Can housing policies affect housing practices?
Are largescale residential developments, with their small apartment units, built with people or investors in mind? Comparing the policies of Helsinki and Vienna.
Housing powerfully shapes our everyday lives. Having previously had just one function, namely that of providing citizens with a base from which to participate in society, housing today has a dual meaning. On the one hand the term refers to our homes, a place with a social meaning for us. At the same time, homes have increasingly become investment vehicles built for the purpose of turning a profit. These two functions are often in conflict with one another, representing a not insignificant challenge for both our urban planning and housing policy makers and our everyday housing practices.
Housing practices could be defined as the way we live our lives. They are about how we organise ourselves, how we live in our homes and how our everyday lives play out. For all of us, all of these will have been directly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. We know that when new inventions, new ways of living and new crises come along, they transform the way we live. While flushing toilets, extra bedrooms and refrigerators have historically played a crucial role in supporting middle class housing practices, the Covid-19 pandemic has finally put the home office right at the top of the agenda when it comes to how our homes will be designed in the future.
Importantly, our housing practices are also shaped by housing and land use policies, decisions that are made both at the national and local level. These policies typically reflect the ideals of their time. Support for affordable housing, and provisions to regulate the size and design of residential property, for example, have been strongly associated with the ideal of creating high-quality homes for middle-class, nuclear families. But when these policies are scaled back, it has far-reaching consequences, for today and for future generations too. In most cities, the cost of housing has been rising dramatically, outstripping wage growth.
The question constantly being asked in Helsinki is: who are the largescale developments with their small apartment units and cramped rooms aimed at?
In the city, private rented housing stock has gone up by 30 percent since 2000. In nearby Vantaa and Espoo, the same figure stands at more than 80 percent. This is a consequence of the decision to abolish rent regulation, which created opportunities for private landlords to make a profit. Both institutional residential investors and private individuals act as landlords, but it is also possible to invest in housing through residential property investment funds, which are offered by most banks in Finland. More than 80 percent of the privately rented properties in Helsinki are studios or one-bedroom apartments. Demand is high, and small flats also attract the highest per square meter prices.
At the same time, the proportion of new-build family housing units with at least two bedrooms in Helsinki has fallen from 60 percent to 40 percent in the last few years. The average size of an apartment has also decreased in Helsinki, and currently stands at 54.6 sqm (down from 70 sqm in 2010). The decline in apartment sizes in Helsinki has happened across all forms of tenure but is much more marked in the rental housing sector. A study by the City of Helsinki shows, that it is particularly families, who have traditionally been at the heart of the council’s housing policies, that suffer from a lack of space, both in absolute and perceived terms.
Put simply, families cannot afford to pay for all the room they need.
In Vienna, where the average flat is 10 sqm larger than in Helsinki, housing and land use policy is weighted in favour of affordable housing. Although more smaller units are being built by commercial developers, 3–5-bedroom apartments still dominate when it comes to new social rental housing. The minimum square meter requirements are set higher than in Finland too. In the Austrian capital, people’s housing practices, and access to sufficient living space in particular, is not determined by location, income, inherited wealth, or social class to the same extent as it is in other growing metropolises in Europe.
Housing is more flexible, providing more opportunities both to stay put and to adapt to new life situations.
While our housing practices change over time, it’s also important to point out that the provision of housing is powerfully shaped by the political and economic frameworks that underpin it. More research that combines the policy context with lived practices is therefore needed. Do we really understand how the financialization of housing is transforming housing practices in Finland? If the aim is to promote sustainable housing, now and into the future, we need to chart the narratives of people’s lived experiences, their housing practices, and use them to shape our policies.
Johanna Lilius
Johanna Lilius is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Architecture with a focus on housing and urban and regional development. She spent 2020–2021 as a visiting professor at the University of Vienna and as a visiting researcher at the Technical University of Vienna.
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