Housing Students became “location-aware” – Now old student housing is no longer suitable for them

Helsinki The student apartments located in Kurkimäki will become homes for the homeless in the autumn.

The Hoas Student Housing Foundation has sold a four-house property located at Kurkimäentie 19 to the Deaconess Institute. Once the students have moved out from below, the houses will be renovated.

In September or October, about 80 homeless people will move into the premises.

From Hoasilta a large number of new student apartments are nearing completion in Myllypuro, near Kurkimäki. 49 of them will be completed in the autumn and as many as 230 in the spring of 2023.

There will be student housing in Myllypuro, because the large campus of the Metropolia University of Applied Sciences has already been completed there, and new premises for the Stad Vocational College and the Language High School are coming.

Hoas is marketing its new homes in its newsletter because students are now “location-aware” and more housing is therefore needed for “parade venues in the metropolitan area”.

In addition to Myllypuro, student housing will soon be completed in Helsinki’s Kalasatama, Espoo’s Perkka and Vantaa’s Myyrmäki. Today, people living in Kurkimäki are offered housing elsewhere.

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Kurkimäki becomes the unit of subsidized housing of Deaconess Institute’s Hoiva oy, which adheres to the housing first principle.

In Helsinki, this principle has been a key reason for the decline in homelessness. It sees one’s own home as a fundamental right that does not have to be earned separately, for example through drug-free treatment.

The deaconess institution will start neighborhood work in Kurkimäki, the purpose of which is to consult new neighbors even before the new residents move into the apartments.

According to recent statistics from the Housing Financing and Development Center Ara, there were 1,209 homeless people living alone in Helsinki at the end of last year. Of these, 518 were long-term homeless, for whom supported housing such as Kurkimäki is particularly important.

In the strategy for the current Helsinki term, politicians set the goal of eliminating homelessness altogether.