In May 2018, the Aalto University Student Union joined SOA – The Finnish Association of Student Housing Organisations.

SOA is an advocacy and cooperation association for student housing communities. Its members include 20 student housing communities from all over Finland, and the umbrella organizations of higher education students, SAMOK and SYL (the National Union of University Students in Finland).

“AYY has looked into SOA’s operations, and we decided to join it because of the broad cooperation possibilities it offers,” says Noora Vänttinen, Chair of AYY’s Board.

SOA offers its members training and other events. SOA also collects statistical information from its member communities, which is utilized both in advocacy work and in the development of the member communities’ own activities.

Housing is one of AYY’s most significant member services. AYY has 2 500 student apartments and it offers a home to 3 200 students in the Helsinki Capital Region.

AYY is continuously developing its operations and housing services. The Student Union’s real estate strategy contains ambitious development goals for future years. Concentrating apartments of the right size close to the Otaniemi campus is an important goal, and the aim is to invest also in the visibility and open communications of the housing services.

“We think that it is important to network with other student housing communities. Closer cooperation and exchange of information will help us to offer higher quality housing services to our members,” says Riitu Nuutinen, AYY’s Service Manager.

Read more about AYY’s housing services: /en/housing
More information on SOA’s activities: http://www.soa.fi/en/soa-ry.html

The AYY Representative Council decided in its meeting on Thursday, 22nd of February, to change the Housing Regulation. The most significant changes concern the period the application is valid and the returning of applications into the queue when receiving an offer for an apartment.

Apartment applications are now valid for only three months at a time, so remember to renew your applications periodically to avoid them being removed from the queue. When you receive an apartment offer, all of your applications into all apartment groups are removed from the queue. You can return three apartment groups back into the queue, discounting the group you got the apartment offer from. So, if you receive an apartment offer from say a single-room apartment in the Teekkari village, you cannot return that application group into the queue, but you must start the queue process again from the start.

Returning is unaffected by whether or not the apartment groups are in separate applications. If the applicant has applied for the same apartment group, for example Teekkari village single-room apartments, in separate applications, Domo will return all the applied Teekkari village single-room apartment applications back into the queue even if they were in separate applications. Apartment groups can be returned to the queue always in maximums of three, even if the applicant had several applications for different apartment groups. So, if an applicant has applied for a two-room or three-room apartment together with a friend, and sent another application for single-room apartments, they can return a total of three apartment groups back into the queue out of all the apartment groups to which they have applied when they receive an offer.

You can read the whole Housing regulation here.