From Collapse to Model City: What Helsinki's Reinvention Offers Kingston
In the early 1990s, Finland was in freefall. The economy had collapsed almost overnight. Unemployment soared past 18%. Suicides reached historic highs. Public trust in government was shattered. In Helsinki, homelessness surged, and people quite literally froze to death in the streets. For a country we now associate with stability and social harmony, it's hard to imagine just how broken things once were. And yet, it was from that low point—not a position of strength—that Finland began the long, quiet work of reinvention.
Instead of chasing silver-bullet solutions or grand promises, they focused on rebuilding from the ground up. They invested in people. They made government transparent. They experimented—testing ideas in real time, learning from what failed, and scaling up what worked. Over the years, this trial-and-error approach reshaped not only Helsinki's housing system, but its entire culture of public trust. Today, Finland is not just surviving — it's thriving. It has ranked as the happiest country in the world for eight straight years, with rising scores in trust in institutions, life satisfaction, and equitable opportunity. Its success is not about perfection — it's about commitment, humility, and the courage to build systems that actually serve people.
I recently had the opportunity to join a study tour of Helsinki, organized by 8 80 Cities and supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). I heard directly from the people who led this transformation—urban designers, public health experts, housing officials, and community leaders. They didn't just share success stories. They talked about failures too. What didn't work. What they had to unlearn. What they had to change. It wasn't fast. It wasn't neat. But it was real. I received a firsthand account of practical, people-centered governance at work — and it left me convinced that many of these lessons could be adapted and applied here in Kingston.
What stood out for me was that Helsinki didn't get better by being perfect. It got better by being honest, by listening, and by trying. Instead of sticking with broken top-down systems or doubling down on punitive measures, they chose a more human approach. They launched small pilot projects. They embedded designers in communities to listen first and plan second. They made decision-making visible—so residents could see how policies took shape, where the data came from, and how their voices mattered.
They rebuilt trust not with speeches, nor by shifting blame to their national government, but with real openness and concrete action.
Why does this matter to us in Kingston?
Because we're facing our own slow-burning crisis. Homelessness is rising. More and more people are living in tents, on sidewalks, or bouncing between shelter beds. Residents are worried, sometimes angry. Service providers are stretched thin. And for all the meetings and strategies and consultations, the unfortunate gap between intention and outcome keeps growing.
The truth is, our version of "Housing First" hasn't lived up to its promise. Not because the philosophy is wrong, but because we've stalled in its implementation. We've confused "first" with "only." We've spent years planning—and spent millions—without delivering results that people can feel. And every delay, every top-down fix that misses the mark, chips away at trust. It makes residents more cynical, and the work ahead harder.
Helsinki shows us another path. One that doesn't wait for perfection. One that recognizes complex problems need flexible, real-time responses. That failure is part of progress, and that public faith can be rebuilt when we act with humility and purpose.
Encouragingly, we're starting to see signs of that shift here in Kingston. The City's Housing and Homelessness Advisory Committee, now under the leadership of Councillors Conny Glenn and Gary Oosterhof, has come to a similar and refreshing conclusion: that we need to try new things and experiment with new ideas—some, where appropriate, through practical pilots and real-world testing. It's a promising signal that Kingston, too, is ready to step away from rigid, top-down approaches and embrace a more open, experimental mindset.
Over the coming weeks, I'll be writing a series of opinion pieces, each drawing on a specific lesson from Helsinki and exploring how it might help us here in Kingston. Topics like participatory budgeting, community co-design, and transparent decision-making. But more than ideas, these articles are an invitation—to imagine a new approach, and to get involved.
At the same time, I'm working with local advocates on something bigger: a Dignified Housing Strategy. It's still in draft form, but it shares the same core principles—start small, stay accountable, co-create with the people affected. If we want to change how Kingston responds to homelessness, we have to change how decisions get made in the first place.
That means involving residents not just as taxpayers or after-the-fact critics, but as co-authors of the future. It means listening to people with lived experience. It means being honest about what's working and what isn't.
We don't need to be perfect. We just need to be brave enough to try something different.
That's what Helsinki did. It worked for them.