Retrenchment and social housing : the case of Finland

• Authors: Hannu Ruonavaara
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

About 12 per cent of households in Finland live in social rental housing. The Finnish system of social housing is now facing challenges. Finland has reached a situation where large numbers of social rental dwellings are free from regulation because the state housing loans have been paid off, while new production of such housing is unable to make up for this loss. Potentially this means a decrease in the social rental housing stock. Current housing policy discourse sees social housing more as a failed policy than a necessary welfare measure. Such developments can be related to a larger change in the Finnish housing regime. It has entered a phase of retrenchment, where the government withdraws from its previous commitment to housing provision in order to give more room to market forces. Retrenchment has led to the strengthening of one of the basic features of Finnish housing policy, its selectiveness.

Keywords

EN

social housing; welfare policy; land markets and housing policy

Discipline

• SOCIOLOGY: SOCIOLOGY

• Publisher: Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Critical Housing Analysis
• Year: 2017
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 8-18
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Hannu Ruonavaara

• Critical Housing Analysis, redakce,Sociologický ústav AV ČR, v. v. i. Jilská 1, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic