Feuds between neighbours becoming increasingly common in Helsinki

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In Helsinki, there is practically no limit to what neighbours can find to argue about, on matters of principle and with no quarter given, and for long periods.
      Feuds with the neighbours are increasingly common, at least according to those who are called in to try and smooth things out. The cases keep the police busy, and also make work for building supervisors and for the city's Building Regulation Department.
      The Building Regulation officials, for instance, have constantly dozens of housing dispute cases on their books. "Staggeringly often the reasons behind these cases brought to us are fundamentally ones of personal chemistry. Somebody has got bent out of shape over something, and they find a suitable pretext to get us involved", sighs Juha Veijalainen, who heads the permit unit at the Public Works Department.
     
The police, too, have a steady case-load of neighbour-on-neighbour spates of one description or another.
      "The most trivial cases are in fact some of the most awkward to deal with. There is no substance there, but they still want to get an argument going", says Inspector Heikki Perkola of the Pasila police precinct.
     
But while they might occasionally be ridiculous, arguments between neighbours are often anything but a harmless shouting-match over the fence.
      The police are routinely called out to intercede in disputes between neighbours that have gone to the stage where blows are exchanged. Long drawn-out feuds can also be carried to the point where the courts are asked to arbitrate.
      "And fines do not always put a stop to it. The battle recommences straightaway, only with a new gripe being used to get things stirred up again", says Perkola.
     
Veijalainen is of the opinion that people in the capital have not yet really learned how to live in a densely-built environment of small houses.
      "The living environment is a good deal tighter than our perceived image of our own turf or territory. We still seem to live as though we were in a sparsely-built detached housing area or out in the countryside with no neighbours to worry about."
      "Then someone goes and builds a two-metre wooden fence around their castle, to protect their privacy."
     
Arguments between neighbours seem to blow up most easily in the summer months, when people are out and about more and windows and doors are left open, allowing noise and even smells to start a ruckus.
      Things generally kick off from small, everyday matters, like taking out the rubbish or beating carpets at times other than those prescribed for the purpose. All kinds of housing areas have their share of fights and disputes. Noise coming through the walls or from upstairs is a primary cause in cases in apartment blocks.
     
Another standard casus belli is territory, and its violation.
      In apartment blocks there are arguments over common areas, such as a shared washing machine and drying room in the basement, while in housing estates of terraced or semi-detached houses, a frequent cause of annoyance and argument might be when a neighbour walks across your yard to his house, or builds something suspiciously close to the boundary-line.
      Insp. Heikki Perkola has no doubts about the worst setting - detached houses are the absolute pits.
      "Building those things ought to be banned outright by law. When one of the two original owners moves out, and someone else moves in, the problems almost inevitably start. The remaining original resident believes he has tenure of a sort and he starts throwing his weight about as if he owned the whole joint, and the newcomer feels he is being treated like some tenant farmer with no rights", charges Perkola, taking an extreme view of how things can - and sometimes do - proceed.
     
The City of Helsinki has five housing counsellors, for whom spats between neighbours are more or less a daily bind.
      "Often people have difficulties examining their own actions and the consequences of them. When feelings are also running high, they cannot find ways and means of resolving a situation peacefully, but get very aggressive", says counsellor Maria Nordman.
      "It becomes a no-surrender situation. The real scale of the dispute and its importance get buried under strongly-held principles", confirms Juha Veijalainen.
     
Helsingin Sanomat /First published in print 28.2.2008

More on this subject:
 A quick guide to how to start an argument with the neighbours

ANTTI TIAINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
antti.tiainen@hs.fi