Vienna: Beautiful, Quality Social Housing
When it comes to high-quality social housing at scale, few places in the world compare to the city of Vienna, Austria. One million people – most of Vienna’s population – live in social housing. Vienna has the highest percent of its housing stock dedicated to social housing, among major cities in Europe.1
Saunas, fitness facilities, lush gardens, daycare centers, and community rooms. Vienna’s social housing is famous for its amenities. Yet it has an efficiently lower cost of production – achieved in part because government intervention has curbed profiteering, by regulating land costs and playing an active role in the market.2
The city’s social housing program got its start during a period known as “Red Vienna” when, in the 1920s and early 1930s, a vibrant tenant movement elected socialists to power. Responding to widespread slum conditions and a war refugee crisis, the city constructed 65,000 quality public housing units – financed by imposing new luxury taxes on private villas, cars, domestic services, and high-end consumption.3
Wohnpark Alt-Erlaa, a social housing development in Vienna, Austria, renowned for its greenery and amenities including swimming pools, saunas, daycares, schools, gyms, medical centers, youth center, restaurants, shopping center, and more. A tenants council represents residents. (Photographer: Dominik “Dome;” CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Karl-Marx-Hof, a social housing project in Vienna built by its city council in 1927-30, with over 1,300 units, gardens, and balconies. Its premises have included nurseries, a youth center, advice center for mothers, library, post office, dental and health clinics, pharmacy, shops, eateries, meeting rooms, and more. (Photographer: Philipp Oberhaidinger; CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Today, Vienna’s rents are among the lowest in Western European cities – and it has ranked repeatedly as the city with the highest quality of life in the world.4 Tenants in social housing are afforded strong protections against rent increases and eviction. They have the right to pass on their tenure to family members.5 Renting is thus seen as a secure, desirable, and long-term option.6
Over half of Vienna’s social housing is permanently affordable public housing, directly owned and operated by the municipal government. The other portion is owned by Limited Profit Housing Associations, which have their profits capped and are required by law to reinvest revenues into building more social housing. Both provide affordable housing options, and together they constitute nearly half of all Vienna’s housing stock – with enough reach to help dampen prices and speculation throughout the housing market. However, while Limited Profit Housing Associations largely cater to the middle-class and require down-payments for move-in, it’s Vienna’s public housing that is most affordable and accessible to the lowest-income households, including lower-income migrants.7
To guarantee that affordable social housing is available, the government plays an active role in each step of the housing production process. It maintains, in effect, a near monopoly over land suitable for housing construction: decades ahead, the city acquires land at lower cost, to add to its public land bank, for development into social housing. Laws cap the sale price of land. The government then directly constructs social housing or allows the Limited Profit Housing Associations to, after a competitive bidding process, with profit restrictions and affordability requirements. The Limited Profit Housing Associations are required to decrease rents, once they have recouped construction costs. The city funds construction through a combination of low-interest government and bank loans.
At the same time, since the 1980s, Vienna’s welfare programs have suffered rollbacks, cuts, and austerity measures. Most significantly, in 2004, Vienna paused its programs to build new public housing, shifting to rely on the less-affordable social housing created by Limited Profit Housing Associations. While previously most social housing was permanently affordable public housing, the Limited Profit Housing Association program has expanded since the 1980s. In 1982, Austria’s federal government passed reforms that loosened rent controls.8 In the mid-1990s, reforms allowed Limited Profit Housing Association units to be sold on the private market, rather than remaining permanently affordable.9 These rollbacks have eroded affordability in recent years. In 2015, Vienna resumed some public housing construction, but its lowered production rate has not kept up with population growth.10 And while since 2006, Austria has enabled non-citizens to qualify for social housing, this remains out of reach for many recent and economically precarious migrants.11
It’s in this context that we interviewed Astrid Hanisch, a social worker and resident of Vienna’s social housing. Hanisch is a native of Germany who moved to Vienna in 2003. She served as a counselor in Vienna’s homeless services, helping people apply for housing – and during the pandemic, she herself qualified to move into social housing. Below is a lightly edited summary of our conversation.
Describe your experience getting social housing?
I’m from Northern Germany, in a city close to Hamburg. When I came to Vienna in 2003, market prices for flats in the private market were a lot cheaper than now, more affordable. So I rented a flat with a friend and shared a bed. It was a fixed-term lease for 10 years, which was pretty common. Our landlord was a blue-collar worker who had inherited three big houses in Vienna. I had a German passport but became a citizen of the city – so I got “social money” [a form of welfare payment] from the state for being a low-income student, about 800 to 900 Euros per month.
I lived there 10 years. But I couldn’t pay the rent on my own, 640 Euros without heat and electricity, after my last flatmate moved out. When the lease ended, the rent wasn’t fixed anymore and kept getting more expensive.
In 2006, Austria opened up its social housing to non-citizens. But now regardless of citizenship, you need special reasons to be allowed to move in: if you are ill, or in a crowded flat, or having a kid and it’s too small. You can apply if you’re over 65, or under 30 – but then you have to stay at your parents’ house to apply. And you must have lived in Vienna for the last two years at the same address. Then you can apply.
I kept renting in private housing because I didn’t qualify. But in 2020, because of the pandemic, Vienna opened its social housing to people in danger of losing their job due to COVID.
Since 2009, I’ve worked as a social worker, helping people in need of a flat. I had clients interested in looking for a flat – and then I got interested for my own situation, because I wouldn’t be able to afford my rent anymore if I lost my job.
After applying for social housing, I got a flat in a few weeks. That’s typical if you fit the criteria. There’s a lottery, you have a good chance to win if everything fits. You apply online. They show you all the flats, you choose one and if you get it, you have to say yes, you get one choice.
I live in a building that is social housing owned by the city [municipally owned public housing]. The city built it in 1932 to 1933. It houses 3,000 households. There are 15 or 16 households in each stairwell. There are big squares, food trees, a park atmosphere, playground, basketball courts, places where people can grow your own vegetables. Nearby there is a bus station, subway, and public train. A location where buses were stopping by to vaccinate people.
I really like it. In the summertime, people have their doors open, which was not the case when I lived in private housing. In my stairwell, there is a grandmother, lots of kids, migrants, a teenage daughter. I like sitting outside with neighbors talking, getting together, kids playing, and teens who can play basketball in the courts.
I never imagined this would be my housing situation. I have a balcony for the first time in my life and I love it. My favorite thing is the security. I know even if I get in trouble paying rent, I won’t get kicked out. In a private-market flat, if you are one day late, the landlord has the right to kick you out – a ridiculous imbalance of rights. In social housing, if you can’t afford to pay, you can call a number 24/7 and speak about it, make a financial plan. Even after 3 months you can get help. You can get money from a city office to subsidize rent.
As a single person, I pay 480 Euros for a flat with 1 bedroom, a living room, kitchen, and bathroom. My rent is one third less than what I would spend in the private market. That makes a big difference. Vienna is interested in the mixture of residents, and other flats in my stairwell might be cheaper. When I first moved in, I called a plumber about problems with the sink, and called a helpline about electricity. They organized some workers who fixed everything for free.
In the private market, you need to pay at least three months of rent on move-in, for a flat, as a deposit. You also need to pay money to a broker or agent to help find you a rental, because it’s very hard to find a flat in the private market. In social housing, you just need rent for the first month. Actually, when I moved in, since my flat didn’t yet have an oven or sink, I paid a lowered rent for two months until the kitchen was furnished.
I plan to live here in social housing forever. Having a social housing flat in Vienna, it feels like it’s your own for life. You can give the contract away to your kids. You can change units after five years, to fit your family size; there’s a newspaper that comes out every month to advertise to exchange flats. You can look for a bigger one, as long as you can pay rent.
What are some challenges?
In the context of national borders in the European Union, there are divides between people who are worthy and unworthy, that are racist and capitalist.
The city is really racist, they don’t want people from other countries in Eastern or Southern Europe – who are not Germans. People come here because it’s better than Budapest, where being unhoused might lead to being put in jail. There are people who actually have houses in Serbia or Bulgaria but they can’t afford heat in the winter, so it’s a better option to stay in Vienna with family, and sometimes stay in a shelter. The city is very afraid of them. During winter, no one wants to see them on the streets, so they’re allowed to enter shelters in the winter. Their legal status changes according to the seasons or weather.
The system for helping unhoused people has been privatized. I’ve worked as a social worker for a company that used to be an agency that was part of the city government, until it got privatized in 2002. I worked at a night shelter and in day shelters for homeless women, and with unhoused youngsters who adopted homelessness as a lifestyle and reject bourgeois property.
Since 2009, the shelters are only open at night, and people have to leave at 8 am. To go to a daytime shelter. When I asked the logic of why people have to leave early in the morning just to enter another place, they explained people shouldn’t feel so “comfortable,” shouldn’t be allowed to “settle down” in the system, they need “motivation” to get out.
To get social housing, everything depends on your legal status.
If people are Austrian citizens or Vienna residents of two years, if they have an income from work, unemployment benefits, or social money [welfare benefits, where you must work a minimum number of weeks annually in order to qualify], their chances aren’t bad. The majority of clients who come into the shelters [I work in] are in that situation.
But it requires a lot from applicants to have stamina to go through the bureaucratic process. A lot of women couldn’t do that. In my experience, less than 10 percent of people in shelters where I worked could get into permanent housing. For other orgs doing support for former prisoners, it’s easier for people who are Viennese by birth, who speak German, who are not dark skinned.
To get permanent social housing, like a place I’m living in, owned by the city… what’s really hard is you need 2 years of having the same address. It’s important to be a citizen of the town, have a registration in the city. It’s a circle of problems [if you’re unhoused]. And you need to apply through a social services institution.
I got this fancy little social housing flat for myself [that is more high priced]. For my clients [that I am helping apply for social housing], they’re applying for lower-priced flats. Rent is low in those one-room places, 250 Euros monthly. There are social housing flats that are really cheap, way below the private market, but in buildings created in the 1920s or 30s, some without a toilet [in the flat].12 All the social housing flats for my clients were without a heating system, and winter is really cold. They’re unattractive.
And the city is very intransparent about availability, that’s part of the problem. It’s actually easier to get a social housing flat if you have an addiction, than if you are just unhoused. With addiction, the discourse is we need to bring them into jobs, they’re Austrians and have legal status, we must help them be productive again. I have a social worker colleague who had a client in a shelter and addiction program who could get a flat in two weeks. But with unhoused people, it could take several weeks or six months. I just waited a few weeks [for my housing].
If you’re in need of a flat, but you’re not from Austria, don’t have legal status, if you have mental health problems, or are older, if you’re not seen as capable of being ‘productive’ and putting money into the system – it’s hard.
Also, you have one shot: if you are offered social housing and don’t take it, you can’t reapply for three years. If your neighbors are complaining, maybe because you have mental health issues, you can be banned from the system for three years. And if you lose a social housing flat owned by the city because you couldn’t keep up with rent, you’re banned for three years from reapplying, unless you can pay back the debt and report your income.
There is some transition housing [for unhoused people who qualify]. Things are getting better for certain people: if you’re a Viennese citizen and have lived in the city for a long time. There’s a “Housing First” program.
People get social [welfare income], that’s not privatized yet. Unhoused people can still apply for social money [welfare income] of 950 Euros, that doesn’t depend on address – but, as long as they worked 52 weeks of the last two years. So some people are in the shelter year after year, or stay with friends or relatives, or informally get illegal housing contracts that are overpriced.
Most women in the shelters are domestic violence survivors. There are women threatened by domestic violence who are losing their housing, but they don’t qualify and it’s not a valid reason to immediately get a social housing flat; in effect, they’re expected to stay with the perpetrator, especially if the perpetrator is on the lease. I give women advice to try the domestic violence shelter system, because if it’s proven and official they can qualify for social housing in a few months, or even weeks. But those shelters are overcrowded and not attractive, they can only stay there a few months. Another option is that if they call the police, the offender has to go, has to give the keys and can’t enter for up to several months [through a court process] – but many women feel that’s dangerous because the perpetrator knows where they live. Many women are forced to stay with men just because of their housing situation, in exchange for sex, being abused, cooking, chores.
In the social housing that is not municipally owned, but owned by Limited Profit Housing Associations, it’s less affordable. I’ve a friend who started a family and got a nice flat in one. [There’s low rent but] they had to pay 40,000 Euros [downpayment] just to become a renter.
What can we learn from Vienna?
You have to continue to build affordable social housing, build it nice, where people want to live. It’s really necessary to have access to affordable housing, and don’t make it too complicated to apply. Make it accessible.
In Germany, there’s a tradition of ‘squatting’ [where people occupy buildings they don’t own to demand affordable housing] there since the 1970s. Twenty years ago in Germany, I used to live in a squat. I really liked living with others. I really miss that. It was with a lot of friends, I liked to live together on a closer level.
[In Vienna,] my building has common areas, a washing room together, the square and parks to bring people together. There’s an organization working on atmosphere, like if you have conflict with neighbors. We should go back to [how] in the 1920s, there was so much more room for community building, big community kitchens – I don’t want to go back to just women cooking, but communal kitchens would be really nice. We still have some rooms in this house where before people celebrated parties together.
People paid just 4% of their monthly income on social rent in 1918-20. Now [with privatization and cutbacks], those who can’t get social housing are lucky if they pay under 40 percent of their income on rent, to a landlord in the private market.
The city privatized its retirement system in 2000. Before, a “birth-to-death” social system was part of the city. Services for unhoused people were some of the first privatized, then those for retired people and people with healthcare problems or disability. My retirement money will probably be low. That’s a generational difference from today’s elders. But I’m not as worried since I got in the social housing flat.
Social housing is stability. I’m sure this is the last thing that will be privatized. There’s more public interest in housing issues, as it gets harder in the private market.
Peter Gowan and Ryan Cooper, “Social Housing in the United States” (People’s Policy Project, 2018), https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialHousing.pdf; City of Vienna, “Vienna’s Population 2021 - Facts and Figures on Migration and Integration,” 2022, https://www.wien.gv.at/english/social/integration/factsfigures/population-migration.html; Justin Kadi and Johanna Lilius, “The Remarkable Stability of Social Housing in Vienna and Helsinki: A Multi-Dimensional Analysis.” Housing Studies (November 6, 2022): 1–25, https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2022.2135170; Cody Hochstenbach, “Landlord Elites on the Dutch Housing Market: Private Landlordism, Class, and Social Inequality,” Economic Geography 98, no. 4 (August 8, 2022): 327–54, Fig. 1, https://doi.org/10.1080/00130095.2022.2030703.
E.g., Ryan Holeywell, “Vienna Offers Affordable and Luxurious Housing,” Governing: The States and Localities, February 2013, http://www.governing.com/gov-affordable-luxurious-housing-in-vienna.html.
Veronika Duma and Hanna Lichtenberger, “Remembering Red Vienna,” Jacobin, 2017, http://jacobinmag.com/2017/02/red-vienna-austria-housing-urban-planning; Stadt Wien Wiener Wohnen, Wien Unser Zuhause, and Stadt Wien, “Municipal Housing in Vienna. History, Facts & Figures” (Vienna: City of Vienna - Wiener Wohnen, 2018), 3, https://www.wienerwohnen.at/dms/workspace/SpacesStore/7ada4d46-faa9-42e0-99a8-93ef8a392bf3/Wiener-Gemeidebau-english-WEB.pdf.
Holeywell, “Vienna Offers Affordable and Luxurious Housing;” City of Vienna, “Quality of Living -- Vienna Remains the Number One,” City of Vienna, 2021, https://www.wien.gv.at/english/politics/international/comparison/mercer-study.html.
Holeywell, “Vienna Offers Affordable and Luxurious Housing.”
In the social housing sector. In the private rental sector, conditions are less desirable. E.g., see Justin Kadi, “Recommodifying Housing in Formerly ‘Red’ Vienna?” Housing, Theory and Society 32, no. 3 (July 3, 2015): 247–65, https://doi.org/10.1080/14036096.2015.1024885.
E.g., see Christoph Reinprecht, “Social Housing in Austria,” in Social Housing in Europe, ed. Kathleen Scanlon, Christine M. E. Whitehead, and Melissa Fernández Arrigoitia, First edition., Real Estate Issues (Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 70.
Reinprecht, “Social Housing in Austria,” 65.
Dara Turnbull, “The Sale of Social and Public in Europe,” (The Housing Europe Observatory; Housing Europe, December 2020), 8, https://www.housingeurope.eu/file/966/download.
Justin Kadi, Lisa Vollmer, and Samuel Stein, “Post-Neoliberal Housing Policy? Disentangling Recent Reforms in New York, Berlin and Vienna,” European Urban and Regional Studies 28, no. 4 (October 1, 2021), 365–6, https://doi.org/10.1177/09697764211003626.
Reinprecht, “Social Housing in Austria,” 65; Kadi et al., “Post-Neoliberal Housing Policy?” 366.
According to the city of Vienna, 0.2% of city-owned public housing lacks a toilet. However, 33% of city-owned public housing units – or roughly 17% of all Vienna’s social housing units – lack heating. See Stadt Wien Wiener Wohnen, Wien Unser Zuhause, and Stadt Wien, “Municipal Housing in Vienna. History, Facts & Figures,” Vienna: City of Vienna - Wiener Wohnen, 2018, p. 13, https://www.wienerwohnen.at/dms/workspace/SpacesStore/7ada4d46-faa9-42e0-99a8-93ef8a392bf3/Wiener-Gemeindebau-english-WEB.pdf.
