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Finland Housing
As part of its overall responsibility to supervise the
nation's environment, the Ministry of Environment was
charged
with overseeing what kinds of buildings and housing Finns
worked
in and lived in, arranging remedies for existing
deficiencies,
and guaranteeing adequate conditions in the future. Two of
the
ministry's four departments, the Physical Planning and
Building
Department and the Housing Department, were created
specifically
for these tasks. In addition, the National Board of
Housing,
which had been created in 1966 to organize the state's
administration of housing, was made subordinate to the
ministry
in 1986.
Efforts to improve the housing of workers began in the
nineteenth century, as did arrangements for low-interest
mortgages. The 1920s saw the passage of the Housing
Corporation
Act and the establishment of the Housing Mortgage Bank. It
was
only after World War II, however, that significant
measures were
undertaken to subsidize housing through what is known as
Arava
legislation. These laws were brought together in 1953 by
the
Housing Production Act, which became the basis of housing
policy
and which helped to foster the tremendous construction
surge of
the next two decades.
By the 1980s, it was estimated that about 75 percent of
Finnish residential dwellings of all types had been
constructed
since World War II. For some types of dwellings the figure
was
even higher. For example, some 70 percent of apartments
were
built after 1960. Migration, whether voluntary or not, and
an
upsurge in population growth had made this construction
necessary. Population movements during the economic boom
caused
the first half of the 1970s to be the period of peak
construction, when as many as 70,000 units were built in a
single
year.
By the first half of the 1980s, about 48,000 units were
built
annually. In addition to a decline in building activity,
the
kinds of dwellings constructed changed. In the economic
boom
years, about two-thirds of new dwellings were apartments,
and the
remainder were free-standing houses or row houses. By 1980
the
ratio was reversed. In addition, by the 1980s much
construction
work was for renovation, and government plans called for
the
number of buildings restored each year to climb from
15,000 in
1980 to 60,000 by the end of the 1990s.
The construction boom meant that Finns were housed
better
than before. The number of dwelling units increased from
1.2
million in 1960 to 1.8 million in 1980 and gave them more
room.
Finnish dwellings were still rather small, however. In the
1980s,
their average size was sixty-nine square meters, nine
square
meters more than in 1970. Much poor standard housing had
disappeared during the boom years. The new dwellings had
modern
conveniences; by 1980 nearly three-quarters of
them--compared
with only one-half a decade earlier--were fully equipped
with hot
water, indoor plumbing, central heating, and sewer
connections.
Although Finnish housing was still somewhat poorer than
that of
the other Nordic countries, it ranked well by world
standards.
About 60 percent of Finns owned their dwellings, and
Finns
spent, on the average, about 18 percent of their income on
housing. Government housing allowances helped people of
low
income to keep housing expenditures within 10 to 20
percent of
this income. Government housing aid came in a number of
forms,
and it helped people in all income brackets. Housing
allowances
were paid to low-income groups and to pensioners living
either in
their own homes or in rental units. Low-interest loans
were
available to people earning modest incomes who desired to
own
their own homes. Better-off Finns benefited from tax
relief if
they had mortgages.
Not all government housing policies were so popular as
subsidies, low-interest loans, and tax relief, for some
had
unfortunate results. The housing program's most serious
failure
was seen in the often sterile and boring apartment house
complexes and even whole suburban developments and towns
that
were designed and built in the postwar period to meet
pressing
housing needs. Some planned towns were internationally
famed for
the beauty of their design. An example was Tapiola,
located on
the outskirts of Helsinki. Many others, however, provided
an ugly
and inhumane environment for those obliged to live in
them. Often
situated far from needed services and lacking softening
amenities, the bleak dormitory villages were desolate
shelter for
newly uprooted migrants from the countryside, and they
fostered
antisocial behavior, family problems, and illnesses. In
later
decades, authorities applied resources to these
ill-conceived
residential areas with the hope of making them more
hospitable.
Another problem, less serious, was a shortage of rental
units. Some observers held that state rent-control
policies had
reduced the profits earned by landlords and hence had
caused a
scarcity of rental properties. The lack of available
rental
housing particularly affected young people, generally not
yet
able to purchase their own homes.
* * *
At the end of the 1980s, there was no single scholarly
work
in English that treated Finnish society as a whole. A
number of
British works from the 1960s and the 1970s treat many
aspects of
Finnish society, but they are out of date, and they vary
considerably in quality. Of these books, the most readily
available and useful is Finland: An Introduction,
edited
by Sylvie Nickels and others. The 1973 version of this
work is
available in an edition published in the United States.
Patricia
Slade Lander's In the Shadow of the Factory: Social
Change in
a Finnish Community is valuable, but it relies on
fieldwork
done in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. A noted
student of
Finland is the geographer William Richard Mead, whose
books
Finland, How People Live in Finland (written
for
children), The Aland Islands (written with S. H.
Jaatinen), and Winter in Finland: A Study of Human
Geography (written with Helmer Smeds) all contain much
useful
information. Wendy Hall's The Finns and Their
Country and
John L. Irwin's The Finns and the Lapps are
intelligent
and popular treatments of Finnish life.
Readers with Swedish could consult Samhallet
Finland,
an essay-length work dating from 1985, by Finland's
renowned
sociologist, Erik Allardt. This brief survey of the
developments
that have transformed Finnish society in the twentieth
century
will give the reader an understanding of Finland as it was
in the
1980s. A festschrift in his honor, Small States in
Comparative
Perspective: Essays for Erik Allardt, contains
articles by
leading specialists on topics such as the family in the
Nordic
countries, the premature mortality of Finnish males,
social
mobility, and the establishment of Finland's welfare
system. This
last subject is treated at greater length by Matti
Alestalo and
Hannu Uusitalo in their detailed and sophisticated article
appearing in the first volume of the series Growth to
Limits:
The Western European Welfare States Since World War
II,
edited by Peter Flora. Matti Alestalo's Structural
Change,
Classes and the State: Finland in an Historical and
Comparative
Perspective provides a learned exposition of the
country's
class structure. Nordic Democracy, edited by Erik
Allardt
and others, treats Nordic Europe as a whole, but it
contains much
information about Finnish society. The detailed
bibliographies
accompanying these scholarly works will guide the curious
reader
further.
Brochures and pamphlets published by the Finnish
government
in English are available from Finnish embassies around the
world.
These publications are quite informative about the welfare
and
the education systems, the role of women, and other
aspects of
Finnish society.
Encyclopedic in its coverage of Finland is the series
of
atlases published by the Finnish government's National
Board of
Survey. The series' excellent maps graphically convey
astonishingly detailed data about many aspects of Finnish
society, and they are complemented by expert articles.
English
translations of the articles appearing in some of the
atlases are
available. (For further information and complete
citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of December 1988
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