Social housing in Vienna

We could learn a few things from the history of social housing in Red Vienna

With all the recent talk from the Harris campaign about subsidizing first-time home buyers, we might want to be looking at an additional approach:  build social housing.

For the second time within a year, I spent four days with a Hungarian couple, two teenage daughters, three guinea pigs and a Spitz. All within a seventy square meter two-bedroom, one of many in a complex. 

Built in 1929 as workers' quarters, its small single worker apartments have been recombined into livable and affordable spaces. The balcony of their third-floor apartment looks out on a shared park area with trees, walkways and a small greenhouse. The eight buildings that formed the quadrangle on their block are a mix of public and private. You need to live in Vienna two years, and then you can go on a waiting list for housing. The income of the people I stayed with qualifies them for a rent of 770 Euros per month (about $850). 

This is where I stayed (John Marienthal, photo)

In the building bulletin board we see the police help poster "I am here for you", a firefighter poster, and the photo in the middle shows who is in charge of your building. There is one maintenance company for the 200,000 apartments the city owns. Because the city also subsidized other construction, about 60% of Viennese people live in some form of social housing. 

To get a mix of all incomes the upper limit for these apartments is €65,000. For a fuller discussion of Vienna's housing please follow the link to the article “The Social Housing Secret” in Portside.