While most countries manage homelessness, Finland has been methodically ending it. The results are not disputed. From 2008 to 2022, the number of individuals experiencing long-term homelessness in Finland decreased by 68%. Finland is now the only country in the European Union where homelessness has consistently declined year after year. Its stated goal — to end long-term homelessness entirely — is not a slogan. It is a government programme with a budget, a timeline, and measurable milestones.
This is not a small achievement. Homelessness is one of the most intractable social problems in developed economies; a problem that wealthy countries have consistently failed to solve despite decades of effort and enormous public expenditure. Finland's success is therefore not just an inspiring story. It is an empirical proof of concept; evidence that the problem is solvable, that the tools exist, and that what has been missing elsewhere is not capacity but will.
The Insight That Changed Everything
The conventional approach to homelessness in most countries operates like a staircase. First, you address your substance misuse problem. Then your mental health. Then your employment situation. Then, once you have demonstrated sufficient stability and compliance, you earn the right to permanent housing. The logic seems reasonable. And the evidence shows consistently that it does not work.
Finland looked at the data and inverted the model entirely. The Y-Foundation, Finland's fourth-largest housing provider and the operational backbone of the Housing First programme, articulates the principle clearly: stable housing comes first. Once a person has a home; a real home, with a rental contract in their name and a front door they control; they receive support services to address whatever other challenges they face. Not as a condition of housing. As a support for living.
The philosophy behind this inversion is both pragmatic and profound. You cannot address addiction from a doorway. You cannot manage mental illness from a shelter dormitory with forty beds and no privacy. You cannot rebuild a life without a stable base from which to rebuild it. Housing is not the reward at the end of the recovery journey. It is the foundation without which the journey cannot begin.
"Unlike traditional homelessness models that require people to address their problems before being assigned housing, stable housing comes first in Finland's initiative. Once participants have a place to stay, they receive support services to help them deal with their challenges."
Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, 2023How the Model Actually Works
The Finnish Housing First programme operates through a structured partnership between the national government, municipalities, and non-governmental organisations. The Housing First Development Network in Finland coordinates implementation across cities, with Helsinki as the primary urban laboratory.
The Y-Foundation; which manages around 18,000 rental apartments across Finland; plays a central role. It acquires properties on the open market, converts former dormitory-style shelters into individual apartments, and provides housing at affordable rents to people experiencing homelessness. The Foundation receives subsidised loans from the state to fund property acquisition; a direct example of public capital being used to leverage private sector operational capacity.
The model has four core operational principles that distinguish it from conventional homelessness interventions:
Housing Without Preconditions
No sobriety requirements. No treatment compliance requirements. No demonstration of readiness. Housing is provided as a right, not earned as a reward. This is the most radical and most important element of the model; and the one most frequently resisted by policymakers in other countries.
Genuine Tenancy Rights
Participants are treated as tenants, not as cases. They have rental contracts in their names. They pay rent; typically a proportion of their income, with housing benefit covering the remainder. They have the legal rights and responsibilities of any other tenant. This matters enormously for dignity and for long-term stability.
Wraparound Support Services
Housing is paired with; but not conditioned on; access to support services including mental health care, substance misuse treatment, employment assistance, and financial counselling. Support workers are present in Housing First buildings, but their role is to offer help, not to monitor compliance.
Social Mix and Community Integration
Finland has deliberately avoided creating concentrated Housing First ghettoes. Properties are distributed across city neighbourhoods. In Helsinki's model, Housing First apartments are located in ordinary residential buildings; often indistinguishable from market-rate or social housing in the same street. Community integration is a design principle, not an afterthought.
The Economics Are Persuasive
Critics of Housing First sometimes argue that it is too expensive; that providing unconditional housing to people experiencing homelessness is a cost that fiscally constrained governments cannot bear. The data from Finland demolishes this argument comprehensively.
Research published by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare shows that Finland now spends approximately €15,000 less per year per person experiencing homelessness than it did before Housing First was implemented. The costs of emergency services, repeated hospital admissions, crisis shelter provision, police interventions, and the cascading social costs of sustained homelessness are dramatically higher than the cost of a stable apartment and a support worker.
Cost Comparison: Shelter-Based vs Housing First
The programme cost approximately €270 million to implement over its first decade. It has saved substantially more than that in reduced emergency service costs, hospitalisation, and long-term welfare dependency. Housing First is not just morally compelling. It is one of the most cost-effective social interventions ever rigorously evaluated.
The Role of Cities and NGOs
One of the most instructive aspects of Finland's model is the explicit, structured role it creates for non-governmental organisations operating alongside municipal government. The Y-Foundation is not a charity in the traditional sense; it is a professional housing provider operating at scale, with institutional financing, professional management, and a clear social mandate.
This public-private-NGO partnership model is worth studying carefully. The state provides the policy framework, the subsidised financing, and the coordination. The municipalities provide land, planning support, and integration with local social services. The NGOs; like the Y-Foundation; provide operational expertise, community relationships, and the ability to work with vulnerable populations in ways that public bureaucracies rarely can.
As we explore in our writing on what ethical real estate investment can look like, this model of structured partnership between institutional capital and community-embedded organisations is one we find deeply compelling. Private capital can provide the asset base. Professional operators can manage the properties. NGOs and social service providers can deliver the wraparound support. Each party does what it does best. The result, as Finland has demonstrated, is something no single party could achieve alone.
What Private Capital Can Take From Finland
Finland's Housing First success required political will and public funding that private investors cannot provide alone. But it also required something that private capital can directly supply: actual housing units in actual cities where actual people need to live.
The Y-Foundation acquires apartments on the open market. It works with private landlords. It operates in the same housing stock as private investors; not in a parallel, isolated system. Private capital that is willing to hold housing assets with the same patience and the same social orientation as the Y-Foundation can participate meaningfully in models like this; not by replacing public investment, but by expanding it.
At The Heilmann Group, the Finnish model informs how we think about the purpose of housing investment at its best. Our U.S. strategy; focused on Section 8 assisted housing and multifamily residential; operates on closely related principles: government-backed income streams, structurally underserved tenant populations, and the conviction that the most durable housing assets are those that serve genuine, sustained need rather than speculative demand.
For those wishing to study the model in greater depth, the Housing First Europe Hub provides comprehensive documentation on programme design, implementation guides, and evaluation frameworks drawn from countries across the continent that are now adopting Finland's approach. It is the single most useful resource for understanding how Housing First translates across different national contexts.
Finland did not solve homelessness by spending more money than other countries. It solved it by spending the money it had more intelligently; by building the right partnerships, designing the right incentives, and holding firmly to the conviction that a person without a home is not a problem to be managed but a citizen whose right to belong somewhere is non-negotiable.
That conviction; that housing is not a luxury to be earned but a foundation to be provided; is at the heart of what we are trying to build through The Heilmann Group. Not because it makes for a better marketing pitch. Because we believe it makes for a better world. And, as Finland has conclusively demonstrated, a considerably better use of capital.
The European Federation of National Organisations working with the Homeless (FEANTSA) consistently cites Finland as the only EU member state where homelessness has fallen. Every other major European country has seen it rise. The difference is not resources. It is conviction, structure, and the willingness to treat housing as what it actually is: the foundation of a human life.
Capital That Builds Foundations
The Heilmann Group provides international investors with institutional access to U.S. and European residential real estate; structured around the conviction that the most durable returns come from housing that communities genuinely need. If that vision resonates with you, we would like to hear from you.
Contact The Heilmann Group