You made a bad experience but that cannot be generalized. I made very good experiences. In general it's probably okay. Sharing means you are not completely your own boss but you can benefit from the company. It got pros and cons.

What I wanted to stress is that with a four times as large budget you can have even more than four times the value because they price often scales sub-linearly with the value.

In this case: 4 roommates would of course need more than a single fridge, say two large fridges, where everyone has half of a large fridge which is comparable to having a small fridge but cheaper in total compared to having to buy four small fridges. That's what I wanted to say.

I think it probably works with people you know and trust, like your friends, or your family members of course. On the other hand, if it is a group of strange people where you have no say who stays "with" you and shared e.g. the fridge, it can easily become problematic. What if e.g. someone wants to invite dozen friends and party all night long several times a week, and doesn't care you don't like it?

I like my privacy at my home, it is my safe haven. Maybe it is a cultural thing too, Finns love the saying "My home is my castle" ie. home is a place where you feel safe and where you are in control. It is quite different from, say, Thailand where it is customary to keep your apartment door open and the neighbor just walks in to say hi. No siree, we can't have that in Finland.

Generally speaking and as you're "young" if I remember well, it's quite normal for people of your generation (18-25) to get and want some flat-sharing experience but as you grow older it's not so attractive anymore as people will go on with their own lives and problems. Flat-sharing is only fun when you're young and care-free (It makes me regret the good old days of studying/drinking/partying/fucking ^o^).

For "adults", in the long term it's more interesting buy some big property (like a small farm) and just divide it so the different people can live their own life (raising a family and such) somehow apart from others but still close to them enough to form some kind of community (sounds like a sect ^o^)

Either you are like-minded and invite another dozen friends and have wild sex with people you hardly know and the best time of your life or you don't like it and usually one is the legal owner of the shared apartment and if that's you then you kind of throw the guy out you don't like or if the legal owner isn't you you move out and seek like-minded people.

It doesn't have to be friends necessarily, just people who are showing mutual respect and agree to some common rules. Usually after some time you can find such guys. It is a bit of work though, but the benefits (company, friendship, much more value for the money) are quite high too are also huge so it's worthwhile in general unless you like solitude and are easily annoyed, then it's definitely better to search for a single apartment/studio, but even then there are possibilities to share something like sharing a garden, sharing a kitchen with separate fridges and strict rules, sharing cars. Shareconomy.

That works if you e.g. own the big apartment or are the primary tenant, and take subtenants there. Then you can decide who lives there with you.

I was maybe more thinking of cases where the owner doesn't live there himself, but rents single rooms from the apartment to different people. I don't think in such cases the other (sub)tenants have much to say whether they accept the new tenant or not, other than moving out themselves.

Also what I recall from such community apartments for students before, at least earlier you didn't really get to choose who lives there with you. You just got some room in some apartment, and that's it. Hopefully you cope with the other tenants.

Jyvaskyla, not in the very center of it, but within ~5km of Matkahuolto and <3km from shops like Prisma, Citymarket, Lidl, etc. It's from private market and I moved in just a couple months ago.

I don't know if it's so weird to cover buying property. There benefits already in place are already supposed to cover food, clothes, some travel, etc. Either way you have to live somewhere, and unless you already own a house and have paid the mortgage off, you're going to have to spend a certain amount of money on your place to live, whether rented or owned. And if you can't pay that money, you need some help. Now again, what's so bad about supporting the purchase of property through benefits?

Think of it from a different angle: if you support rent through benefits, where does that money go? Quite possibly in the hands of a private landlord. What can he do with the income? Whatever. Like buy property. So saying that it isn't reasonable to support the purchase of property through the benefits system is in contradiction with the fact that the money spent on supporting rent payments can still end up supplying private property, just for some other person. At the very least, to have some consistency, shouldn't they then limit these benefits to state owned housing only?

That would be one way... but then they'd have to make sure there are enough such state-owned housing for all people living on benefits.

Albeit this is not directly related, also that will people lose their (state-owned) home as soon as they find a job, or can they keep living in it? Currently even many working people get some housing benefits because of high housing costs.

What you said about rental with benefits, it has already been identified as a problem that landlords (like me) tend to put the prices to the maximum what the benefit system covers. There is no incentive for the tenant to try to get it cheaper if KELA/sosiaalivirasto (the state) already pays for it.

I think suggestions to somehow alter the housing benefit system, or limit them to state-owned housing only, will face VERY much opposition from the Finnish labor unions. Why? Because they practically own the biggest (private) rental housing company in Finland. It is in their interests that the state pays as much as possible for the rents, as it goes to their pockets.

http://yle.fi/uutiset/ay-liike_kaarii_miljoonia_vuokra-asuntoyhtiostaan__asumistuet_valuvat_osinkoina_liitoille/8462252

And as we know, if the labor unions (SAK) oppose something... then it will most probably not happen.