Those area's are pretty bad, but they're not as dangerous as e.g. in the US. I guess it's because the addicts are mostly alcoholics and they get just enough government money to buy their daily booze.
Municipalities own a significant amount of housing available for rent. These are available for anyone but there are societal reasons why someone might be preferred (e.g. single mother), while others are in the queue.
These are not the housing units given to the homeless. They are run by organizations and charities together in collaboration with municipal social workers. There are two or three houses like this in Helsinki.
So are you saying that two or three houses were enough to solve homelessness in Helsinki?
The municipally owned rental housing (available to anyone) which you talk about, together with different forms of social support help people from falling into homelessness in the first place.
Those few apartment blocks used for the "housing first" scheme are the help people out of homelessness. These houses are not normal rental apartments, and have social workers present, etc. These are not available for rent for anyone, and no-one would voluntarily choose to live in one of these if given alternatives. They are somewhere between a shelter and a normal apartment.
There are only a few houses for this purpose in the Helsinki Area, and they are actually in quite nice locations and far from each other.
No-one in their right mind would live in these houses if they have an alternative, but the problems don't affect the wider area. Some restlessness in the immediate vicinity, but not that bad.
> and they are actually in quite nice locations and far from each other.
The area's near Helsinki were I've been and where I was told by Finnish people were a lot of state houses, were certainly not nice locations. There were alcoholics everywhere and the area was visibly poor. But it's true, they were not as bad as in many other countries.
There are areas with high concentrations of municipal housing built in 1970s and 1980s, and this is generally considered a mistake in urban planning as there are concentrations of low-income, low-education residents, which isn't a positive for the area.
But I reiterate: this is normal housing available to everyone. You gotta pay your rent and behave or you get evicted. The municipality is just the landlord here.
The supported housing for the homeless is just a few housing units (apartment blocks), and they aren't normal housing. Examples of this kind of housing is Sininauhasäätiö (org), Ruusulankatu (address) and Diakonissalaitos, Helsinginkatu.