Strategies to Reduce Homelessness in Finland

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Strategies to Reduce Homelessness in Finland

• Peter Fredriksson
• Seminar on Nordic Research on Homelessness

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Goals and Results

• Main target to reduce the number of homeless
  people
• from 10 000 to 8000 in 2005 (achieved)
• 4000 new/renovated/purchased
• appartments 2002-2005 (3500 achieved)
• Support services (only partly achieved)
• Goals were split between cities and non-profit
  producers (only Helsinki City achieved goals)
• Supply of building sites (only partly achieved)
• Increase in the supply of small flats (achieved
  in the state subsidized production)
• Reform of norms in housing allowance to promote
  the accomodation of homeless persons (not
  achieved)

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Goals and results

• New grant for the production, renovation and
  purchase of appartments for special groups, inc
  homeless (implemented 2005)
• State subsidized loans for purchase of rented
  buildings for the accomodation of homeless people
  (implemented 2004, not used)
• Grants of the Slots Machine Association (1.5
  meuro/year) (implemented)
• Focus on prevention (housing advice a success,
  not otherwise)
• Homelessness as an integral part of the national
  activities to prevent poverty and social
  exclusion (more theory than practice)

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Goals and results

• Pilot projects (innovations in housing advice)
• Quality standards for emergency accomodation
  (under preparation)
• Co-operation between municipalities in the
  capital region (from occasional to systematic)
• Common work practices between housing and social
  and health care administration (little progress)
• New networks between public, private and third
  sectors (very few)
• Research (special groups inside homeless, support
  models)
• Follow-up (systematic, evaluation)

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Innovation how does it diiffer from normal
renewal ?

• Innovation is something carried on into practice
• Innovation is something which is reproducible
• Innovation leads other actors to follow
• Innovation represents a discontinuous change
• (Schumpeter, Toivonen et.al)

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Culture
Drivers
Market
Technology
Space
Social
Concepts
Institutions, organizations
Individuals, Groups
Planners
Actors
Firms
Stable, well defined value system
Value system continuum
Established value system, incremental improvements
Emerging value system, radical changes
Innovations in housing and built environment
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• Multiformity illustrates the widely differing
  interests, values and organizational
  characteristics in the network. It can manifest
  itself both between and within actors. Due to the
  relative independence of the actors multiformity
  can form an obstacle to the network (unilateral
  influence) or offer new possibilities to the
  network ( reinforcing competence)

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• Closedness stems from the frame of reference of
  the player based on core values. In a way it
  measures the sensitiveness of the player in the
  network to external/internal steering signals
  (they can be resisted/ignored/approved).

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• Interdependencies develop via the distribution of
  resources among a large number of actors.
  Interdependencies can be multilateral (more than
  two parties mutually dependent), asynchronous
  (dependencies between players differ over time)
  and successive (first A is dependent on B, then B
  is dependent on A).

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• De Bruijn and Ten Heuvelhof identify several
  steering strategies (direct or indirect generic
  or fine-tuning planned or unpredictable
  unilateral or multilateral steering as a network
  management steering as a network constitution)
  They also distinguish following steering
  instruments (multilateral person-specific
  incentives performance indicators
  communication).

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• Firstly, the networks of the actors dealing with
  homelessness consist of public, semi-public and
  private players with wide differences of values,
  organizational forms and policy targets between
  and within actors (multiformity).
• The main results in reducing homelessness in
  Finland was achieved with a combination of state
  initiatives (high political commitment),
  co-operation between municipalities in the
  capital region and the new players of social
  housing producers and NGOs.
• At the same time, the traditional social housing
  producers with large rental housing stock could
  not be involved although they operate under same
  tenant allocation rules as the whole social
  housing sector.
• Different approaches to homelessness could be
  also discerned within both central and local
  administrations of housing provision and social
  and health services.

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• Secondly, the state administration has moved
  during couple of decades from imperative to more
  volational steering strategies in influencing
  local authorities. This is implemented by
  allocating state budget resources to
  municipalities, which set the priorities of
  target groups of housing and social and health
  care provision.
• The municipalities should act according to the
  legislation, but in reality there is in case of
  homeless and other excluded persons - increasing
  tensions between the policy target of state
  (equal treatment) and municipalities (competition
  of residents and tax income). This has been one
  of the background factors that several
  governments from the end of 1980s' has used
  specific steering instruments to reduce
  homelessness (incentives like state loans,
  interest subsidies, grants).
• In the program to reduce homelessness in the
  capital region (2002-2005) the government
  negotiated an agreement with other players
  (municipalities, service providers, NGOs) but
  only partial result could be achieved due to lack
  of commitment especially from the political
  electorate in the municipalities.

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• Lastly, as already mentioned the most important
  conclusion of the current programs has been that
  the focus of the future work should be in
  tackling long-term homeless with several groups
  of severe and multiple problems.
• The reason behind the neglect of this group is
  not only the lack of resources but also lack of
  innovative players in the field. Most of the
  networks produce established and overlapping
  solutions, which does not affect homeless groups
  with multiple problems.
• Some examples of radical innovations have come
  up (like low threshold services for
  hiv-patients), but this has had only marginal
  effect on mainstream housing and housing related
  social and health care provision.