The City of Helsinki has expressed concern about planned reforms in housing supplements.
Deputy Mayors Hannu Penttilä and Paula Kokkonen have sent a letter to the SATA committee working on reform to the social welfare system, warning about the prospect of increased regional inequality.
If the plans of the committee are implemented, recipients of housing subsidies would be given priority in queues for rental apartments built with state support.
Penttilä and Kokkonen say that if this happens, some neighbourhoods would start to have a disproportionate amount of poor residents, which would lead to the formation of slums, and a negative public image for the areas in question.
The deputy mayors are also worried that some of the areas would have greater concentrations of immigrants than before, which would tend to push away native Finns with jobs.
Hannu Penttilä says that the letter comes in response to claims that it would be cheaper for those receiving housing supplements to live in municipal housing than to rent on the open market.
A recently published study shows that beneficiaries of the supplements pay a higher rent on the open market than others.
Currently, an estimated 19,000 households are queueing for a municipal apartment. Twenty per cent of them receive housing supplements.
