The State and Self-help Housing in Urban Finland, 1920 to 1950

This paper examines self-help housing and state housing policies in urban Finland from 1920 to 1950. In Finland self-help housing consisted primarily of self-building of one- and two-family houses. It is often assumed that self-building used to be the typical urban form of housing production. It was certainly the form that housing reformers preferred. However, most urban housing production was private speculative production. Self-building became relatively important only when other production was depressed. The state supported self-building by providing subsidised housing finance. Of the three successive housing finance systems examined, only the last concerned only self-building. The loan policies also included an attempt to control the quality and design of self-built housing. The policies were, however, so limited that they did not have a large impact on urban housing in normal times. In Finland, as in many other countries, the government's attitude towards self-building can be characterised as guarded support.