Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

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I think there is a bit of nuance to this. The UK also has about 500 or so homeless people per 100000 inabitants. In the US the number of people in prisons is about that number per 100K. On top of their huge homeless problem.

There is the brutal reality that the climate in Finland and being homeless are not a great combination in the winter. And the summers are short. Getting people off the streets saves lives. If it's -20 during the night you can either lock people up or collect their corpses in the morning. Most people will seek shelter by themselves or not reject shelter when it is offered to them. But people with serious psychiatric issues, that are maybe a bit self destructive and under the influence of alcohol or drugs are going to have trouble doing rational things. So, yes, Finland does the pragmatic thing here. I don't have good statistics on this but I bet there are more than few corpses being collected in the US and the UK on a yearly basis.

I've lived in Finland for a few years. It's a friendly place that is mostly safe and nice to be. There's a level of pragmatism and compassion with much of what they do that other countries could learn from. Including the business of incarcerating people. The US and UK are maybe a bit lacking with that. Finland has prisons and psychiatric wards (not the same thing) of course. But people don't stay in those endlessly. Prison sentences are generally short, and rehabilitation is something they put a lot of effort on. Most crime there relates to people doing stupid shit because they are drunk, mentally ill, etc. The solution usually includes addressing those issues after they serve their shortish prison terms. And with some level of success.

> If it's -20 during the night you can either lock people up or collect their corpses in the morning.

Or put floor heating under the streets like they did in Jyväskylä!

I think that's more about keeping them ice free. There's a shopping street in Helsinki where they did that, I think.

Anyway, sleeping rough in Jyväskylä sounds like it would be tough. Although you might have enough material (snow) to try to make an iglo. Some people do that for fun even. Of course technically if you make an iglo your home are you still homeless?

I was told by locals that it was explicitly to keep homeless people from dying. A few streets in the center were heated. Like, not warm in any way, but it was kinda weird to walk into the center and suddenly all the snow was gone. Just warm enough for it all to thaw.

Note, this was 20 years ago, maybe it all changed, either the system or the reasons. I can imagine that if you have a zero homeless strategy, it's weird to say that the street heating is for the homeless.

> I was told by locals that it was explicitly

My experience with Finnish people is that it can be hard to tell when they are joking and they have a dark sense of humor. Great poker players too.

True! That said, I wasn't fooled. I'm very good at Finns. It might be incorrect but they believed it for sure :-)

So are they committing people who are drunk? That would explain why the number is so high, but that also seems like overkill.

No, drunk people who do stupid shit or have passed out in public are just locked up for night and then let go unless they injured or killed someone.

In my (european) country overly drunk people[1] are locked up for the night in dedicated facilities, and let go the next morning. They also need to pay for it quite a lot of money (detention places are often jokingly called "the most expensive hotel in the city").

I'm not personally a fan of that, but it's quite common in post-soviet countries and very normalized (people are actually surprised when I tell them that not every country does that)

[1] Ultimately for their own good, not as a punitive measure. They are watched by medical personnel and don't risk dying of hypothermia. Still it's not something I'd like to experience.

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