Well, I wasn't trying to argue against "no strings attached housing". Actually, there used to be a lot of low-cost/no-cost options including the aforementioned

Well, I wasn't trying to argue against "no strings attached housing". Actually, there used to be a lot of low-cost/no-cost options including the aforementioned dirt-cheap rooming houses, mental care residential facilities (including voluntary and involuntary incarceration), and shelters run by nuns and the like. Note that some of this still exists today but not the same scale as before. I'm afraid also that Finland's socio-economic situation is rather different from that of the U.S. Up until quite recently, they have had a homogeneous culture, a much smaller population, and more social stability, versus the U.S. with its vast and highly diverse population and relative instability. I don't see how a Finnish solution would quite fit our situation, though we should of course study their methodology since they tend to have good ideas :)