The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Finnish idea could be key to creating affordable homes
Amy lives on Jura and she encapsulates the endemic challenges that young, rural people have – finding a house to live in, juggling multiple jobs to make a living and needing a car to get anywhere.
Like many under-30s, she left home to study and decided to return home to live her life. To do so, she says, she needs to be resourceful and needs the support of her strong, local community.
One of the biggest challenges for young, rural dwellers is the lack of affordable, or ‘decent’ housing. Amy lives with her partner in a static caravan on her parent’s croft.
Many of the available properties in the UK countryside are large, and expensive to rent and to heat.
In popular tourist areas, like the west coast of Scotland, the availability problem has been exacerbated, post-pandemic, by people’s desire to flee the cities to the countryside, or coast.
Finland is a good place to take some inspiration from.
The Finns put community and self-help at the heart of planning infrastructure and services.
It is officially the happiest country in the world and is one of the most sparsely populated. With 50% of the population living rurally, population density averages 18/km2 – similar to parts of Scotland.
Finland has been experiencing a ‘counter-urbanisation’ trend since the early 2000s – something we’re seeing here in northeast Scotland just recently, as people seek their purchase of the rural idyll.
In Finland, too, Covid has escalated this migration away from Helsinki and its other cities to the countryside.
Tackling rural housing is something that the Finnish Village Movement Association is doing.
It is an umbrella advocacy organisation of 4,000 village development associations. Its purpose is community led local development (CLLD), community wellbeing and public participation.
Kirsi Oesch is project co-ordinator for the Luopionen and Kukkia villages on the shores of lake Kukkia in Southern Finland. There are 700 permanent inhabitants and more than 1,000 more summer residents.
The region has seen its permanent population decline after the closure of a large factory, and investment has historically been low in the area. Kirsi says that what they do have in the villages is a lot of social capital, know-how and new ideas; also, there is a wave of growth in associations, social enterprises and co-ops.
Independent of Covid, a community-coordinated housing project started in Luopionen and Kukkia villages, in 2005, and will continue until 2024.
Building types have been designed in the village with a local architect. The wooden, prefabricated units are made in Helsinki from Finland’s abundance of trees.
They are as ‘eco’ as they can be, with no plastic used in manufacturing and low energy use resulting from being ‘airtight’. The principle of the design is a small house with small emissions and less ‘stuff ’.
Prices start from 120,000 euros (£103,500) to buy and 400 euros (£345) a month to rent. The funding for the project is from a mix of sources, private investment, EU funding (LEADER) and a local bank foundation.
The homes have shared spaces – roads, saunas and waste management. Co-working spaces have desks and meeting rooms.
A similar concept – the Smart Clachan – is being explored in Scotland.
What would it take politically and in terms of planning to adopt models similar to the Finns? I certainly hope we can follow Finland’s lead – our rural living youngsters need such boldness.