A Helsinki city council member from the National Coalition Party, Otto Meri, raised concerns about a rental apartment owned by Helsinki City Housing Company (Heka) being listed on Airbnb. The unit has since been removed from the short-term rental platform. Iltalehti reached the entrepreneur who rented the apartment and confirmed he took it down. He himself rents the apartment on a standard lease and said he didn’t know that subletting it for short stays violated Heka’s rules until Helsingin Sanomat reached out. According to him, the listing was active for less than a month. He explained he had temporarily relocated to Spain and only intended occasional short-term rentals, not full-time commercial use. The studio apartment in Vallila was listed for approximately 80 euros per night, its official monthly rent is around 400 euros. Short-term rentals are prohibited in Heka apartments, which are primarily reserved for low-income residents and allocated based on urgency of housing need. Heka CEO Maria Aspala told Iltalehti the company acts when it becomes aware of disturbances or rule violations. She noted they receive only isolated reports of Airbnb-style activity across their portfolio of roughly 55,000 apartments housing about 100,000 people. Council member Meri added that building residents had flagged the listing repeatedly to Heka over an extended period, though Iltalehti couldn’t independently verify those claims.
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