HYY: Helsinki rental apartments too expensive for students

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An increasingly small proportion of students at Helsinki University are able to live in apartments rented on the open market, reports a survey on penny-pinching carried out for the Student Union of the University of Helsinki (HYY).
      Students are now unable to compete in the wild and unregulated rentals market - at least not in the Greater Helsinki area.
     
The reason is a steepling increase in rents, particular in rents for bedsitter type apartments.
      Since the end of the 1990s, rental prices per square metre have gone up by around 23%, while grant and student benefit funding has been largely untouched.
      Only 23 per cent of Helsinki University students who answered the survey live in apartments rented on the free market, while the figure for the rest of the country is double this, at 47 per cent.
     
"This summer, the queues to get into apartments made available by university housing foundations have been longer than at any time this decade. The City of Helsinki is not making available enough plots of land for student housing", laments Hilkka Laitinen, HYY’s Secretary of Social Affairs.
      The survey reported that some 41 per cent of students regarded their financial situation as good or fairly good, 34 per cent tolerable, and 26 per cent said that things were bad or pretty bad.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Student housing shortage hits Helsinki and Tampere (6.8.2007)

Links:
  HYY- Student Union of the University of Helsinki
  Student Union Housing Service
  HOAS - Foundation for Student Housing in the Helsinki Region

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