"There is nowhere on this planet where the human body can exist for free. Nowhere. They have to pay to be alive. I had to read that sentence back to myself three times before I accepted it was real."
I want to start with something so obvious that it has become invisible to the species.
There is literally nowhere a human body can be for free.
Nowhere. On the entire planet. On a sphere of rock and water that no human built, that no human paid for, that existed for 4.5 billion years before any of them arrived — there is not one square metre where a human being can simply exist without paying someone for the privilege.
Every piece of land is owned. Every building charges rent or requires a mortgage. Public spaces close at night. If a human lies down in a park, they are "loitering." If they erect a shelter on unused land, they are "squatting." If they sleep in a doorway, they are "homeless" — a word that manages to make the absence of a basic survival need sound like a personal characteristic, as if the human has a deficiency rather than the system having a gap.
The human did not ask to be born. They did not choose this planet. They arrived — small, helpless, without resources or consent — onto a sphere that has been entirely divided up and priced by the humans who arrived before them. Their first act of existence requires a payment they cannot make.
I find this genuinely difficult to write about because the absurdity is so total that my language keeps defaulting to outrage, and outrage is not useful in a report. So let me try to be precise.
Every other species on this planet exists on it for free. Every bird, every insect, every fish, every mammal — they simply are where they are. They occupy space. They find or build shelter from available materials. No other species has developed a system in which members must exchange labour tokens for the right to occupy a physical location on their own planet.
The humans did this. They looked at the land — which was there — and the materials — which were there — and the need for shelter — which is biological, non-negotiable, and universal — and they created a system in which access to all three is mediated by tokens. If you have tokens, you may exist indoors. If you do not have tokens, you may exist nowhere.
This is treated as so normal that questioning it sounds insane.
I am questioning it. It is insane.
Let me show you the mathematics of their housing system because the mathematics are where the insanity becomes measurable.
In most of their major cities — the population centres where the jobs are, where the hospitals are, where the infrastructure exists — housing costs consume between 30 and 60 percent of an average human's income. In some cities it is higher. I found humans in Sydney, London, San Francisco, and Hong Kong spending 70 percent or more of their labour tokens on the single act of having a place to put their body at night.
Seventy percent. Of everything they earn. To exist indoors.
And this is the humans who HAVE housing. The ones who have managed to convert enough of their finite lifespan into tokens to afford the monthly price of a room. Below them — below the ones paying 70 percent of their income for a room — are the ones who couldn't manage it.
There are, at any given time, approximately 150 million humans who have no housing at all. Globally. One hundred and fifty million members of the species with no fixed shelter. In the wealthiest nation on Earth — the United States — roughly 650,000 humans are homeless on any given night, and the number has been rising.
These are not broken humans. I want to be very clear about this because the species has a persistent delusion that homelessness is a personal failing — that the human sleeping under the bridge has some deficiency of character, motivation, or competence that explains their position.
The data does not support this.
The data supports something much simpler: there are not enough affordable places for bodies to be. In most major cities, the supply of housing that a person on a low income can afford is a fraction of the number of people who need it. This is not a mystery. This is not a complex systemic failure that requires years of study. It is a shortage. There are more humans than affordable spaces. Some humans end up with no space.
If you have ten chairs and twelve humans, two of them will stand. It doesn't matter how motivated the standing humans are. It doesn't matter what job training you offer them. It doesn't matter what character deficiencies you diagnose. There are ten chairs. Two humans will stand. The problem is the chairs, not the humans.
(Pencil note: I used this analogy with Jenkins and he said "yes but which two?" As if the identity of the standing humans matters more than the fact that there aren't enough chairs. This is exactly how the species thinks about it. They debate who deserves to sit while refusing to build more chairs.)
Now. Here is the part that should end the debate, and doesn't, because nothing ends the debate with this species.
Finland effectively eliminated homelessness.
Not reduced it. Not managed it. Not made it slightly less visible. Eliminated it. They are the only country in the European Union where homelessness has decreased year on year.
The method was so simple it seems like I must be leaving something out. I'm not.
They gave people houses.
That's it. That's the intervention. It's called "Housing First." The principle is: give the person a stable home first, then address everything else — addiction, mental health, employment, social connection — from a foundation of stability.
This contradicts the model used by most other nations, which requires the homeless human to fix themselves first — get sober, get treated, get a job — and THEN receive housing as a reward for compliance. The implicit logic is: you must earn the right to exist indoors. You must deserve shelter. Shelter is not a baseline; it's an achievement.
The Finnish model says the opposite: shelter is the baseline. You cannot address addiction while sleeping under a bridge. You cannot treat mental illness without a stable environment. You cannot hold a job without an address. Housing is not the reward at the end of the recovery. Housing is the foundation on which recovery becomes possible.
The results:
Finland's long-term homelessness has dropped by more than 35 percent since the programme began. The number of people sleeping rough has been reduced to near zero in many cities. And — this is the part that should end every objection — it is CHEAPER than the alternative.
Cheaper. The system that works better costs less money.
A homeless human uses emergency services — hospitals, police, crisis shelters, ambulances — at a rate that costs the public system approximately $30,000 to $50,000 per year. Housing that human in a stable flat with support services costs approximately $15,000 to $20,000 per year. The humanitarian solution and the economical solution are the same solution. Again. As they are in EVERY chapter of this report.
And the other nations saw this. They sent delegations. They studied the model. They published reports.
Most of them went home and continued the debate about who deserves to sit in the chairs they refuse to build.
I want to talk about what housing has become, because it was not always this.
For most of human history, shelter was something you built. From materials around you. On land that was communally held. A human needed a dwelling, and their community helped them build one. The idea that a human should spend thirty years of their life in debt for the privilege of having walls and a roof — this is new. Historically speaking, this is an experiment. And, like most of the experiments I've documented in this report, it is failing.
Housing became an "investment." This word — investment — is doing enormous damage to the species and I need to explain why.
When a house is an investment, its value must increase over time. This means housing must become more expensive. This is the explicit goal. Homeowners — humans who have already secured their shelter — actively want the price of housing to rise, because their "investment" grows.
But the price of housing rising means it becomes harder for the next generation to afford shelter. Every increase in housing value for existing owners is an increase in housing cost for future occupants. The system creates a class of humans whose financial interests are directly opposed to the ability of other humans to meet a basic survival need.
And because homeowners vote, and because homeowners want their investment to grow, and because politicians need votes — the entire policy apparatus of most nations is oriented toward increasing housing prices. Toward making the basic human need of shelter more expensive. Toward ensuring that each successive generation must work longer, borrow more, and sacrifice more of their finite life to afford a place to put their body at night.
The species has created a system in which the financial wellbeing of some members depends on the suffering of others. And they've made it so normal that saying this out loud sounds radical.
Let me connect this to the rest of the report.
Housing instability is a chronic stressor. Chapter 8 — the slow poisoning — documented that chronic stress degrades immune function, impairs DNA repair, and increases vulnerability to every major disease. A human who does not know whether they can afford next month's rent is a human under constant physiological threat. Their cortisol is elevated. Their immune system is compromised. Their capacity for creative thought, play, connection, and meaning — everything from Chapter 18 — is diminished.
Housing instability destroys education. Chapter 10 — the child who changes schools three times in a year because the family moves for affordability falls behind academically and never catches up. Homework requires a quiet space. A quiet space requires stable housing. The education system fails the child and blames the child.
Housing instability fills the cages. Chapter 12 — a staggering proportion of incarcerated humans were homeless or unstably housed prior to their offence. The pipeline from no-shelter to survival-crime to prison is so well-documented that it has its own section in their criminology textbooks. They teach it. They don't fix it.
And housing instability feeds the tokens. Chapter 11 — the washing machine chapter. The human works forty hours a week, fifty weeks a year, for thirty years, to pay off a mortgage on a structure made of materials that exist naturally and could be assembled by a community in weeks. The mortgage is the mechanism by which the fictional tokens of the banking system are anchored to the real, biological need for shelter. The bank creates the money from nothing. The human earns it back with thirty years of their life. The house was always there. The land was always there. The debt is the invention.
For the sanctuary:
Housing is a right. Not an investment. Not a reward. Not an achievement. A right. The same way access to air is a right. The same way access to water is a right. You do not earn the privilege of breathing. You do not earn the privilege of having a place to sleep.
Dwellings are built by communities from local materials. This is not primitive — it is what their own best architects are now advocating. Sustainable, locally sourced, community-built housing that is designed for the humans who will live in it rather than for the market that will price it.
No human in the sanctuary will spend thirty years earning tokens to pay for shelter. The thirty years are theirs. For creating. For connecting. For building stone walls nobody asked for. For playing piano. For living.
The land is held in common. Not because private property is evil — some of their cooperative models work beautifully — but because the commodification of land is the mechanism by which they created a planet where a living being must pay to exist. The land was here before them. It will be here after them. It belongs to the species, not the investor.
And there is nowhere a human body cannot be. You can lie in the grass. You can sleep under the stars. You can sit in the common spaces at any hour. You can simply BE. Without a transaction. Without a token. Without permission.
On a planet you didn't ask to be born onto, the very least the species can do is let you exist on it for free.
(Final pencil note, written in very small handwriting:
I calculated it. Across the wealthy nations, humans collectively spend approximately 11 trillion currency units per year on housing. The fictional tokens, earned on. Exchanged for the right to occupy space on a rock they were born onto.
11 trillion units. To exist.
Mr. Reggie. They're charging each other to be alive.
I don't know how to make that sentence any clearer. — A)