Antimateria: Anyway if you would get 560 euros without housing benefit (google translated) you just could rent an apartment and that's basically it.
One more thing, the rent prices are quite much dependent on what people are ready to pay for them. Take for me for example, I would have been quite happy to get 600€/month for my flat, but since someone was ready to pay almost 100€ more (700€) for it per month, hey why not(*)?
That's one of the problems of the current Finnish housing benefit system: the rent prices will "magically" rise close to what is the maximum that people get from the state for housing benefit. Why would the unemployed care if the apartment costs 400€ or 700€ per month, if it is the social security system that pays it fully? For the working people it is worse of course, for them it does sting if they have to cough up an extra 300€ per month.
So, in case people have less money to pay for rents (e.g. due to basic income)... then the rents will come down, period. The rent prices are not fixed, they can both go up and come crashing down. Pretty much just like apartment prices themselves.
(*) Before anyone thinks what a lucky bastard I am for getting "free" 700€/month for renting out an apartment that I happen to own, take into account these related costs that come to me from it:
- I pay around 200€/month for the housing company which takes care of the house and the apartments, and that also includes the central heating etc. On many years that has not been enough but we've been charged extra months, e.g. last year twice (ie. two extra 200€ payments from me).
- From that 500€/month, I have to pay 30% of taxes, which leaves 350€/month. So I get 350€/month for it after monthly costs and taxes.
- But the killer is, there will be a a pipe rehabilitation project coming to that house in a few years, which will cost me probably at least 30000€. Which means that all the rent income from about 8 years will be gone to that project, just to keep the house and apartments functional.
So there you have it, at the moment I am not really making any money from being a lessor, it is all going to keeping the house in shape. That's why I am very close to selling it away, frankly I should have done that already a long time ago.