Professor says praise for Helsinki housing policy is partly justified

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s interest in Helsinki’s housing policy is partly justified, according to Mari Vaattovaara, a professor of urban geography at the University of Helsinki, Yle reports.

Mamdani discussed Helsinki’s housing policy when he met Helsinki Mayor Daniel Sazonov during a global mayors’ meeting over the weekend. In an interview with Yle, Mamdani said New York could learn “a great deal” from Helsinki and Finland’s welfare state model.

Mamdani said he was particularly interested in Helsinki’s housing market, which he considered to be in a better position than those of many other cities. Helsinki said in a statement on Tuesday that Mamdani had shown strong interest in the city’s housing policy during the meeting.

Vaattovaara said other cities, including New York, could learn from Helsinki’s long-term housing policy, which she described as an institutional approach. Helsinki does not sell all the land it owns and applies social mixing in its housing policy. The city’s planning monopoly is also an important part of the system, she said.

“There is something here that can be taken to the rest of the world: the state and municipalities are active and not merely correcting the consequences,” Vaattovaara said.

She added that other cities could also learn from Finland’s model for tackling homelessness, which has been regarded as an international success story. However, she noted that homelessness has begun to increase over the past couple of years after many years of positive development.

Professor criticises recent housing policy

Vaattovaara stressed that Helsinki’s long-term housing policy should be distinguished from the policies pursued in recent years. She described the current situation as a deep housing crisis.

“We have been caught up in considerable turmoil. Very uniform large-scale developments have been built, along with significantly more small apartments led by investors. Tenant turnover in these apartments is at a record level,” she said.

Vaattovaara said Helsinki’s situation regarding apartment sizes was still not as bad as elsewhere in the Helsinki metropolitan area. On average, smaller apartment blocks are being built in Espoo and Vantaa than in Helsinki.

Although Helsinki’s housing policy has attracted international interest, Vaattovaara acknowledged that transferring individual policy measures from one country to another is difficult.

Researchers have tried to compare housing policy in Helsinki and Stockholm through large, multi-year research projects, she said, but the efforts have largely failed because the institutional backgrounds are so different even between Nordic countries.

Yle published its report on September 21.