governments will resort to the worst types of tenements and to poverty-only precincts. That’s guaranteed because present governments – federal, state, local – do just about jack to respond to homelessness and to address poverty.
I also argue that the national unemployment rate is not 5.5% but that it is above 20%, maybe even 35%, of working Australians. 10% of Australia’s labour force is acutely underemployed and more than 1.1 million underemployed Australians are looking to work more hours per week.
The Northern Territory’s homelessness rates are the worst in the nation and are at the higher end of the homelessness scales on the global spectrum. According to the ABS in 2012, 734 in every 10,000 Territorians are homeless. This is more than 7% of the Territory’s people living homeless.
Outside of natural disasters and civil strife, that’s one of the world’s highest homelessness rates. When we disaggregate we find that the 7% translates to 12% of the Territory’s Indigenous Australians living homeless.
Sadly, the Kimberley region describes a similar tale, where 638 per 10,000 of the population are homeless. But, once again, as the homeless population majorly comprises of Indigenous Australians, one in eight of the Kimberley’s Indigenous Australians are homeless.
The Northern Territory has a homelessness rate 14 times the national average. There are regions of the Territory where the homeless comprise 15 to 30% of the local population. The East Arnhem has the highest homelessness rate at 28%.
Racism, call it institutional or structural, has disgraced this nation to the point of not lifting a finger to help our homeless and poverty affected brothers and sisters. But the future speaks of a time more torrid where this type of mass poverty will be experienced by millions of Australians. Classism will rear its ugly presence and become the new norm.
Imagine an Australia where 10% of its people are homeless, where a quarter of Australians live in extreme poverty and where between half to three-quarters of the Australian population live below the poverty line. It is coming.
Let’s start with the truth: the real story – presently – is 300,000 homeless Australians, more than 100,000 homeless children, 25% Australians of working age who are unemployed and millions of Australians living in poverty.
Absolute poverty describes individuals and families that are not able to provide basic necessities such as housing, food and clothing.
Classism will become this nation’s most hurtful sore and, though it will intertwine, it will subsume all the other "isms". Poverty is mounting and, as a catastrophic crisis-in-waiting, it will tear at this nation.
Australia’s pensioners will comprise a significant proportion of Australian poverty. Today, a pension averages annually about $22,000. It’s already tough going if that is all one has. Poverty is the biggest issue.
I believe that the pension is trending to be worth the equivalent of $70 in present value in just 20 years time. That means the pension alone will mean dirt-poor living. Unless Australians have their home paid off by their retirement and $1 million saved in superannuation, they will live their last stretch of life in poverty.
Australia provides more than 400,000 social houses while around 170,000 families remain on the waiting lists. If social housing were to disappear, there would be millions more homeless Australians. In the decades ahead, millions more of such dwellings will be needed — but there is nothing to indicate that they will appear.
Future governments will resort to the worst types of tenements and to poverty-only precincts. That’s guaranteed because present governments – federal, state, local – do just about jack to respond to homelessness and to address poverty.
I also argue that the national unemployment rate is not 5.5% but that it is above 20%, maybe even 35%, of working Australians. 10% of Australia’s labour force is acutely underemployed and more than 1.1 million underemployed Australians are looking to work more hours per week.
The Northern Territory’s homelessness rates are the worst in the nation and are at the higher end of the homelessness scales on the global spectrum. According to the ABS in 2012, 734 in every 10,000 Territorians are homeless. This is more than 7% of the Territory’s people living homeless.
Outside of natural disasters and civil strife, that’s one of the world’s highest homelessness rates. When we disaggregate we find that the 7% translates to 12% of the Territory’s Indigenous Australians living homeless.
Sadly, the Kimberley region describes a similar tale, where 638 per 10,000 of the population are homeless. But, once again, as the homeless population majorly comprises of Indigenous Australians, one in eight of the Kimberley’s Indigenous Australians are homeless.
The Northern Territory has a homelessness rate 14 times the national average. There are regions of the Territory where the homeless comprise 15 to 30% of the local population. The East Arnhem has the highest homelessness rate at 28%.
Racism, call it institutional or structural, has disgraced this nation to the point of not lifting a finger to help our homeless and poverty affected brothers and sisters. But the future speaks of a time more torrid where this type of mass poverty will be experienced by millions of Australians. Classism will rear its ugly presence and become the new norm.
Imagine an Australia where 10% of its people are homeless, where a quarter of Australians live in extreme poverty and where between half to three-quarters of the Australian population live below the poverty line. It is coming.
Let’s start with the truth: the real story – presently – is 300,000 homeless Australians, more than 100,000 homeless children, 25% Australians of working age who are unemployed and millions of Australians living in poverty.
Budget is 'ruthless' towards Australia's most vulnerable
By Roqayah Chamseddine
Sydney Morning Herald
10 May 2018
This week's federal budget offers an unsurprising leg-up to wealthy Australians, arriving just days after Finance Minister Mathias Cormann argued that in order to “ensure that Australians are incentivised and encouraged to work hard ... there's got to be an appropriate reward for effort”.
This means that by 2024 those earning $41,000 a year will be paying the same tax rate as someone earning $200,000. What's currently being sold to the public as a flattening of the tax system has business groups excited, and social-service groups dismayed at what's to come for Australia’s most marginalised.
With homelessness rising to alarming levels – by 14 per cent between 2011 and 2016 – the government's apparent abandonment of those most in need for the benefit of the wealthy is disheartening.
In response to federal budget revelations in which homelessness and housing funding slides to just $1.54 million, the lowest it's been in 10 years, Homelessness Australia described the federal spending decline as “short-sighted and heartless”.
The organisation's chair, Jenny Smith, stated it will be “forced to turn even more people away, many of whom will end up in our hospitals, prisons and mental health facilities; when all they need is a home”.
In a media release, the volunteer-based advocacy group also denounced the government's "robo-debt" policy, which would have state fines automatically deducted from welfare payments without people's consent.
Smith was far from the only person to rebuke the myriad of cuts and spending in the federal budget. Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus characterised the budget as a ruse by a “failed government” which relies on “failed trickle-down economics” intended on convincing Australians to give the current administration another shot at keeping their power.
Gerry Georgatos, a poverty and suicide prevention researcher, told Fairfax Media that it is travesty that the budget is being well received “even though it completely left out Australia's poorest, the homeless, the unemployed, and the underemployed”.
Georgatos is the director of humanitarian programs for the Institute for Social Justice and Human Rights, works firsthand with the homeless, and is the National Coordinator Support Advocates for the National Indigenous Critical Response. His on-the-ground experience has allowed him to see the impact of government policy, especially when it comes to the poor.
The latest budget, which introduces no increase to Newstart, leads Georgatos to believe that homelessness and begging will become even more visible to Australians. "There's no budgetary support or galvanising of support for refugees, transitional accommodation, for outreach support, for actual psychosocial support for the most vulnerable Australians."
Georgatos has long argued that Australia’s homeless crisis is far worse than the public has been led to believe by current and previous governments, attesting that some 300,000 Australians are homeless. “Australia tries to hide the grim realities, tries to mask the levels of poverty, unemployment and of the homeless. This is a moral abomination," he says.
"One government after another fails the poor, the homeless and the nation's major institutions are similarly responsible. Australia's discourses on poverty – absolute and relative – its impacts are reductionist and minimalist, skewed and deceptive. Australia's discourses on homelessness are in effect invisible or of what little utterances there are, they are brutal, inhumane, rubbish."
On the subject of housing, Georgatos finds there to be no ambition in the budget to stimulate the state and territory governments to increase public housing rentals, and this is despite the stark reality that, Australia wide, some 180,000 families are on waiting lists for a public housing rental, according to Georgatos.
The benefits offered to Australia’s unemployed, low income earners, and its middle class are few and far between, especially if we are to peer into what kind of future is being planned out by way of the latest federal budget. If recent history is any indication, the nation's most vulnerable will be made to feel as though what may not even amount to a week's rent in most suburbs is enough to overlook the substantial handouts laid at the feet of big businesses. As we continue to watch the homelessness rate climb, wages stagnate, and poverty levels rise, it's difficult not to see just how this budget clearly serves the affluent.
Georgatos has long argued that Australia’s homeless crisis is far worse than the public has been led to believe by current and previous governments, attesting that some 300,000 Australians are homeless. “Australia tries to hide the grim realities, tries to mask the levels of poverty, unemployment and of the homeless. This is a moral abomination," he says.
"One government after another fails the poor, the homeless and the nation's major institutions are similarly responsible. Australia's discourses on poverty – absolute and relative – its impacts are reductionist and minimalist, skewed and deceptive. Australia's discourses on homelessness are in effect invisible or of what little utterances there are, they are brutal, inhumane, rubbish."
On the subject of housing, Georgatos finds there to be no ambition in the budget to stimulate the state and territory governments to increase public housing rentals, and this is despite the stark reality that, Australia wide, some 180,000 families are on waiting lists for a public housing rental, according to Georgatos.
The benefits offered to Australia’s unemployed, low income earners, and its middle class are few and far between, especially if we are to peer into what kind of future is being planned out by way of the latest federal budget. If recent history is any indication, the nation's most vulnerable will be made to feel as though what may not even amount to a week's rent in most suburbs is enough to overlook the substantial handouts laid at the feet of big businesses. As we continue to watch the homelessness rate climb, wages stagnate, and poverty levels rise, it's difficult not to see just how this budget clearly serves the affluent.