Large parts of northern Sweden have seen a fast increase in many new job opportunities. Skellefteå municipality is the most prominent example of this. The company Northvolt established a factory there in 2017 which has led to a fast increase in population. This has largely been seen as positive, however it has also caused many problems for the municipality. The most pressing problem is housing. It has been hard to build new housing at a fast enough pace to match the increasing population, this has led to a housing shortage in Skellefteå.  The aim of this essay is to examine the possibilities of converting and using second homes as permanent housing in Skellefteå Municipality. Deserted houses will also be included to a lesser extent. This will be done by analyzing previous research and reports and by taking second homes from broker websites and analyzing the price and other factors in ArcGIS Pro as well as the potential costs of renovation. The results show that five types of second homes could be converted into permanent housing at a somewhat reasonable price. While many second homes are cheaper than apartments, they are still quite expensive if the costs of renovations are included. It is unclear if using second homes as permanent housing could have a large impact on the housing shortage in Skellefteå, and more research is needed to say anything for certain. Deserted houses could be converted to permanent housing, but it is unclear if there is an interest in doing so, since it could be very expensive and tedious to renovate these houses.

In Sweden there are large differences between living in the city and the countryside. To make the countryside more attractive as a place of living, improvement is necessary in some regions. One such region is Skruv, a village that consists of a lot of deserted houses.  The purpose of the study is to improve the living conditions in this region. As a result, a design proposal has been created. In the creation of this study, both information gathered from field studies and interviews with subject relevant professionals has acted as a basis. This all surmised into a proposal with the old stationhouse as a central role. The proposal has a futuristic angle, as it expects there to be a functioning train stop, something which also increase the attractiveness of the region. In the proposal the chosen deserted houses consist of functions that are deemed desired by the inhabitants in Skruv.  Overall functions in a society are the same regardless of the geographical location. It’s important to look at a place specific conditions and resources to enable a favorable development.