This article is part of the series Home Truths: Europe's Housing Challenge.

HELSINKI — Finland’s experiment in ending rough sleeping has caught the attention of policymakers for one reason: It’s working.

Called Housing First, the Finnish model aggressively closed homeless shelters, calling them traps, and did not require participants battling addictions to recover before receiving keys to a home.

“We used to think that people somehow needed to get sober in order to be able to live in a flat,” said Helsinki Mayor Jan Vapaavuori. “But then we turned that around: You need an apartment in order to get sober.”

Vapaavuori is Finland’s former housing minister, a post he held when the Housing First model was first developed. Now his job is to implement it on the municipal level.

Housing First’s biggest innovation is right in its name.

The program is based on the comically simple idea that to end homelessness, give people homes.

Amid a rising homeless crisis across Europe, Housing First, now a decade old, is credited with getting 1,345 people off the streets, a 35 percent reduction in homelessness in Helsinki between 2008 and 2015, according to a review by Y-Foundation, a Finnish housing NGO that is involved in the program.

In some cities, long-term homelessness halved, the group claims.

Housing First’s biggest innovation is right in its name. Previously Finland had used a so-called staircase model for providing shelter. A homeless person had to meet a series of conditions before being accepted into a Finnish housing unit. The conditions often included first getting clean from addictions to alcohol or drugs.

Now the housing is allocated first, with services including addiction counseling provided second — but intensively.

Your name on the door

On a recent day in a housing block near Helsinki’s central fire station, Laurence Moore, 64, came home with a bag of groceries. Greeting his neighbors, he took the lift up to his floor, unlocked a door with his name inscribed on it, and stepped into his one-room apartment.

Moore is one of 88 residents of Alppikatu 25, a public housing unit for people at risk of homelessness in the Finnish capital. Alppikatu 25 and eight similar units around Helsinki, each a self-governing community, form the hub of Finland’s strategy.

Besides being off the street, Moore likes living in Alppikatu 25, he said. “I have no complaints about my life here,” he said, standing in his small home. “I can live the way I want.”

Advocates of Housing First say that a safe and stable place to live has increased the effectiveness of social services. For starters, it’s easier for social programs to support people when they know where to find them.

The larger goal of the program is to help residents feel a property is theirs, said Vapaavuori, the mayor.

Negative attitudes toward people experiencing long-term homelessness "may be similar regardless of the circumstances in which they are living," researchers found.

“People who haven’t had any contact with society for a long period of time, they need to regain their dignity,” he said.

Residents receive an open-ended tenancy agreement. “They need to be proud of something and have their own name on the door.”

The Finnish program’s success contrasts with a sharp rise in homelessness elsewhere in Europe. A report by FEANTSA, a Brussels-based NGO working with the homeless, suggested that every European country except Finland had seen a rise in homelessness in recent years.

Officials from Canada, the U.K. and France have inquired about the program in recent months.

The Finnish system is not without its critics, however.

A study from 2015 by the Finnish Ministry of the Environment has questioned the program’s track record on addiction. The study found some “patterns of drug and alcohol reduction and of stabilization in use,” among Housing First residents, but in most cases, residents had not curtailed additions.

Critics have also worried the communal Housing First residences are stigmatized in larger Finnish society, because the housing blocks are architecturally distinct and physically separate from the homes of fellow citizens.

The 2015 study did find evidence of bias against residents, but was inconclusive on the connection to Housing First. Negative attitudes toward people experiencing long-term homelessness "may be similar regardless of the circumstances in which they are living," researchers found.

Birth of a plan

Housing First’s success in bringing a radical shift to Finland’s homeless policy dates back to 2007, with an unexceptional government initiative: a four-person committee.

Charged with studying a worsening homelessness problem, the four-member panel, which included a medical doctor and a bishop, delivered the then-shocking proposal to battle homelessness by dismantling Helsinki’s long-standing system of homeless shelters.

“Temporary accommodation in many situations is an obstacle to ending homelessness,” said Juha Kaakinen, secretary to the 2007 expert panel. “People can’t get out of it,”

“The system wasn’t working because people weren’t getting housing," he added. "While they are living in shelters and hostels, they are still homeless." (Kaakinen is now CEO of Y-Foundation, the housing organization involved in the program.)

The panel’s final report, called “Your Name Above the Door,” laid the groundwork for Housing First.

Perhaps more shocking, after its panel on homelessness recommended closing Finland’s homeless shelters, the Finnish government then actually went ahead and did it.

“We try not to evict anyone from these units as there really isn’t anywhere else for them to go” — House manager Antti Martikainen

“We were radical or brave enough to try another solution,” said Helsinki’s deputy mayor, Sanna Vesikansa. “We realized what we had done before with temporary shelters, it was not working.”

In Helsinki, 600 hostel and shelter beds available in 2008 had reduced to only 52 by 2016.

Coming home

Founded in 1936 as a nightly shelter for 250 men, Alppikatu 25, where Moore now lives, was remodeled into Housing First apartments. Revamped in 2011, it now houses 88 residents in individual rooms located in a cream-colored block building in a vibrant neighborhood north of the city center.

It isn’t just a housing block. The new unit has 22 employees, including social workers, nurses and a physiotherapist. Residents have access to social welfare supervisors and employment coaches, a doorman and a secretary. They work in shifts so that someone is on duty around the clock.

All major decisions concerning the unit and its residents are made in community meetings attended by employees and residents. Attendance is not compulsory, and staff do not make decisions concerning residents before discussing the issues with them first.

The decision-making power given to residents helps them become more involved in the daily life of the community and to take on responsibility.

Group activities are common. On a recent weekday at Alppikatu 25, a group of men in a shared area on the first floor were preparing badges for a local company. The badges featured the Finnish cartoon figure Moomin, a white vaguely hippo-shaped character from a series of children's books. Others were socializing in the common room. The room felt relaxed, people talking and laughing.

House manager Antti Martikainen wandered through, speaking with the staff and the residents. He checked on the badge makers and talked about upcoming community events, one a music night.

Many of the residents had been drinking. That’s allowed under house rules, unlike in the old shelters.

Martikainen explained the house rules. If residents became abusive or violent, residents including the offender would be invited to a “crisis meeting,” to discuss what sanction might be appropriate. The system worked, he said. It was rare for things to get bad enough that a resident had to move out, though it had occurred.

“It only happens with repeated cases of violence by the same resident,” he said. “We try not to evict anyone from these units as there really isn’t anywhere else for them to go.”

The sites are monitored. In a room off the entrance hall, an employee watched a bank of CCTV screens, connected to cameras in the building’s common areas.

Costs and benefits

The estimated cost of Finland’s switch from shelters to Housing First is around €300 million over 10 years, with the main expenses being 3,500 new homes and 350 new support workers.

Recent research has suggested that over the long term, the system could save Finland money.

In the city of Tampere, one supported housing unit saved almost €250,000 in one year compared with the previous shelter system. Y Foundation estimates Housing First saves Finnish social services programs about €9,600 annually for each person it serves, compared with the same person remaining homeless.

Under the program, accommodation is not given for free. Tenants sign open-ended rental agreements that they pay for with state benefits, which support staff help them to access. The idea is that tenants should have the same rights and responsibilities as their fellow citizens.

In any case, both residents and care providers say the success of Housing First isn’t best expressed in euros. Back in Alppikatu 25, Moore emptied his shopping bag and made himself coffee. Raised in Ireland, he worked across Europe and the U.S. before arriving in Finland, where he has stayed for many years. He has friends, but he prefers to be alone, he said.

Now he can be. His room is tidy and the floor is clear. His clothes are ironed and stacked on the ironing board. “I keep things neat,” he said. “This is my home.”