pic: dreamstime.com
It’s not really new, but SvD published the latest figures – a new record – on the Stockholm apartment queue today. Over the last year, 40,000 new names were added to the list – bringing the number of people in line to get a rental apartment to a nosebleed high of 676,000 people. It’s almost twice the number of the people already living in Stockholm’s inner city limits.
The Stockholm apartment queue is an institution: you sign up, you pay a yearly fee, and sometime – around fifteen-twenty years down the line if you want an apartment in downtown Stockholm – you’ll be given an apartment. Not for free! No, you still have to pay rent and all. It’s just that you’ll have a chance to get an honest-to-God apartment in Stockholm without any hassle. All you need is patience and 200 kronor a year to keep your place in line (bostadskö).
There are faster ways to get an apartment, but it’s a tradeoff in time and money. There are also different queues, for example if you’re a senior citizen (over 65) there’s another queue, and it’s even a little shorter – the average waiting time is 10 years. If you have special needs, there’s another queue. For students, there’s an average wait time of 5 years.
According to this older article, about 12,000 apartments are announced out every year but they’re not always snapped up. Stories abound of apartments to let, with announcements sent out to hundreds of people, that nobody then accepted (see one story here). The system’s inflexibility also means that someone suddenly in need of a place to live due to health or divorce and the like, can be completely out of luck.
It has become something entirely different than the what it was set up to be back in the 40’s. These days, there are tens of thousands of people that are in the queue “just in case” and who already have an apartment. Martin Lindvall, public policy chief at the property owners association Fastighetsägarna, told SvD that the queue functioned a bit like an insurance policy: “Those first in line” he said, “are those who are already well established.”
However, 676,000 people paying 200 kronor a year brings in 135 million kronor to the city, which is not to be sneezed at. We can only hope that some of that money goes to people for whom the queue was supposed to help.