Population Register and Enumeration of Homeless Persons Mr. Timo Salovaara

1. Population Register and Enumeration of Homeless Persons Mr. Timo Salovaara Information Services Manager Population Register Centre, Finland email: timo.salovaara@vrk.fi

2. BASIC FACTS ABOUT POPULATION REGISTER The Population Information System (POIS) is the official population register of Finland: it contains vital records and address information of Finnish citizens and resident aliens. Besides information on persons, the system contains data on buildings and apartments. The responsible authorities are the Population Register Centre (PRC) and the 25 district register offices, which have 59 service points located around the country.

3. REGISTRATION OF ADDRESS AND RESIDENCE • the Finnish population register contains current, up-to-date data on place of residence and address of all persons • a person’s address is the most widely needed and used single data item • a complex and thorough information processing system has been established to collect change of address data from citizens and to share that data with public authorities • for this general purpose it is mandatory to register also the fact that someone has no place of permanent residence and no address

4. REGISTRATION OF ADDRESS AND RESIDENCE (or lack thereof) Persons without place of residence • persons who have informed the register office authority that they have no permanent place of residence (n.nnn persons) • persons whose place of residence and residence circumstances are unknown to the register office authority (n.nnn persons) • persons who are located in different institutions; ie. hospitals, correctional facilities etc. (nn.nnn persons) Please take into consideration that it is NOT recorded that someone is ”homeless”. Being without an ”official place of residence”, which is meant in the first case above, is a different thing.

5. REGISTRATION OF ADDRESS AND RESIDENCE (or lack thereof) Generally, genuinely homeless persons will fall in the previous groups of 1) persons without a permanent place of residence and 2) persons whose residence situation is unknown to authorities However, group 1) will contain a number of persons who • do have a decent place to live in, but have not told that to the authorities, because it is not allowed to use the house / space for residence purposes (business premise, summer cottage…) • have indeed told the register office authority of such a fact, but the authority has not accepted and lists the person as one without a place of residence • have recently moved to live with someone, but do not want to make it ”official” (yet…) • criminals etc. who want stay ”below the radar” of authorities (but do possess a conventional dwelling)

6. CONCLUSIONS Population register can not function as a sole source for purposes of enumeration of homeless persons: the population register has a general function and its main business is to keep track of people’s addresses. Keeping track of homeless persons and their conditions would be a function of dedicated, professional ”stakeholder” organisations and is beyond the means of the register office authority. However, population register records on persons without a place of residence could be used as source material on statistical surveys on homelessness, if such surveys are being conducted by legally mandated authorities like Statistics Finland. Privacy laws must be studied in detail and adhered to during the planning and execution of any register-based survey.

7. Thank You!