The cornerstone of unity

63 THE Y-FOUNDATION
– HOUSING FIRST!
Life as a full member of society requires a decent place to live and a safe environment. A home is everyone’s 
own place. It provides shelter, but it is also a key to living with dignity and to personal growth.
Most people who have been homeless are able to live independently if they are provided with an apartment 
and enough support. To settle in, people need conditions that enable forming human relationships and they 
need a foundation for building the kind of life they want. Providing suitable housing is also essential for social 
peace. Help at the right time and tailored to the needs of the residents ensures they will settle in well. It is also 
crucial to preventing them from becoming homeless again.
Reducing homelessness is not inexpensive. But if the problem is not dealt with, its economic and human 
costs are larger. Permanently ending homelessness requires producing enough reasonably priced housing and 
adequate forms of support.
The Y-Foundation was founded in 1985 due to the serious homelessness problem of the time. The Y stands 
for “alone” in Finnish. The homeless were singles, often divorced and unemployed men, overlooked by the 
public housing policy, which favoured families. The foundation started concrete actions to end homelessness, 

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including offering rental apartments to people with housing problems. The organisations behind the foundation 
are the Finnish Association for Mental Health, the Finnish Red Cross, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of 
Finland, the Confederation of Finnish Construction Industries, the Finnish Construction Trade Union, the 
Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities, as well as the cities of Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Tampere, 
and Turku. This broad collaborative front has enabled the Y-
Foundation’s work for over 25 years and has 
simultaneously reduced prejudices against homeless single people. 
The Y-Foundation buys apartments that it rents out, and it also builds new rental apartment buildings. The 
individual apartments are in different parts of town in normal (mostly) owner-occupied apartment buildings, which 
are very common in Finland. It is also very important to carefully plan the location of the new rental apartment 
buildings, for example to ensure the availability of services. In these and other ways the Y-Foundation helps the 
homeless adapt to society.
The Y-
Foundation offers permanent apartments with normal leases. The foundation’s housing work is 
financed through loans granted by the state and financial institutions, the Funding Centre for Social Welfare and 
Health Organisations, and the foundation’s own funds.
The support measures and services for the residents are organised together with municipalities, parishes, 
and NGOs. Thanks to local networks, the resources of the authorities and voluntary organisations can be 
efficiently used. Coordination of the available support and rehabilitation services helps to find long-term housing 
solutions.
In 1987, there were nearly 20,000 homeless people in Finland. At the end of 2016, the amount had dropped 
to about 6,700. This figure includes both people in crisis shelters and those staying with relatives and friends. At 
the beginning of 2017, the Y-Foundation owned nearly 17,000 apartments in 56 different municipalities.
In addition to producing reasonably priced housing, the foundation is actively involved in developing housing 
services. The foundation also helps its residents get jobs by providing paths to a meaningful activity and paid 
work. In addition, the foundation is the home base of the Networking for Development Project, which supports 
implementation of the “housing first” principle. The housing-first principle simply states that homeless people first 
need a home, for only after that can rehabilitation measures be successful.
The Y-Foundation is active in the European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless 
(FEANTSA). Together, they coordinate the Housing First Europe Hub, a permanent learning platform founded in 
2016 that aims to revamp work on h
omelessness. The hub’s network promotes the spreading of work on 
homelessness based on the housing-
first principle and the further development of work practices. The network’s 
activities consist of training, research, and advocacy work at different levels.
Juha Kaakinen 
– executive director of the Y-Foundation