How Divergent Housing Institutions Evolve: A Comparison of Swedish Tenant Co‐operatives and Finnish Shareholders' Housing Companies

A particular feature of housing provision in Sweden is the significant amount of co‐operative housing (bostadsrätt). While many other countries have co‐operative housing, it rarely accounts for more than a few percent of households. In Finland co‐operative housing has been practically non‐existent. Instead the Finnish system of housing contains another institutional speciality, not found in Sweden: housing company (asunto‐osakeyhtiö) owner occupation, which corresponds to some extent to what in the USA is termed condominiums. This institutional divergence is puzzling because Sweden and Finland resemble each other in their welfare policies and institutional arrangements. This paper explores the puzzle of divergent housing institutions by comparing the early histories of Swedish housing co‐operatives and Finnish housing companies. While both forms of tenure emerged as early 20th century solutions to urban housing crises, their organizational form and social character are rather different. Swedish co‐operative housing grew as a social movement closely connected with the social democratic popular movement coalition, backed by government and local authorities. No such movement existed in Finland, and the element of mutual help soon gave way to speculative activities. With the deregulation of Swedish co‐operative housing the two forms have become more alike, to the extent that both can be considered forms of indirect owner‐occupation. Thus, in terms of tenure there is significant convergence of the two institutions, but nevertheless the social context (social relations of housing) have been and remain rather different. Keywords: Co‐operative housingOwner‐occupationHousing institutionsComparative history Notes 1. Co‐operative tenure is also very common in Norway, though this is not as well known as the importance of co‐operative housing in Sweden. According to the same statistics, about 12% of dwellings in Norway were co‐operative (Karlberg & Victorin Citation2004:Table 1). 2. In terms of legal terminology, most accurate translations would be "limited liability shareholders' housing company" or "limited liability shareholders' joint‐stock housing company". For obvious reasons, I shall stick to the shorter term, "housing company". I thank the Finnish housing researchers' net discussion list for help in the translation issue. 3. Non‐legitimate ways of access, most importantly squatting, are thus ruled out from this definition. 4. In not only the Swedish language research on Swedish housing, but also the English language one, both the national and local Tenants' Savings and Building Associations are regularly referred to by their Swedish language acronym HSB (from Hyresgästernas Spar‐ och Byggförening). I shall follow this practice in this paper. 5. The most well known of early housing co‐operatives is the one founded (and still operating) in Käpylä, an idyllic early 20th century wooden house area in Helsinki. 6. Homeowners in single‐family housing are to some, rather modest, extent organized in local and national associations, and there are perhaps some rudiments of "homeowner ideology" in these organizations and also of common policy positions.