Stockholm's ‘Housing for All' Is Now Just for the Few
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Loading... - Amelia Poulin
- 07 Sep 2022
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When Ida Jonsson woke up on her 18th birthday, her first act as an adult — before voting or getting a drink — was to participate in a ritual for many Stockholm natives: signing up on the city’s lengthy waiting list for public housing.
Now 25, Jonsson only moved into her apartment a year ago. And she counts herself as fortunate: Not everyone is as well informed as her on the urgency of signing up for a rent-controlled apartment as soon as legally possible. “A lot hangs on the people around you and for them to tell you to put yourself in the queue,” Jonsson says. “It’s a shame because a lot of people put themselves in the queue only a few days too late and it can make a huge difference.”
For thousands of young Swedes working in Stockholm, the struggle for housing involves either scrambling for an expensive sublet or commuting into the city from more-affordable suburbs. The average wait time for rent-controlled apartments is now 9.2 years; in some desirable areas, prospective tenants might hold out for 20 years.
Cities from New York to Dublin are seeing young people struggle to find affordable housing amid low supply, high demand and soaring inflation. But Sweden, where citizens pay among the highest tax rates in the world to offset better social services, was supposed to be the exception.
The country’s national housing system sees rents set through negotiations between property owners and tenant associations to adequately reflect the property’s quality, aimed at ensuring that safe rental apartments in the Swedish capital are available at affordable rates.
Anyone in Sweden is entitled to permanent tenancy of a rent-controlled apartment, thanks to a postwar system put in place by the social democratic government. In Stockholm, an estimated 57% of apartments are privately owned, while the rest are rent controlled, according to 2019 data from Statistics Sweden. But there are not nearly enough units to meet the high demand, forcing those who cannot go through official channels into a subletting market, where reports of bribes for access and sexual harassment are not uncommon.
The situation is expected to worsen as inflation rises and the economy is predicted to stagnate next year. The economic conditions will mean “serious challenges for housing companies to produce more housing,” says housing and property councilor Dennis Wedin. Read More…
