Wrap-up of the first year of RADAR

The first year 2024 of the RADAR research project has come to an end. This one-third point is a good opportunity to reflect on the journey so far, the key developments, and the plans for the years 2025-2026.

Getting started in the spring

RADAR officially began in the spring with the formation of a steering group, the launch of the website, and a blog post outlining the project’s aims and its novel approach. The project brings together Veera Niemi, a social work researcher from the University of Turku, and Elisabetta Leni, an economic researcher from Y-Säätiö, who had been independently preparing related studies for about two years. With the start of RADAR, both were eagerly awaiting access to register-based data to begin their analyses.

Niemi received part of her data shortly after the project began, while Leni had to wait until December 2024 for access. Despite these delays, the first year was characterized by still intensive preparations, including continuous interactions with the Finnish Social and Health Data Permit Authority (Findata) and various register holders.

Presentations and publications

The project’s first steering group meeting took place in September, where research plans were presented, and Niemi also shared some preliminary findings. Discussions within the group provided valuable insights for refining the analyses and strategies for effectively communicating the findings to different stakeholders, collaboratively interpreting them in the process.

Engaging with other researchers in the field, both nationally and internationally, is important in all research. Throughout the year, we presented our research plan and early findings at several conferences:

• Finnish Urban Studies Conference (Kaupunkitutkimuksen päivät) in Helsinki in May
• Nordic meeting of the International Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood from Care (INTRAC) in Gothenburg, Sweden in May (presentation by Niemi, focusing specifically on history of child protection among the homeless)
• European Network for Housing Research conference (ENHR) in the Delft, Netherlands in August
• European Research Conference on Homelessness in Budapest, Hungary in September
• Finnish Social Policy Conference (Sosiaalipolitiikan päivät) in Joensuu in October

In addition to academic conferences, RADAR was involved in some public discussions on homelessness. During the Night of the homeless (Asunnottomien yö), RADAR was the subject of a presentation at the annual National homelessness seminar (Valtakunnallinen asunnottomuusseminaari), where over a hundred professionals from the social, health, and housing sectors gathered. Niemi also participated in two panel discussions, one at the national seminar and another at the local Night of the homeless event in Turku.

Currently, our work is focused on the time-consuming process of data analysis, and we are drafting our first scientific articles. In the first year, Niemi and other colleagues published a descriptive report detailing the process of acquiring novel register data through the Findata data permit process. Additionally, apart from the initial blog post introducing RADAR, Niemi and Leni co-authored another blog post discussing inclusion, sustainability, and critical questions in housing policy.

Local engagement

The section of RADAR focusing on Turku is closely connected to the Pathways to homelessness in the Turku region – From transitions to social, health, economic, and technological sustainability project (ASKE 2024-2025, funded by Länsi-Suomen Yleishyödyllinen Asuntosäätiö). Through ASKE, quite much engagement with local homelessness networks took place during 2024. The ASKE project has its own local steering group, where preliminary findings specific to Turku have been discussed.

At the end of the year, mayor of Turku, Minna Arve, and deputy mayor Mirka Muukkonen convened a network of public, private, and non-governmental actors working on homelessness. One of the aims of the network is to contribute expertise to support the development of a housing policy agenda for city of Turku. Niemi joined the network as a research representative, bringing insights from ASKE and RADAR to the discussions. Additionally, Niemi and a colleague from ASKE presented some register analysis results at a December meeting of Asumisen toimijat, a long-standing network of grassroots professionals in the field of homelessness in Turku.

The cities central to RADAR—Helsinki, Espoo, and Turku—are all part of Finland’s National programme to end long-term homelessness by 2027. At the beginning of 2025, the Ministry of the Environment announced funding allocations for local homelessness reduction initiatives in all three cities 2025-2026. In Turku, Niemi and the ASKE project will actively collaborate with this TurVa project, focusing on continuous data collection and the application of the latest scientific knowledge.

The TurVa project plays an important role as an umbrella initiative, coordinating resources for the other networks and projects in Turku, mentioned above. It has also facilitated Turku’s participation in the international EU Homeless Counts project, where 35 European cities exchange knowledge and refine methodologies for local homelessness data collection in 2025. Turku is the only Finnish city in this initiative, with Niemi serving as the research representative alongside homelessness expert Vilja Kamppila from the Centre for State-Subsidised Housing Construction

Nordic countries cooperation

Y-Säätiö is a founding member of the Nordic Homelessness Alliance, a collaborative network that aims to end homelessness in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden and brings together key stakeholders from those countries. Leni participated in the Advocacy, Research and Data Collection Working Group and co-authored a forthcoming research note entitled “The Role of Real-Time Data in Ending Homelessness: Insights and Perspectives from Nordic Countries,” along with other researchers and experts from the region.

This note provides a comprehensive analysis of the challenges and opportunities of homelessness data collection in the Nordic context. Drawing on insights from the first year of the RADAR initiative, Leni provided perspectives on register data and homelessness in Finland. Discussions with other Finnish experts and comparisons with ongoing efforts in other Nordic countries reinforced the consensus that effective policy responses must be deeply rooted in a nuanced understanding of homelessness and its underlying causes for which register data play a crucial role.

Looking ahead

At the time of writing this first year wrap up of RADAR, the latest national statistics on homelessness in Finland were released, and they showed an increase in the number of homeless people for the first time in over a decade. According to this annual count, there are now 3806 single homeless people, and municipalities have reported causes for the increase such as lack of affordable housing, recent major changes in social welfare, high housing and living costs, and increasing levels of rent arrears. A nuanced understanding of individual housing histories, changing living situations and welfare service use, and robust knowledge of the cost-effectiveness of Housing First through the longitudinal register-based analysis in RADAR is, hence, now even more urgent than before.

As we enter the second year of the three-year RADAR project, we are now deep into analysing the data. We are planning the first roundtable meeting with Verkostokehittäjät to collaborate with frontline experts in interpreting and discussing our preliminary findings. We are preparing peer-reviewed articles and contributing to co-authored publications on homelessness in order to publish the first results of RADAR. Many exciting events and collaborations in local and international networks are coming up also during this year, and we will keep the RADAR website updated with the news.