The aim of this study was to map how pleased council tenants were with their housing, the strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats of council housing.

Although most of the tenants were satisfied with their housing, also problems exist and specially the social problems seem to be increasing.

The City of Helsinki is the owner of 56 000 rented dwellings and the landlord of over 100 000 citizens. Almost every fifth dwelling in Helsinki is a council dwelling. And yet, the housing queue is still long. In many European countries today, council housing and other society-provided housing is on the defensive. The construction of rented dwelling has stopped increasing, and the dwelling stock has partly been privatized.

The study is essentially based on a questionnaire sent to 9000 random sample council tenants in November 2001.

Two-thirds answered it. The opportunity was also provided to give freely formulated answers. The findings of the questionnaire were complemented with register and GIS data on the neighbourhoods studied.

A new questionnaire was sent in year 2005 to 12 000 random sample council tenants.

The city's tenants like it in their homes. Only 8 % were discontented or very discontented. The most serious problems were the old familiar ones: public drinking, noise and disturbing youth gangs. The use and sales of narcotics was more uncommon. The freely formulated answer expressed wishes for improvement of tidiness and for earlier intervention against disturbances.

Today problems in council housing seem to be getting worse. Due to a lack of nursing and institutional capacity, the city has been forced to allocate council dwelling to an increasing number of people needing rehabilitation for intoxicant abuse or mental illness. Some of the immigrants have adaptation problems. Increasingly, dwelling seem to suffice only for the deprived and for special groups. This implies additional pressure on the maintenance of the dwelling and on the neighbourhood. It is becoming increasingly obvious that if we want to avoid a vicious circle, we should intervene in the negative phenomena and the maintenance of council housing right now.

City of Helsinki Urban Facts, Research Unit
Mr. Erkki Korhonen, tel. +358 9 169 2428

17/05/2004

Erkki Korhonen

research

Urban Policy > Housing > Housing management

Tenant management