“Not for Normal People“: The Specialization of Social Rental Housing in Finland

Public housing is usually provided for people who cannot afford buying or renting housing on the private housing market. In Finland, the provision of rental public housing, or social housing as it is called, is divided into two categories: “normal rental housing” and “housing for special groups”. The “special groups” include people with so-called “special needs”, and the social rental housing provided for them is regarded a social service. The majority of new social rental housing is housing for special groups. The article asks, is Finland’s social housing turning into a social service, who belongs to special groups and why are they called special? In explaining the trajectory of the Finnish housing policy, the article analyses the process that the author suggests calling the “specialization” of social rental housing, which is the result of deinstitutionalization, piecemeal retrenchment of the welfare state from the housing sector and prioritizing private housing production.