The city with no homeless on its streets
HousingSummary
In his article “The city with no homeless on its streets,” Mat Trewern (2019) states that street homelessness which once existed in Finland’s capital, Helsinki, is almost nonexistent today. In 1987, it was reported that there were over 18,000 homeless people on its city streets, but since Finland’s government followed the “Housing First” principle, the amount of homeless people dropped to about 6,600 people by the end of 2017. The “Housing First” principle is unconditional and prioritizes the homeless people’s needs by giving them a home where rent is paid for by the state through housing benefits with access to support services at any time. In contrast, the UK follows a more traditional approach to homelessness where a homeless person must first be accommodated in temporary housing before being offered a permanent home which has not helped to reduce the rate of homelessness in the UK’s streets. Thus, the UK government has requested help from Housing First to implement similar tactics in its cities to tackle homelessness. According to Juha Kaakinen, a key architect of Housing First in Finland, he says Housing First should be considered as a national policy to end homelessness at a global scale and this can also address the housing crisis.