Photograph by Annabel Oosteweeghel
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Finland: Model Home
By Mike Edwards, November & December 2004
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Drop a few coins into a slot machine in a local casino in Finland and you
contribute to the care and comfort of retirees. Legal gambling in Finland is
the exclusive province of the Slot Machine Association, a government-controlled
nonprofit that pumps more than $50 million a year into the welfare of the
country's 65-plus population (800,000 out of a total of 5.2 million).
Slot machine profits, for example, helped build the four-story Saga Senior
Center, a complex of 138 units in Helsinki with cheerful apartments that are
emphatically uninstitutional and that allow older people to have their own
space and their own life.
Throughout Finland, there's great enthusiasm for housing like Saga:
"It's the classiest senior home in Finland," says Leif Sonkin, a
housing expert. "It's really like a spa." Indeed. Sunshine pours
through the glass roof of the atrium, nourishing a lush semitropical garden.
The swimming pool is indoor-outdoor and heated in winter. In the basement are
saunas, essentials of Finnish life, and a well-equipped gym. (Pay no attention
to its thick steel doors; the government requires bomb shelters in all
buildings, a holdover from Cold War days.)
"The Saga center isn't a place for rich people," says
administrator Mariana Boneva. A small apartment rents for about $600 a month.
Most retirees can afford that, but "if they need it to live here, people
can get a government housing subsidy," she adds.
Saga is one of three residences owned by the nonprofit Ruissalo Foundation.
Although municipalities are charged by law with caring for older people,
nonprofits have taken a major role; they operate more than half of
Finland's "service housing" homes for the elderly.
This shared responsibility is an extension of the egalitarian streak that
started permeating policy in the 1950s, when Finland, along with Sweden,
Norway, and Denmark, embraced an unabashedly liberal brand of welfare that set
a new course in social programs for the elderly.
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