If you walk the streets of Helsinki, you will be hard-pressed to find a person huddling under a piece of cardboard.

Take it from the CEO of Finland’s largest non-governmental affordable-housing provider.

“You don’t see people sleeping on the streets,” Juha Kaakinen said after a presentation at the Hamilton Convention Centre Monday.

If that’s not impressive enough, Finland started to tackle homelessness in earnest during an economic recession in 2008.

“In spite of that, we could finance the program and get homelessness decreasing. So I think that it only shows that it’s not a money issue.”

Kaakinen shared how his country of about 5.5 million has nearly eradicated homelessness within a decade at the National Conference on Ending Homelessness.

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More than 1,300 policy-makers, civil servants, front-line workers and people with lived experience are in Hamilton for the annual three-day conference.

Finland achieved its feat through its own version of Housing First, an approach that aims to move people into stable dwellings quickly while providing long-term support.

That involved the conversion of emergency shelters and hostels to a variety of social- and assisted-living flats through strong government incentives, Kaakinen noted.

The national strategy saw the state split the cost with municipalities to make the big shift.

Non-governmental organizations are also key contributors, receiving funds through Finland’s national lottery.

For instance, Kaakinen’s organization, Y-Foundation, has more than 17,000 affordable flats under this system.

In 2008, he said Finland realized people were falling through the cracks and something had to change.

“The main thing I think is you need to have a certain political consensus and political will,” Kaakinen said.

But the results — no people sleeping on the street — have helped political careers, not hurt them, he noted.

Planning policy has helped: In larger urban centres such as capital city Helsinki, at least 20 per cent of new developments must be affordable.

Homelessness still exists in Finland, Kaakinen noted, but it has shifted with people staying temporarily with relatives and friends.

“But people are not sleeping on the streets anymore.”

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The current tally is about 6,600 people and 200 families, roughly 1,000 fewer than 10 years ago, he said.

In 2016, a research paper by the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness estimated at least 235,000 go without shelter a year in Canada.

At the conference Monday, Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos announced more details about Ottawa’s plan to reduce chronic homelessness by 50 per cent within a decade.

The federal government is making $1.25 billion available to cities over the next nine years through “Reaching Home,” which aims to land nearly 160,000 people in more stable housing.

The homelessness plan is part of the Liberals’ $40-billion National Housing Strategy.

Tim Richter, president and CEO of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, welcomed the announcement but suggested Canada could set higher goals.

“If I were to want for anything now, it’s greater ambition. I think they can do a lot better than a 50 per cent reduction in chronic homelessness.”

Richter said the Finnish example shows what can be done by taking stock of the existing system — shelters, for instance — and turning it into something more fruitful.

“When you build a shelter, it’s like trying to fix a flood with a bucket brigade.”

Operationally, supportive housing costs less than keeping people in shelters, he said.

Additionally, a reduced load on associated services, such as health care and the criminal justice system, is another benefit of Housing First.

Citing a Finnish study, Kaakinen said the savings associated with providing one person with supportive housing for one year are at least 15,000 euros ($22,437).

“In our thinking, a hostel or shelter is always a temporary solution ... it’s not a solution to homelessness.”

The national conference in Hamilton comes with the shift to Housing First already underway in Ontario.

Under the previous Kathleen Wynne government, funding envelopes for housing and poverty-reduction shifted to the emerging model.