THE "VIENNA MODEL" OF SOCIAL HOUSING
A success story
Housing policies may vary significantly among countries, regions or cities and are always dependent on the respective history and culture of government intervention in the individual Member States as well as on the different social and economic framework conditions. Government intervention, in particular through public investment in affordable housing, has dwindled substantially in the past decade despite rising demand in all cities.
A growing number of city-dwelling EU citizens with medium to low incomes are confronted with overheated housing markets and spiralling housing costs. The limits of affordability have been exceeded, and people live in qualitatively poor or overcrowded dwellings and are even threatened by forced eviction.
The exhibition “The Vienna Model of Social Housing” shows how Vienna has for the past 100 years been safeguarding the supply of its population with affordable housing. Close to 50 percent of all Viennese live in municipal housing estates or in dwellings subsidised by the City of Vienna. Every year, the City of Vienna invests approx. Euro 450 million in housing construction and refurbishment as well as in the support of persons with very low incomes.
The high proportion of subsidised dwellings exerts a price-dampening effect on the private housing market and ensures a good social mix for the city. A special characteristic of Vienna lies in the fact that a person’s income cannot be gleaned from his or her home address.
How the funds for subsidised housing are generated and how they are used; what measures are taken in the fields of neighbourhood work and eviction prevention; what criteria are applied in flat allocation – all these topics and, above all, the political dimension of affordable housing are thematised and presented by the exhibition.
The exhibition “The Vienna Model of Social Housing” was presented in Lyon (France) at the European Housing Festival and in Moscow. Other venues included the Maison de l’Europe in Nantes (France) und the Austrian Cultural Forum in Bratislava (Slovakia).
