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THERE ARE AS many as 100 million people homeless in the world. In Europe alone, there’s an estimated 4.1 million.
Despite these colossal numbers, there is no cohesive approach in tackling the issue. In developing countries, with a lack of services, funding, and housing, it’s extremely difficult to get a handle on it.
In other areas, thousands have been made homeless by war or natural disaster.
In Haiti, there are still up to 170,000 still homeless after the 2010 earthquake, living in “dire conditions”.
However, in some developed countries, authorities can control the situation, and while homelessness is still a long way off from being eradicated, some policies are working.
We took a look at some places abroad to see what the situation was there, and some ways they are tackling the issue:
FINLAND
Homelessness across Finland has fallen dramatically over the past three decades. Figures from the European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless (FEANTSA) suggest that as many as 20,000 people were homeless in 2008, down to just 8,000 in 2012.
The government’s key strategy in this is a ‘Housing First’ approach. Instead of relying on hostels, dormitories, and shelters, they converted them into supported housing.
“In Helsinki, the last big shelter was closed in 2012 and it has been converted into a supported housing unit,” a FEANTSA report read.
Like Ireland, there is an aim to end homelessness - however, they have just four months left to meet their target.
While homelessness is is falling across the country, an estimate for 2012 points towards homelessness increasing due to rising numbers in the nation’s capital Helsinki.
In 2012, out of a population of 603,854, there were 1,100 people homeless in the city, over a quarter of which were under 25.
UTAH, UNITED STATES
The strategies implemented in Utah have proven to be extremely effective. A recent report detailing the success of the state’s Ten Year Plan placed the number of ‘chronically homeless persons’ at 1,932 in 2005. This has fallen 74%, and stood at 495 last year.
Some local shelters might even be able to close.
How did Utah manage that? Simple – by giving homes to people who were homeless.
Previously, receiving a home in this manner would have had several requirements, such as participation in rehabilitation programmes or job training, the Huffington Post reports. Under this new programme, these services are offered to those who are given an apartment, but if they don’t stick by it, the state backs off.
However, they must take good care of the property and not cause any hassle in their neighbourhood.
It has ultimately proved more cost-effective than leaving people out on the streets – $16,670 in hospital visits and spells in prison, compared to $11,000 for the apartment and a social worker, according to Nation of Change.
That isn’t to say the problem hasn’t completely dissipated. The number of homeless school children (those living in a some form of temporary accommodation, rather than sleeping rough), has risen slightly and stood at 12,383 last year, following a massive spike in 2009.
ATHENS, GREECE
Austerity budgets in Greece led to an “unprecedented” surge in the number of people homeless, the Guardian reports, a portion of which were the “new homeless” – middle-class people who were thrown into homelessness.
“The homeless service provider Klimaka reports that, in the past, most of its clients were single homeless people and a majority had addiction problems and/or mental health issues,” a FEANTSA report read.
Now, they face overwhelming demand from the “new” homeless, who are characterised by higher levels of qualifications and work experience and who do not present complex needs beyond not being able to meet housing costs.
The Spiegel reports that while Athens always had an issue with homelessness, there can now be as many as 25,000 people out on the streets.
That figure could be much higher. The Orthodox Church was feeding 250,000 people a day in 2012.
FEANTSA has also noted that Greece has a long way to go in terms of eliminating homelessness. A number of measures introduced in recent years can actually criminalise homelessness. The country has no integrated homelessness strategy, and while new local governance structures have been set up, they haven’t been fully implemented.
One measure introduced in 2011 did suspend evictions for a six-month period after someone was made redundant.
PARIS, FRANCE
France has a massive homeless population, numbering somewhere around 274,000, Reuters reported, with some 33,000 sleeping rough.
The official figure stood at 141,500 in 2011, up 50% from 2001, and half of which are foreign nationals.
However, the exact figure in Paris is unknown. According to The Economist, the last “meaningful estimate” was made in the mid-2000s, but there has been nothing since then. At the time, there was an estimated 12,000 people sleeping rough or in some kind of emergency accommodation, and are often extremely visible on the street.
Some estimates also suggest that less than 10% of families in Parisian shelters are French. The majority (57%) are of African origin. Another growing issue is the number of Roma living in squats.
Reuters added that squatting is become a significant trend in Paris, rising from 3,000 in 2002 to 20,000 last year. Squatters cannot be evicted in winter.
In 2010, the number of families requesting accommodation surpassed the number of single people, according to FEANTSA.
Authorities are attempting to get to grips with the issue of homelessness in the city. As much as €200 million has been released to address unfit housing.
Nationally, the social services are looking at how to target those most vulnerable - refugees, young people and people with mental health problems – and also but “humanising” shelters.
However, in terms of a housing-led approach, there are issues surrounding the supply of housing stock and adapted housing, and it is difficult to link those in temporary shelters into housing solutions.
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
Figures recorded between April and June this year estimated that there were 2,497 people sleeping rough in London, an increase of 23% from the same period the year previous.
Close to 1,300 of these people were sleeping rough for the first time.
Over the course of 2013, a total of 6,508 people were were seen rough sleeping by Broadway outreach workers, a small increase from the year previous.
When he was re-elected as London’s mayor in 2012, Boris Johnson pledged to engage in a new drive to end homelessness. All well and good, and something most political leaders would like to do, but he had already pledged when he was first elected to end homelessness by 2012.
An initiative called No Second Night Out was introduced, to ensure that no one spend more than one night sleeping rough.
However, VICE went on the streets to see first hand how the project was working out, and discovered that it could be creating more issues than it is fixing:
NSNO only offers to help rough sleepers the first time outreach workers meet them. If NSNO workers already know you to be homeless – if they know you’ve been sleeping rough for a couple of nights or, say, three years – they won’t help you again.
And let’s not forget the ‘homeless spikes’, an isolated issue but one that attracted international condemnation.
These metal pieces were installed outside a block of apartments in London, and were designed to stop homeless people sleeping outside. They were subsequently removed, presumably much to the delighted of Boris:
Pic: Andrew Bennett via Flickr/Creative Commons
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Would have been nice to have even a single comment from a sex worker rather than Ruhama (an organisation rooted in Catholicism with a definite agenda) or the Gardai. Poor quality journalism
@Eoin Silke: Except this is about trafficked women who are being clearly exploited.
“The brothels used by these gangs are staffed almost exclusively by a transient workforce of sex workers trafficked into Ireland. ”
This isn’t about someone choosing to become a sex worker for whatever reason they choose. This is about people with no say in the process.
@Tricia G:
The quote
“The brothels used by these gangs are staffed almost exclusively by a transient workforce of sex workers trafficked into Ireland” is attributed only to “Sources with a knowledge of the investigations” which is meaningless in terms of evidence, any time I have tried to chase up similar statements in the past they turn out to be anonymous opinions with no factual basis.
I am a source with knowledge of the investigations, I even took that a step further by conducting my own investigations today and establishing that €1000 pw for self catering accommodation can be quite a bargain in many areas. Not only do you have my real name to go with that, you can find the evidence yourself on booking com and airbnb.
The only way to know an facts about coercive sex trafficking is to stop using it as an excuse for laws that harm and endanger everyone who sells sex (including coerced victims) and start to think of it, and investigate it, as the serious crime it is, on par with kidnap for ransom. So far, nobody ever seems to have even tried to do that, with the result that if someone is being coerced into selling sex there is little to no hope of anyone identifying and locating them let alone doing anything to help them.
https://mymythbuster.wordpress.com/victims-of-the-same-fiction/
Legalisation and start demanding that our government starts treating us as adults.
@Robert Halvey: remember the article is about trafficked women who are not choosing to be sex workers but subjected to daily rapes by their ‘customers’ and violent coercion by the gangs controlling these operations.
@e: Amazing how people completely ignore the victims in all this. Even the article refers to them as sex workers, they’re not workers. They’re sex trafficking victims being horribly exploited by ruthless criminals who think people can be treated like property. Sadly I’m not even surprised some landlords are fine with what’s going on in their properties.
@Rui Firmino: look at the article again, there are no specifics from verifiable sources and unsubstantiated opinions expressed by an unverifiable and anonymous source.
The headline is spun into clickbait around what turns out to be a scary, but, currently, perfectly normal, charge for any self catering accommodation.
The only way to care about any victim is to go looking for the hard facts of their circumstances rather than blindly following expedient, agenda driven fiction for appearance sake.
@Gaye Dalton: You sound awfully defensive.
@Rui Firmino:
@Rui Firmino: good point. And a very big difference too.
@Brendan Harlowe:
Alternatively there is reality
https://mymythbuster.wordpress.com/victims-of-the-same-fiction/
Men, stop frequenting these places! The cops should arrest the Johns. The unfortunate women in these situations need our help, not our willies.
Remember folks, criminalising sex work facilitates trafficking. Current anti-sex work laws increase violence against sex workers and victims of trafficking.
Ruhama is NOT a trusted source.
@Conor McK: The Garda Protective Unit believes there are trafficked women forced into prostitution here. Are you saying that should be legalised?
@e: “ Then stop the trafficking, but what about the women who voluntarily do this?
Women should be free to do what they want with their bodies.
@e: Less opportunity for traffickers if there is already a legalised established trade. I don’t think anybody is advocating trafficking here.
@e: There are women forced into marriage.
Should we criminalise all bridegrooms?
Legal to sell, but Illegal to buy… Irish logic
@Stoic Savage: because historically women were blamed and charged. It was changed to blame the people soliciting (so that’s the pimp or the John), in order not to victim blame those doing it, as they often had no other choice. I agree if women want a safe space to engage in sex work it should be legal. But equally there are many women, either literally forced into sex work by threat of violence or for other reasons such as feeding addiction, social isolation or financial insecurity. It needs a whole government response rather than relying on charitable organisations to do these studies.
@e: The only organisation exclusively, and lavishly, funded to research the sake and purchase of sex is SERP at UCD which was founded by the same person who founded and lead the “Turn Off the Red Light” campaign, which aggresively demanded the current legislation over the opposition and concerns of people who sell sex.
So far, since they were founded, they seem to have limited their total consultation with current sex workers to 4, or possibly 5.
We cannot ever understand anything without real, objective and impartial research.
https://mymythbuster.wordpress.com/serp-ucd-transcript/
Open borders,cheered on by the likes of this publication,is a destroyer of Irish society.
This didn’t happen when Irish people went to mass weekly.
@ggg: You’re right. Back then the church looked after the sex on our behalf.
@ggg: Yeah the good old days when you could take advantage of a young woman and know that everyone would keep quiet for shame and she’d end up in a Magdalene laundry if she got pregnant.
@ggg: Yeah, they would just get raped by the priest later. Much better!
@Diarmuid Hunt: We’re talking about prostitution.
@west awake: ggg was talking about the time when all went to mass in Ireland, are you telling him that we’re talking about prostitution?
@west awake:
@west awake: So going back to what ggg was saying and my reply can you see why there would be less demand to pay for sex in a shame controlled society (not that it didn’t happen because it did then too) where it was easier to prey on women? Also how do we know that there was a lower percentage of prostitution per capita, do you think reporting on this topic to either Gardaí or the media happened as often back then?
This seems to be a load of nonsense centred on PR for Ruhama and trying to deflect culpability in the murder of Geila Ibram. away from the 2017 Sexual Offences Act.
Fact: The 2017 Sexual Offences Act forces women who sell sex to work alone, hold large amounts of cash and hide from Gardai to be able to make any money..
Fact: When you force women to work alone, hold large amounts of cash and hide from Gardai to be able to make any money you endanger them.
Fact: The 2017 Sexual Offences Act specifically targets the income source of people who sell sex
Fact: When you attack the only source of a person’s income you do them harm. If it is their last resort survival income you also threaten their life.
Fact: €1000 for one week for one person in self catering accommodation is not even slightly unusual, and, in some areas would be such a bargain you would be tempted to ask if the offer available above is limited to people selling sex, or can anybody apply?
5000?? Fcuking hell.
Once again we see a lucrative business handed to organised crime gangs who run it to squeeze the maximum profit to themselves with no regard for anyone else.
Why do these people have such a large market for their imported slaves ? Large enough to go to the trouble of importing them!
Clearly making the customer a criminal hasn’t destroyed their market – presumably far too few get caught.
To my eye the most unacceptable part of prostitution is the exploitation and control involved. If it is to happen (and it is not for nothing it is known as the oldest profession) it should be by choice and the prostitute should keep her earnings with only the taxman permitted to gouge her for a share. The current setup, while in principle it seems to protect the prostitute working solely for herself, in practice it seems that only the slavers get to operate.
Legalisation and licensing would seem to be the only way to wrest this business from the hands of organised crime and remove the incentive for them to cause so much misery.
Remember a few years ago seeing a young Eastern-European woman looking nervous at Dublin Airport with some late 50’s gangster-looking Dub. The whole scene looked wrong but didn’t know how to intervene. To this day I’m pretty damn sure this was some kind of trafficking situation but even with hindsight not sure what I’d have been able to do. Very sad.
Just wondering if the policy of allowing Ruhamma the ability to vouch for so called Sex workers still is a way to get Irish residency. In other words saying you have been trafficked into this country is a positive in order to gain residency. It’s hard not to be cynical with regards to so called asylum seekers. How are these people coming across our borders, have we no vice squad anymore leaving aside the end user, which is another matter ?
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