A house should be designed to grow with the family.
A home of one's own creates the basis for the growth of self-confident middle class


The last two years of his presidency Lennart Meri will dedicate to the ''Young Estonian family'' project to support young people in building their homes in European-style settlements and to thus increase the self-confidence of the middle class.

Why should the President build a home for anyone?

Eleven years ago, on April 2, 1988, I made this promise on the Joint Conference of the Creative Artists' Unions. When we published the materials of the Conference, I wrote on the back cover of the brochure the manifest of the young family, within the framework that was feasible at that time. The framework was quite naļve. This brochure, whose actual cost was one and a half roubles per copy, was sold for three and a half roubles. Two roubles from the sale of each brochure were to be donated to the young family foundation.

What happened and where did the money go?

The restoration of the Estonian State faced us with more urgent tasks. We owe the fulfilment of this promise to the young Estonian family and the whole nation. By us, I mean the Estonian state, not the government.

When ten years had passed from the Conference of Creative Unions, I decided that my last two years in office should be dedicated to launching this plan. I am grateful to the Government for allocating the launching sums from the next year's state budget.

Two and a half million kroons is not too much.

News of this sum has been received with irony, because everybody knows the price of building a house. But this is just the detonator, the starter of the project. First, the state resources actually allocated to this project are ten times bigger. Second, the money is going to come from private banks. The banks, like me, are interested in the birth of a stable, self-confident middle class. ''Young Estonian Family'' is a project on a considerably broader scale than mere house-building.

The starting sums from the government enable us to reduce the loan interests. In other words, we are planning a long-term loan system for the building of homes to enable families to repay their loans by means of moderate monthly payments they can afford.

And third, the land donated by the state free of charge is another important component of the project, whose value has perhaps not been fully appreciated yet.

The Estonian banks do issue housing loans. Why should state and government interfere?

At the present time, the interest on housing loans is quite high. The government will assume the task of decreasing this interest rate so that the monthly repayment would not exceed the rent of a modern apartment. The project's objective is to reduce the monthly repayment amount for the two working members of the young family to 2,900, not 7,000 or 8,000 kroons as some speculations have assumed.

The banks give no loans without guarantee. Will the Estonian state be the guarantor of the ''Young Estonian Family'' project?

The guarantee will first and foremost be the land under the buildings, and this is something we still have in the Republic of Estonia, thank God. The Government is ready to allocate land, so that through the building regions, which we could call settlements, it would be possible also to solve the problems of regional policy and integration. In other words, we do not intend to build some houses in the land of milk and honey and others into the wilderness, we wish to build compactly, but with large plots, just like at Nõmme. Compact building is on the one hand much cheaper, and on the other hand, and what is even more important, such settlements would create a completely different social environment than exists in Lasnamäe or Keldrimäe. At the moment, we are planning such building areas in four regions.

What regions are they?

One of them is Meriküla in the close neighbourhood of Narva-Jõesuu, the other in Mummasaare, on the incredibly beautiful beach of Vaivara. The third is near Paldiski and the fourth, lo and behold, in the close vicinity of Tartu.

The Estonians might indeed move to the vicinity of Tartu and even to Paldiski. But do you actually believe that young Estonians would eagerly settle somewhere in Eastern Viru County?

We should not underestimate the beauty of the Viru County. We tend to forget that before World War II this region was well on the way to catching up with Pärnu and Haapsalu. It is not a mere coincidence that the President's summer residence was situated in Oru.

Why are you leaving Tallinn and the Tallinners out of this project?

Four fifths of all foreign investments and a great majority of new construction following our regained independence have been concentrated to Tallinn. Such Byzantine developments have been utterly alien to the Estonian landscape and attitude. Estonia has never liked centralisation. The Estonian state was born of local governments. Invisibly, the Estonian statehood has ever since ancient times asserted itself through local governments. Tallinn can do without starting money. Another thing: governments come and go, but the state remains. Governments tend to think and plan within the frame set by the duration of their mandate. But the social and building processes relevant to the ''Young Estonian Family'' project must be planned 25, 30, 40 years ahead. Let us recognise here our common traits with Finland, which in 1945 had to find housing for a quarter of its inhabitants, which resulted in our neighbour having one of the most modern and economic housing resources today. A great deal of these were built with a long-term loan system, similar to that of the ''Young Estonian Family'' project.

The Finns invented prefabricated wooden houses, known all over the former Soviet Union as ''finskiye domiki''.

Their official exploitation time was three to five years.

By the beginning of the Thirties, the living standards of Estonians, and especially state officials, had improved considerably, and this enabled them to move into private houses. I doubt that for instance Captain Uno Laur's parents would have built a stone house on the Vabaduse Boulevard otherwise.

If someone decides for a cheap building site, this bespeaks of two things. First, he is not wealthy. And second, that although not wealthy, he prefers to live in a private house. Thus, he shares the values of his neighbour and his neighbour's neighbour. Be people as different as they may, this shared feeling has taken them to the same street. I believe that if implemented professionally the ''Estonian Young Family'' could also be successful in evoking socially and culturally homogenous settlements. Right now, we are planning the financing system for the project. The preliminary evaluations indicate that Estonia could build up to a hundred houses a year. This is much too little for Estonia's needs, and still more than we dared to expect.

How do you intend to achieve the low price of the houses?

First, the house must be effective, and therefore economical. There will certainly be no Carrara marble in these houses. The running costs of the house must be low, the heating system and insulation must meet very high standards. The house must meet the needs of the Estonian latitude and climate. We have collected these experiences bit by bit. Let us remember how friendly countries started their assistance to our country in 1992-1993. The houses at Mustamäe got new roofs and windows. Until then, one third of the heat we had paid for went just out of the window!

How big should an Estonian's dream-house be?

This is not a dream-house, but an economical house. The house should be flexibly designed and grow with the family. The house for the newly married could be smaller than the house for a family with one, two, or three children. Technically, the house must be planned to grow with the family.

The first floor of the house need not be completed in the first years. The house can just have the ground floor, which should have a design that would enable further growth. The size of the house must be within the means and meet the needs of the family inhabiting it. And the settlement as a whole should be attractive.

What do you mean by attractive?

I mean beauty. Beauty is something that the financing experts are unable to calculate on paper. What was the cost of a street at Nõmme, with the quiet whisper of pine-trees, the heather, and the ice-cream seller pushing his white cart, shouting ''Ice-cream! Ice-cream!''?

A considerable part of the price of a new house is made up of the so-called connection charges to the communication networks administrated by so-called natural monopolies.

Yes, unfortunately this is so. Our hands have been so full with the restoration of the state's independence that we have not had the strength to suppress the new monopolies. They have acquired considerable power, but of course the citizen will take this power back with a smile.

The building of water, sewage, electricity and communication networks is still expensive.

The monthly repayment rate has been planned for twenty years. Part of it has also been planned for the building of communication networks. Communications are expensive everywhere. In Estonia communications are more expensive than they should be, as here the monopolies indeed dictate the price.

Which families does the concept of young family cover?

Am I old?

Well, let us put it delicately…

… not too young any more? I do not know the upper limit for a young family age.

Would I qualify as a young family?

Certainly. As the ''Young Estonian Family'' is headed into the future, and the repayment term is twenty years, the time factor sets a certain limit to who can afford it and who cannot. Yet we should be very flexible about the upper limit.

During the Singing Revolution the birth-rate in Estonia grew considerably.

It was a sudden increase, but also just as solitary as the Grand Canyon turned inside out. At the time, Estonia was so poor that we were unable to add thrust to the changed demographic behaviour, or at least to prevent the decline. And yet I believe that the walls of a private home would add to people's self-confidence, thereby creating much better preconditions for having children. But handling our demographic situation is not the objective of the ''Young Estonian Family''. Still, it is one of the numerous means. Demographic behaviour can first and foremost be influenced by giving our citizens more self-confidence, security, and solid prospects for the future.

How far is the ''Young Estonian Family'' project now? When can we see the erection of the first settlements?

We are working at the financial solutions for the ''Young Estonian Family'', and with the building ideas at the same time. As always, also here the content determines the form. The architects will have more than ample freedom of imagination, but this time there will be no place for turrets. Imagine the Vabaduse Square in 1928! Try to understand the unswerving faith and determination that guided people at the time. This determination is both the precondition and the result of the launching of the ''Young Estonian Family'' project. Let us give Estonia back the strong pulse that has been building Estonia and leading her forward throughout the ages.

back | archive of interviews | main page