A pretty good primer about the state of things in Finland right now and added info

Fun fact, when he mentions how the poorest are mostly in debt, the debt is typically caused by healthcare bills, rents and other mandatory payments that people cannot afford to pay. Basic social security level in Finland is so low that a human rights organization has given a notice about it to Finland three times in a row. At the same time, healthcare fees are some of the highest in the world. Contrary to what is often known about our "free healthcare", it's not free, it's very expensive and the main reason for the debt of the poors.

The credit system in Finland is such that if someone has a mark on it, unpaid bills or debt, it prevents you from getting housing, loans and even basic services like home insurance, car insurance, a bank account, a phone service, electricity etc. completely. The mark used to last for years and would shut people pretty much fully out of society and it still does that, getting housing without clean credit is nearly impossible for example.

What is often then demanded from the very poorest is a sort of bond payment for the service that they are deemed unrealiable to get due to bad credit. Obviously nobody can pay a 400€ bond payment just to get electricity in their home if their entire monthly income is already only about 500€. Therefore these people are completely screwed no matter what.

Then if by miracle someone with bad credit like this gets a job, there is a system where most of their income gets deducted to pay the debt and this can't be avoided. So they often again can't pay for their basic needs, but also can't get credit due to bad credit.

Often these debts are things like 50-100€ healthcare bills that go to be collected into private debt firms that add huge sums of processing fees to them. The court also adds more fees to them. Once a small bill like this is unpaid, it trasfers into a debt worth hundreds. A poor family for example often is forced to skip paying these or daycare fees to feed their kids and all of these are the true debt of the poors. If you get caught travelling on the tram without a ticket, you get a 80€ fine for it and these mostly end up turning into debt as well, because the people using the tram without a ticket are often poor.

Point being that poor people don't have any consumer debt, because nobody can get those without a steady wage income. It's all this other mandatory stuff.

It's a vile system through and through. I've been in that situation myself for 20 years, due to an unpaid student loan and having been financially scammed as a young adult. I am now free from if, only thanks to help from loved ones, but will never be able to own anything because I don't have time to earn enough for that before I run out of worklife.

I work with people who are all in this situation. The main issue with getting housing for poor or homeless here is this bad credit, not a single landlord will even consider someone who has a marking in their credit and often the marking is from something like a bill from a dentist and just spirals out of control from there. As soon as these bills move to a credit firm they rise beyond anything a poor person could hope to pay. To levels beyond their income. It's a carceral system that keeps people in misery, by design.