The City of Helsinki cannot wash its hand of the debt servicing costs raising the rents significantly. Lowering the cost substantially requires paying the debts away or refinancing them with cheaper money, which Heka cannot do by itself. The most efficient action would be the city to capitalise Heka by the debt balance enabling Heka to pay them away completely.

By financing the future renovations by savin in advance taking new loan are not needed. The saving could be implemented by creating a renovation insurance where every housing unit pays premiums and then at then, at the time of renovation, gets a insurance payment covering the expenses without loaning. The idea of the model is similar than of the employment pension insurances, where on paper everyone saves for their future pensions but that is in practice a mechanism for allocating money from current payers to current pensioners via a financial buffer. The most transparent and trustworthy way of managing the system would be to establish a non-profit mutual insurance company offering only renovation insurances for the Heka housing units. The model could be introduced by first including only new apartments and then gradually existing ones.

An important benefit of the renovation insurance model is that it would create a clear incentive for better maintenance: by investing in the upkeep the expected cost of the future renovation gets smaller, and the renovation moves forward in time, thus making the premium smaller. The lower expenses can be used to compensate the larger upkeep expenses. This is considerable difference to the current model where upkeep is shows only as an expensive cretin an incentive to cut costs.

Is highly contradictory for the city to be concerned about the financial situation of Heka and capitalise it occasionally, but at the same time collect continuously property taxes and land rents from it. The Act on Municipal Tax on Real Property allows lowering the tax of non-profit buildings to zero – and if the company form of Heka prevents applying this directly the city can just commit to pay the tax income from Heka back to Heka. The land lease agreements between Heka and the city must be remade lowering the rent to zero. Lowering the rents by the amount of the property taxes and land rents is doable if the city just wants to.

The aim of the reform is to guarantee that all renters and buyers get good apartments but don’t pay more than the real and reasonable expenses. The condition of the apartment would be taken into account so that rent or price ceiling would be lower if the apartment is in bad shape. If the resident has abundant money, they can refurbish the apartment and enjoy the results – the costs of the voluntary refurbishments, however, could not be transferred to others.

It would be natural to extend the regulation both on rents and selling prices. Only regulating rents could lead to weird situation where the value of an apartment is totally different when it’s used for renting or for selling, which could encourage to real estate shenanigans.

By including regulating quality in the rent and price regulation it can be made sure that the reform won’t lead to poor quality building and unpleasant living. In addition to the materials and architecture the quality regulation could be used to ensure better conditions to the building workers than the legal minimum.

The reform would not in itself ban making profit – profits would be possible if some private actor manages to build good quality housing more cheaply than the prevailing cost level. The reform would thus crate an effective incentive to get rid of unnecessary cost coming from bad planning, messy subcontracting chains, and other such factors. When new ideas come to general use the actual expenses, used for calculating the ceilings, could even go down over time. Restricting profits surely will affect how keen the private builders are to build and so the City must ensure realisation of building targets both by increasing its own Heka-production and by supporting the non-profit builders.

In the public discussion on rent regulation the loudest opposers often get the most attention. The typical counter arguments are: ”supply of rental apartments will go down”, ”the apartments will fall into disrepair” and presenting the rent regulation as an unthinkable idea in general. Each of these are on flimsy ground.

”Supply of rental apartments will go down.”
The claim on the decreasing supply is based on selective scenario, where there are no options for market lead production. By deciding on a level of housing construction when introducing the regulations, supporting non-profit builders and pledging to build the rest by the City can be maintained.

”The apartments will fall into disrepair.”
The claim is also based on selective scenario. By tying the rent ceiling on to the real maintenance expenses there continues to be enough money for the maintenance. Lowering the rent ceiling of apartments in bad condition creates a good incentive to take care of the apartments. In the current reality cutting on the maintenance is more a problem in investor heavy condominiums then in public housing, thus reducing the profits firs production could even reduce the short-term maintenance cutting.

”The rent regulation is a complete utopia.”
The perceived unthinkability of rent regulation tells more about the public debate on the economy moving rightward than about reality. Up until the beginning of 1990s the nation-wide rent regulation based on the law was the norm, to whitch the current unregulated rents are the deviation. In the former system the government set by decree the acceptable rents per square meter by area, by building year and by room count, and the acceptable reasons for deviating from the base rents. The renter had the right to challenge the reasonableness of their rent in court and to get the excessive part of the rent refunded for up to three years in past. The regulation did not prevent the major housing developments of the 70s and 80s.

The aim of the reform is to ensure that Helsinki can enact its own housing policy regardless of the future of the national subsidy system. The Housing Finance and Development Centre of Finland (ARA), the state agency managing the system, has this far been a major enabler of the construction of affordable housing. Now the major budged cuts are made to the system in general and subsidies for right-of-residence apartment are terminated completely. Abolishing ARA as independent agency is not a good sing for the future of the system. The new Helsinki system could operate initially alongside the national system supplementing it.

Helsinki must define a reasonable level of basic electricity needs and organise the production of the city public energy company Helen so that all residents can be offered the corresponding amount of electricity without burning based production. The expenses of basic electricity system must be covered by city taxes instead of user fees. Things like wine cabinets and charging electric cars must not be included in the reasonable level but quota could be raised based on medical equipment on other actually necessary extra needs. The electricity needs above the reasonable level would be covered by making a contract with the electricity company of choice as is done now. Helen would continue selling electricity in market rates and the reform would not affect the corporate clients. Fulfilling the basic electricity needs and maintaining the transmission networks are parts of the basic infrastructure, the expenses of which must be distributed among all based on the ability to pay.

The city energy company Helen must at once end energy production based on burnin. District heating must be based entirely on heat pumps, geothermal heat, heat storages and small nuclear production. Replacing fossil burning by burning biomass is no a solution – regardless of artificial emission calculations the carbon raising from a chimney doesn’t care weather is has come from biomass that is fresh or that has fossilised over millions of years. Some of the existing burning based heating plants can be kept in usable condition for ensuring security of supply.

Currently about half of the expenses of the Helsinki Regional Transport Authority (HSL) are covered by the member municipalities and half by ticket fees. In 2024 HSL collected 372.2 M€ of ticket income and Helsinki’s share of this was 217.8 M€. In the same year the municipal tax rate of Helsinki was 5.3 % and tax income 1068 M€. Thus, the Helsinki’s share of the ticket income could have been covered by a tax increase of 1.08 %-points. After such increase the tax rate would be 6.38 % – which is still considerably less than the national mean of 7.5 %.

In practice the result of tax funded free public transport would be, that low and middle income residents of Helsinki would be left with more money at their disposal. Users of student discounted AB zone ticket earning 0–3339 €/month, users of student discounted ABC zone ticket earning 0–4984 €/month, users of base priced AB zone ticket earning 0–5565 €/month, and users of ABC zone ticket earning 0–8307 €/month would be left with more at their income. With zero income the tax increase is also zero so they would be left with the full amount of the saved price of the ticket at their disposal.

As a HSL member Helsinki must promote free HSL public transport. Abolishing the fees would also allow abolishing the expensive ticketing system. If the other municipalities are not willing to make the whole HSL transport free Helsinki must by itself offer free public transport for all residents and employees of Helsinki. The free public transport only for Helsinki residents would be best to implement so that the city pays the fraction of the total expenses of HSL that corresponds the fraction of trips made by the Helsinki residents.

The line would essentially connect the busy West harbour ferry terminal, Meilahti hospital area and the areas midst the Ring Rail to the regional heavy rail network. The line could be continued in the future towards the airport and even further. The stations of the lines could be:

• West harbour passenger terminal (transfer to ferries)
• Punavuori
• Kamppi (transfer to current metro)
• Töölö
• Meilahti hospital
• Pasila station (transfer to local and long-distance trains, and to the other new metro lines)
• Koskelantie crossroads
• Käpylä station (transfer to Main Line local trains)
• Maunula (tranfer to circular light rail 15)
• Pakila (tranfer to Ring I:n transverse bus lines)
• Torpparinmäki (transfer to Tuusula Highway local and long-distance buses)
• (option for further continuation)

The line would essentially create a new parallel connection between Eastern Helsinki, Pasila and Espoo. The parallel connection could be used as a detour during traffic disruptions of current metro line and in normal condition it would fill in the capacity of it. The line would also essentially connect the university campuses of Kumpula, Viikki, Otaniemi, Myllypuro and Pasila into an interconnected campus zone (much better thant the proposed Science Tram). Moving the Lahti Highway / Ring I intersection underground would free a big lot for infill development, and it would be natural location for a regional bus terminal. The line would use the existing Myllypuro and Itäkeskus stations in its eastern end. The stations of the line could be:

• Itäkeskus (current station; transfer to existing metro)
• Myllypuro (current station; transfer to Mellunmäki branch of the existing metro)
• Kivikonsolmu (a possible location for infill development and a new bus terminal)
• Viikki Campus
• Vanhakaupunki
• Kumpula Campus
• Pasila station (transfer to local and long-distance trains, and to the other new metro lines)
• Ruskeasuo
• Munkkiniemi
• Aalto University (in Espoo; transfer to current metro)
• Tapiola (in Espoo; transfer to current metro)

The line would essentially connect the Jakomäki direction between the Main Line and current metro into the regional heavy rail network. It would be natural to continue the line vie Jakomäki to Hakunila where it would meet the upcoming Vantaa tram line. The line would share track with the southern part of the North-South and the eastern part of the new East-West line. The stations of the line could be:

• West harbour passenger terminal (transfer to ferries)
• Punavuori
• Kamppi (transfer to current metro)
• Töölö
• Meilahti hospital
• Pasila station (transfer to local and long-distance trains, and to the other new metro lines)
• Kumpula Campus
• Vanhakaupunki
• Viikki Campus
• Kivikonsolmu (a possible location for infill development and a new bus terminal)
• Jakomäki
• Hakunila (in Vantaa; transfer to Vantaa tram)
• (option for further continuation)

The unhealthy hierarchies within the healtcare workplaces are dismantled best by advancing workpalace democracy. The local health centres, that are more humane size working environments, are much better base for endorsing worker democracy than larger units. The nurses, physicians, and other professionals have the best knowledge on how things are best done at the practical level – thus unit specific decisions are best to be left for the workers of the unit. In every local health centre, a democratic administration model must be introduced, where the highest decision making body of the centre is the unit council elected by the workers of the unit. The model can later be extended into large units and their subunits.

However dense the health centre network not all elderly or ill can walk there themselves. Currently the transport is organised by HSL neighbourhood routes, by ambulance or by taxi – however the frequency of the neighbourhood routes is quite poor and due the deregulation of taxi services organising them is a fuss. A good improvement would be to assign a HSL minibus and a driver to each health centre. With good planning the buses could both charter transport patients from their doorstep and drive some scheduled neighbourhood route services near the centres. A familiar and trained driver would be good especially for frequent health centre visitors. The minibuses could also be used to transport samples and rotating personnel between health care facilities.

The health centre buildings must be kept in good condition and in the ownership of the city. The unit councils elected buy the workers of the centres must be given power on the upkeep of the buildings. If it’s necessary to move a local health centre into new premises within the locality the old building must be kept in city ownership and taken into good use for example as a community houses, youth centres or day cares.

The general purpose of the libraries is to bring information available to everyone. Lending books, inviting authors to speak on their books, school collaboration, and providing computers and the day’s newspapers are the core of libraries now and in the future. The library buildings have an important function as public living rooms – in the throughly commercialised urban space the libraries are the rare places, where everyone can spend time without the pressure to buy anything. Free of charge meeting and event facilities are a great support for small organisations and other civic activities. The opening hours of libraries and the availability of meeting rooms must be increased.

The purpose of day care centres is both to raise the children safely into members of the community and support the parents by taking care of their children on behalf of them – both are achieved best by centres that are close home and humane in size. Closing small day care units and concentrating children into large more sparsely located units is not the right direction. In all day care centres, regardless of unit size, the proper guidelines of interior and outdoor space per children must be followed.

Following the example of the cities of Espoo and Vantaa, Helsinki must create a city-wide network of service points where everyone can get advice and assistance in using public services. The points must act also as service points of the public transport organisation HSL. Currently updating the discount group and other in person things can be done in multiple service points in Espoo and in Vantaa, whereas in much populous Helsinki there is only a single congested and cramped HSL service point.

A borough council must me established for every of the 60 city districts called kaupunginosa in Finnish. Each council would be elected by residents its operating area. The councils would meet within their operating areas, and they could nominate non-voting representatives of the local associations or decided to make the meetings open. Deciding on the upkeep of the streets and other common areas could be organised so that the city council decides on the overall resources by budged, the urban environment committee decides on the allocation of maintenance staff and equipment between the districts, and the borough councils decide how to put the resources into use in their operating area. The administrative staff serving the borough councils should have their office premises in the borough in question to make sure that the staff has a first hand connection to the area they are serving.

The city planning process must be updated so, that before the final decision making the matter is sent to the relevant borough council or councils. The final decision would be based on the official proposition including the possible alterations by borough councils. The borough councils must be given the power to dismiss the whole matter, so that if the committee would still want the matter to be approved the final decision would automatically be transferred to the city council. The idea is to create more direct and effective channel for the residents to have their say. The current process in provides in principle aways ways to express ones opinion, if one knows when to do so, but listening is fully in discretion of the committee. In planning processes initiated by private investors this discretion is often not in the side of the ordinary resident. The actual powers of the borough councils would force the urban environment committee to listen better the local residents.

The process of deciding the city budged must be updated so that before the negotiations among the city council groups an official budged draft is published and sent to borough councils. The yearly budged is the single most important yearly decision steering the city organisation – currently the draft negotiated behind closed doors leaves the city council to act largely as a rubber stamp. In the new model the process starts with an official public draft, that is the best estimate of the city civil servants on how the last year’s budget would look now considering the price and demographic changes. The draft would then be sent to boroughs councils for them to propose changes. The official draft and the borough council propositions would be the base of budged negotiations. The idea is to increase the transparency of the budgetary process and to force the city council groups to be more open on their political positions with respect to the official draft and the borough councils, instead of agreeing on matters in secret.

Maunula has a well-functioning health centre. However the city has plans to concentrate all health centres of northern and north-eastern Helsinki to Oulunkylä, which would mean closing the Maunula, Paloheinä and Pihjalanmäki health centres. Concentrating would significantly weaken the regional coverage of basic health services and the plan must not be carried out. Maunula, Paloheinä and Pihjalanmäki health centres must be kept open. Building a new spacious building in Oulunklä is not a problem in itself – the surplus space due keeping local centres open could be put into use by offering it to the student health service YTHS to replace the small Malmi service point by a better one, or by building wards for the elderly incapable of living by their own.

Out of the main roads going through Maunula only Rajametsäntie is equipped with cycle lanes separate from cars and pedestrians – similar ones should also be added to Männikkötie and Metsäpurontie. The road safety could be increased by transforming the Männikkötie/Metsäpurontie junction, why not also the Männikkötie/Koivikkotie and Männikkötie/Rajametsäntie junctions, into roundabouts. The current two-way path on the eastern edge of Rajametsäntie is a functioning one and it should not be replaced by separate one way paths. From the cycling point of view the recently renewed Rajametsäntie/Metsäpurontie junction seems to be poorly designed and it should be thought again regardless the possibly new cycle paths of Metsäpurontie.

Usually the best connection from Maunula to Käpylä-Kumpula-Kalasatama direction is to first use line 23/63/53 and then transfer to line 56. Widening and the new traffic lights of Metsäläntie have already made transferring at Postiljooninkatu stop worse – in the future when 23/63 are changed to stop on the other side of city block on Postiljooninkatu the transfer becomes lousy. The transfer could be made smoother again by replacing the large Metsäläntie/Rajamietsäntie junction by a roundabout and moving the near by Niittyläntie and Vaskisepäntie stop pairs in contact with it. A well-designed roundabout without any waiting the lights would allow really quite smooth transfers. There is plenty room for the roundabout, and it would also be good for the cycle traffic crossing the junction.

In one hand transforming the highway like inner entrance roads to boulevard like urban space is in itself a good idea. In growing Helsinki the land currently occupied by interchanges and the noice zones of the entrance highways have better use. In the other hand the boulevardisation must not become a justification to demolish the parks outside the current highway zones and turning the boulevards, that still act as the main entrance ways to the city, into nice urban areas is challenging. If the Maunula interchange of Tuusulanväylä is to be developed the Pirttipolunpuisto park must be preserved and the pedestrianised main side of the new boulevard city must the Pirttipolunpuisto side – even as a city boulevard Tuusulanväylä would most likely have too much traffic to allow pleasant outside sitting in that side. The Käpylä station interchange zone is an excellent place for a transfer bus station and more efficient buildings. The constructions around Käpylä station must be planned to allow lines 56, 53, 603 and 69 to pass the station uninterruptedly for the whole construction phase. If the new Tuusulanväylä fast tram means shortening the lines 66 and 67 into feeder lines the substitute lines going through central Maunula must be more frequent and with better hours than the current lines going to central Helsinki. The massive Pasila shopping centre is so close that the area does not need new shopping centres, instead the new commercial premises bus focus on daily services of the new residents and supplement the services not currently missing in Maunula.

The line 56 connecting the Kumpula campus with the metro and commuter train networks must be made faster, more reliable and its capacity must be increased. The line is currently regularly quite congested and especially crossing the Koskelantie junction can be tedious at times when a lot of cars are on the move. The actions to take could include at least:

• Speeding up the Koskelantie/Intiankatu junction by editing the traffic light cycles, by transforming the junction into a roundabout, and/or by restricting car traffic on the north end of Intiankatu.
• Adding separated bus lanes on Asesepäntie and Metsäläntie.
• Restricting car traffic on Työpajankatu between Vanhan Talvitie and Hermannin Rantatie (or moving the Kalasatama stop under the metro station and the terminus to the south side of the metro track).
• Replacing the current buses by the larger electric bendy buses, and doing the necessary small adjustments on the tighter junctions around Kumpula hill.
• Adding separate stopping spots at Käpylä station for lines making planned schedule catching stops at the station.

The pedestrian crossing over Kustaa Vaasan tie at the Kumpula campus bus stop is the main passage between the campus, the plurality of public transport stops, and the Arabia mall – the cars driving fast and against red lights make the crossing an everyday thriller. Everyone using the crossing on a regular basis has probably either seen a dangerous situation or been involved in one. Automatic speed cameras must be added on both directions at the crossing for getting some actual sanctions for driving over the speed limit and/or on red lights. Currently even filing a police report on red light driving with witnesses does not seem to lead to any consequences. Ideally, in addition to the speed cameras, the speed limits could be lowered and speed bumps installed around the crossing – among small inconvenience drivers and the safety the users of the dangerous crossing the latter must always come first.

The upper secondary schools was placed on Kumpula based on inadequate information by the university – when the building was intentionally designed so small that the school must regularly operate partly in the uni premises the did not tell the city that this was purely a premises cut that was not ran by the students nor the teaching staff before making the decision. The number of students and staff on the campus is increasing and instead of cuts there is already need for more space. If the growth of the uni campus continues it would be best that the city would relocate the upper secondary school and leave the building designed for educational use and already owned by the university for the use by the university.

The new commercial building planned on the site of the current Itäkeskus bus terminal must not be build. The plan would transform the well functioning and understandable terminal important for the whole eastern Helsinki into a messy side hustle of a commercial building. The new smaller terminal would limit larger increasing of buss traffic in the future and it would make transfers more difficult – in the plans transfers both to buses and between the eastern metro branches would require zigzagging though the commercial centre. Even now when the planned building has luckily not been constructed it is reason why the terminus of tram 15 has been left so far on the temporary location outside the bus terminal. Itäkeskus is already a massive shopping complex and the existing bus terminal area must not be sacrificed for good of private real estate investors.

The Östersundom area was forcibly annexed into Helsinki with the intention to make it a new suburban development area for the growing Helsinki. The planning has slowly moved forwards and it has contained the good option of connecting the Mellunmäki metro branch into the area – however in the latest draft the metro connection has been replaced by tram. Sparser urban structure, slower public transport connection requiring transfer for getting to city centre direction, and locating the cores of the development near highway intersections all scream planning towards a car suburb. From the nature point of view, it’s a good question whether the whole project is good in the first place, but if Östersundom area is built it’s better locate the same amount of apartments more densely around metro stations. Claiming that planning requiring more existing nature to be bulldozed from the way of sparser urban structure and traffic planning encouraging into driving is more natural is just dishonest. A new development area near a terminus of an existing metro line as a rare opportunity in Finland and it would be absurd to just throw it away.

The plan to close the Elielinaukio bus terminal and replace the area by a new office and commercial building would be significant loss on the downtown public transport connections. Changing the bus lines now terminating at Elielinaukio to terminate at Kamppi is an imminent risk to the current and future capacity on the Kamppi bus terminal. The connections to the regional core must be prioritised over the interest of private real estate investors. Instead, moving the terminal one level down underground could be investigated with giving the residents an actual possibility to come with ideas on the usage of surface area.

In planning the upcoming renovation of the Merihaka area one of the possible options is to demolish the student housing foundation unit HOAS Hakaniemenranta 12 and to replace it with larger residential buildings. Even though the same number of student apartments would be assigned in the new buildings the demolishing and rebuilding the existing quite cheap apartments, even by the standards of student housing, would unavoidably mean higher rents. The new larger buildings would also threat the architecturally valuable build environment of Merihaka. If something new is to be built in Merihaka the parking building in the western edge of the area could be replaced by Heka public housing, rare in the Hakaniemi-Sörnäinen axis.