Lappeenranta opens Finland’s first 11-person student shared home

Finland’s first known student housing unit of its kind will open in Lappeenranta, Yle reports. The Lappeenranta region student housing foundation LOAS has converted a house into a shared home for 11 students.

The building is located in the Skinnarila district, just over a kilometre from LUT University and LAB University of Applied Sciences. LOAS executive director Joonas Grönlund said the foundation wanted to test new housing solutions.

Each resident will have a private bedroom, while the other spaces will be shared. The house has several bathrooms and toilets, six fridge freezers and a sauna. The bedrooms have wardrobes, but residents must provide their own other furniture.

Unlike LOAS’s existing shared apartments, the new home is open to men, women and nonbinary people. Its other shared apartments, which accommodate two or three people, have previously been limited to residents of the same gender.

The larger bedrooms could accommodate couples, but LOAS decided to accept only one resident per room. Grönlund said the decision was based on the dynamics of communal living and the possibility that couples and single people might have different daily routines.

LOAS received the house as a donation. Grönlund did not provide further details about the donation because the donors do not want publicity.

Residents will move in during October

Students generally prefer studio apartments, according to a survey conducted in the spring by the Finnish Student Housing Association SOA and the National Union of University Students in Finland SYL. The survey also found limited demand for communal housing.

Studios are also LOAS’s most sought-after homes, but Grönlund believes there is still a place for communal living.

The new shared home will become available for applications later in August, after the busiest period for student housing applications has passed. The residents are expected to move in during October.

“The idea is that people would not end up here, but want to live here,” Grönlund said.

If demand is insufficient, LOAS can convert the building into four or five family homes.

Other forms of communal housing

Grönlund said he was not aware of any similar student shared homes elsewhere in Finland. Yle also contacted several organisations that manage student housing and found no comparable example.

In Otaniemi, on the Aalto University campus in Espoo, there are two shared apartments for more than ten people. Unlike the Lappeenranta home, they are located in an apartment block, and each resident has a private bathroom.

The Otaniemi apartments are owned by the Aalto University student union. Its chief financial officer, Veera Kiviranta, said the apartments have a 100 per cent occupancy rate except during the summer.

Communal living can also be organised in other ways. The Central Finland Student Housing Foundation KOAS has buildings where residents have private apartments with kitchenettes and bathrooms, as well as shared spaces for socialising and group work.

KOAS chief executive Matti Tanskanen said it was good to offer students different forms of housing. He said students have different needs and that there would not be a single model for student accommodation.

The Tampere Student Housing Foundation TOAS also offers communal living through shared apartments and community studios in the Hipposkortteli complex, which was completed this summer.