Housing | Helsinki abolishes the criticized Hitas system

The Helsinki City Council decided at Monday’s meeting to terminate the Hitas system. It will be replaced by a set of measures instead of a single replacement system. The city gives up reserving new plots for Hitas sites.

The introduction of separate measures is more flexible than the housing regulatory system, and “enables different options to be tested and reorientated”, the city’s press release says.

The whole includes the construction of quality-controlled family housing production, increasing the production of right-of-occupancy, experimenting with co-ownership housing, and later actions aimed at increasing the attractiveness of suburban areas.

The decision does not come as a surprise. HS is anticipated abolition of the system already since spring.

Quality controlled family housing production means that lots are reserved for family housing in the most expensive areas of the city, which are subject to the same type of quality criteria, for example in terms of size, as in Hitas housing. However, housing production works according to market conditions.

The goal of co-ownership apartments, on the other hand, is to facilitate the transition from a rental relationship to an apartment owner. The Helsinki housing development office builds apartments for which residents enter into long-term leases and for which they first pay a small portion of the purchase price. Later, they have the opportunity to redeem the apartment for themselves.

Measures to increase the attractiveness of suburban areas especially concern the urban renewal areas Malminkartano, Kannelmäki, Malmi, Mellunkylä and Meri-Rastila, which will be intensively renovated in the next few years.

Municipality wants to introduce the co-ownership housing model during 2024. It calls on other state actors to open a discussion about removing or increasing the model’s income limits in an appropriate way.

In order for the implementation of the new co-ownership model to start as smoothly as possible, the city government urges to start reserving plots for the housing development of the city of Helsinki, ATT.

The city government also urges to take care of sufficient plot reservations for the city’s own housing rights production.

Slow is a regulation system for the price and quality level of apartments, the purpose of which is to offer affordable owner-occupied apartments to apartment buyers and also to monitor that the apartments remain affordable.

The has been criticized for example, because the apartments do not end up with those for whom they are intended. Hitas apartments are cheaper than market-priced apartments, but they can also be purchased by people with good incomes, for example as investment apartments.

In the report prepared by Aalto University last year, Hitas got reprimanded that no one knows how much money Helsinki loses because of the system.

Correction June 12, 2023 at 10:03 p.m.: The photo is from Jätkäsaari, not from Hernesaari as was incorrectly written in the caption.

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