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This is Jallukka, a block of affordable rental houses built to serve people who have struggled to find housing in the private market.
The Jallukka apartment block looks one you’d see in any of Australia’s cities. Source: SBS News / Kathleen Farmilo
It was born out of a collaboration between the Y-Foundation, a Finnish housing provider and the country’s largest “non-profit landlord”, and ELMU, a live music NGO.
“The reason we want to build this kind of building is because many musicians have low incomes, and they want to make art [for] the people,” she says.
One of Jallukka’s rehearsal rooms, with a drum kit and amps. Source: SBS News / Kathleen Farmilo
Including rehearsal space was a key design consideration for the teams, adds Degerman.
A project like Jallukka is possible in part because of the Finnish government’s approach to equitable and affordable housing. But could a similar project ever work in Australia?
Finland’s Housing First model
In practice, it means that homeless people are offered homes unconditionally, rather than having to meet certain requirements, such as finding employment, before accessing housing.
According to Degerman, an essential element of Housing First is encouraging homeless people to set their own goals, rather than having goals imposed on them by a social worker.
Everyone needs to have a place to be and live. And when you have that place, then you can build your life.
Maria Degerman, Y-Foundation
According to the Housing Finance and Development Centre of Finland, the homelessness rate in Finland has decreased by about 80 per cent since the 1980s.
A row of mics and — of course — a Jimi Hendrix poster in one of Jallukka’s rehearsal spaces. Source: SBS News / Kathleen Farmilo
Australia’s housing crisis
“The problem is that any form of social housing in Australia needs funding, and at the moment, funding hasn’t been provided at a level sufficient to sustain the system, let alone grow it,” he says.
“They don’t do that because they benefit from the commodified forms of housing, or we see homeownership as the norm that our society should be structured around.”
Social housing for artists
Only $23,200 of that was derived from their creative work.
For example, the median rent for a house in Sydney is $775, which is more than double, while a unit is $720.
Source: SBS News
For low-income creative workers, a housing solution like Jallukka might seem miraculous.
In 2018, McCann was living in a share house with three other people, working out of their bedroom.
“I was spending every morning turning my bed up against the wall and working for the day on stuff, and then at nighttime putting my mattress down.”
I just knew it wasn’t a healthy thing for me to be doing.
Jeff McCann, artist
“I realised a lot of changes in the way that I approached the business side of things. I actually had the physical space to shut a door and to go, ‘Okay, I’m not thinking about what I can make within my three by three bedroom.'”
Visual artist Jeff McCann lived in one of the City of Sydney’s creative live and work spaces. Source: SBS News / Kathleen Farmilo
Sydney’s creative live and work spaces
“We know artists find it tough to secure affordable inner-city housing and workspaces as soaring costs push artists out of central Sydney,” says Sydney’s lord mayor Clover Moore.
Our research shows an alarming number of spaces where creatives once made and exhibited work in the last decade have been lost to a booming residential property market.
Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore
The City of Sydney has also recently released its 10-year cultural strategy, committing an extra $20 million in “direct support” to artists, producers and creative spaces.
“Of course, the artistic endeavours that these people progress enhance the fabric of society. They benefit us all.”
Could Australia have its own Jallukka?
“I just think it’s an example of ‘it can happen’.
It’s not necessarily complex, it’s just we need to make the decision that we want to engage in these kinds of housing forms for certain sections of the population, for example, people in the arts.
Cameron Parsell
“I would love to see something like that, multiple things like that all over, in all different spaces … What I could pull from a coastal kind of living is different to the bush, which is different to the city.”
“So it’s about society understanding that access to affordable housing is going to benefit them by creating enhanced social cohesion, solidarity, and also equity within society.”
