Objectives and Barriers to Promoting Social Housing Policy in Urban Finland

According to Finnish national housing policy, social rental housing (ARA) plays a key role in providing affordable housing and combating segregation in growing urban regions, in particular in Finland’s three largest urban regions (Helsinki, Tampere and Turku), which are the focus of our study. However, the proportion of social housing in Finland has declined, with an internal structural shift towards housing for special groups. Moreover, in the large cities, the ARA housing stock has not been completed to the extent called for in the housing programmes. Our paper addresses these contradictions. We examine the views of key actors responsible for housing policy and social housing implementation with data from three separate research projects between 2017 and 2022. We ask: What reasons do key actors see as to why the supply of social housing has stagnated and declined? Furthermore, we identify the possible barriers to promoting social rental housing in current policies and practices. Our analysis reveals several market-, policy- and practice-based constraints to the promotion of social rental housing. Above all, Finnish housing policy has always been secondary to other policy objectives, which makes it unpredictable. Therefore, the guiding regulations at the national level and the implementation of housing programmes at the local level seem to be out of step with each other. However, local governments are politically more stable and have attempted to promote social housing objectives, but there are clear and path-dependent differences between the cities in our study in this respect. Despite this, the representatives of social housing companies did not see the need for a broader housing policy reform in Finland. Instead, they asked for long-term commitment and predictability.