The transfer of students from the general housing allowance to the student housing supplement is a wrong direction for students’ benefits in three ways. It increases students’ inequality and the need for basic social assistance and makes it more difficult to transfer between benefits. Not much weight has been given to the harmful consequences in preparation and decision-making; instead, the Government will implement the transfer as a simple budget cut regardless of its impacts.

Transferring students back to the student housing supplement is possibly the most blatant act of income inequality by Orpo’s Government. It considerably lowers the status of students who do relatively poorer than others, as the lowest-income students lose up to EUR 200 per month as a result of the transfer. Students who earn more than EUR 1,200 per month will benefit from the transfer. SYL is satisfied with the success of students who work actively, but such a shift in the focus of benefits is poorly justified from the viewpoint of social policy and enabling studies.

Secondly, the transfer makes it more difficult for students to secure their livelihood in the summer. Students without summer jobs will inevitably have to rely on basic social assistance more often than before. In the Government proposal, social assistance expenditure is forecast to increase by approximately 6 million, but student organisations’ shared view is that the estimate is considerably too low.

Thirdly, the transfer to the housing supplement complicates the benefit system and complicates transitions between benefits. In the future, starting or ending studies, falling ill, returning to studies from a sick leave, having a child and becoming an employee will often lead to the student moving between housing allowance and housing supplement. Each transition creates a new, unnecessary incentive threshold and a bureaucratic process of applying for benefits.

Parliament is currently discussing the transfer of students to the student housing supplement. The report of the Education and Culture Committee was completed on 28 November. The law is to be adopted by the end of the year.

SYL and other student organisations have commented on the impacts of the housing supplement transfer in several statements and meetings with decision-makers.

“The transfer of students to the housing supplement is an unfortunate example of Orpo’s Government’s pocket calculator policy. The only goal seems to be to accumulate enough savings without regard for the impacts,” summarises Aino Halinen, Member of the Board of SYL.

Further information:

Aino Halinen
Member of the Board
+359 (0)44 906 5007
aino.halinen@syl.fi

Sakari Tuomisto
Social Policy Specialist
+368 (0)40 687 6353
sakari.tuomisto@syl.fi