How Some Other Countries Deal With Their Homelessness Crisis

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Photo by William Navarro on Unsplash

Sometimes, trying to solve problems internally may require looking at outside forces and what they do to find inspiration. While the United States has a homelessness crisis within the country, it might do it some benefit to see what other countries are doing to find solutions.

Here are two countries that have a lower rate of homelessness and what they do to help their homeless population:

 

Finland:

When looking up “How do other countries deal with homelessness” on Google, Finland and its way of helping the homeless is one of the top results. While their way isn’t perfect, it still has dropped down the number of citizens that are homeless through what is called, “Housing First.” Fitting to its name, this adopts the focus of helping homeless people find housing based on their needs. Cynics believe that the issues lies within mental health and addiction that may attribute to why some people may be homeless. While this may be true for some people, the Housing First project focuses on giving people a home first where they would be treated like everyone else. They believe that offering affordable housing would lead them to be able to solve their other issues such as addiction. The country believes that they are able to eradicate homelessness by 2027, with the number lowering to around 4,000 people without a home in 2021.

Japan:

Japan is a country that can boast about a 0% of homelessness within their citizens. Well, not that there are 0 people experiencing homelessness in Japan; but the number is so low that it is rounded off to 0% (around 3,992 homeless people in a country with a population of over 125 million).  This is because the country has programs in place such as subsidized rent options, food aid for those in need, and even benefits for businesses to hire people for them to help get them back on their feet.

 

While these solutions aren’t perfect and won’t help everyone the same way, it is still a good thing to look at them, recognize what their solution is, and possibly even adapting their solutions to fit our needs and situation in our country better.

 

Read More:

https://tomorrow.city/a/homelessness-in-japan

https://yle.fi/news/3-12409059

https://housingfirsteurope.eu/countries/finland/

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-sunday-edition-for-january-26-2020-1.5429251/housing-is-a-human-right-how-finland-is-eradicating-homelessness-1.5437402

https://archive.thinkprogress.org/four-countries-the-united-states-can-look-to-when-fighting-homelessness-a2a43e2cc396/


Posted by Angelo Alvarez

 

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