Social Europe

  • EU Forward Project
  • YouTube
  • Podcast
  • Books
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

Vienna social-housing model: celebrated but misused

Gabu Heindl 26th September 2023

The ‘Vienna model’ has been distorted to embrace private investment but its real redefinition should be ecological.

Vienna,social housing
It’s not just housing—the Amalienbad public swimming baths in Vienna (SAVEMEDIACONTENT/shutterstock.com)

When it comes to housing, Vienna is celebrated as the epitome of how to do it right, amid accommodation crises around the world. While there is indeed a lot to be learned from the city’s housing politics—the oft-cited ‘Vienna model’—it also needs critical reassessment if housing is to be treated as a public good rather than a private commodity, as is more and more so under neoliberal conditions.

Recently the Austrian Erste Bank toured eastern-European cities, including Brno and Zagreb, to propagate a housing-investment programme designated ‘Vienna model’. The internationally renowned exemplar was recast in the bank’s public-relations discourse as a public-private partnership (PPP).

Within this scheme, the ground for building is still provided by the city but the housing units are built with finance from banks, private developers or insurance companies. While the dwellings must be rented out as social housing for a limited period (mostly ten years), they then fall under the rule of the market, becoming available for sale, and resale, including for private rental.

This PPP ‘Vienna model’, which should be more mundanely characterised as Wohnbauoffensive Wien, has indeed been practised by the city administration as a special, privately financed housing programme since the global financial crises. It has been applied especially in Seestadt Aspern, a large new urban development on the outskirts of Vienna. This is why analogous procedures can now be advertised under the highly reputable label ‘Vienna model’.

‘Red Vienna’

What, however, gives the housing model associated with the Austrian capital its reputation as a synonym for affordable, high-standard housing and a tight social-housing network is certainly not a PPP which reroutes public money into private housing. On the contrary, the good name which the ‘Vienna model’ internationally enjoys stems from its origins in a socialist housing programme carried out in 1920s ‘Red Vienna’. This continued in the city’s century-long tradition of social-democratic government, resulting today in 420,000 non-market rental housing units (municipal and co-operative), with associated security of tenure.

This tradition—which still draws on its Austro-Marxist, left-social-democratic heritage—has been misused to beautify and camouflage an initiative to privatise and capitalise urban public space. But if Vienna is recognised today as the world’s ‘most liveable city’, that is a product of its political history.



Don't miss out on cutting-edge thinking.


Join tens of thousands of informed readers and stay ahead with our insightful content. It's free.



We can still see all over Vienna icons of Red Vienna’s housing and other radical reform programmes. Inscriptions on the facades of the countless 1920s and early-30s communal housing blocks—a Hof (court) in many cases, as in Karl-Marx-Hof—announce, in big red lettering, that it was built by the city by means of the Wohnbausteuer (housing tax), a highly progressive tax to provide housing and other urban infrastructures for the working classes. This is declaimed in a straightforward manner, as a small but important victory against capital and its political representatives.

‘Luxury’ for the many

The ‘Vienna model’ practised by the social-democratic city administration from 1920—interrupted in 1933 by the Austro-fascist dictatorship of the Catholic right, replaced in turn by Nazi rule in 1938-45—meant mass housing was regarded as a high-quality infrastructure for the many: it was neither charity nor an emergency measure. The idea was to finance the housing structure as such—to make housing affordable for all, instead of financing individuals through subsidies, which would only be redirected to private owners as ever-increasing rents as demand grew.

Regarding housing as infrastructure meant that it went beyond giving a ‘roof’ to the needy, to include innovation and architectural quality. Indeed, this extended to an idea of ‘luxury’ for the many, such as via rooftop pools in public housing blocks.

Housing was a part, and a pivotal point, of Red Vienna’s declared programme of building, step by step, a city for the non-propertied masses. This represented a network not only of social-housing superblocks but also of public hospitals, baths, libraries, cultural centres and childcare facilities. The city was to become a proletarian counter-universe, surrounded by a country dominated by socio-political conservatism and authoritarianism—a tangible, liveable, alternative reality.

Profitable for some

Speaking of a ‘Vienna model’ with regard to social housing today evokes that tradition, revived after the 1930s fascist ruptures and a neoliberal intermezzo around the turn of the millennium. It is a tradition of retaining social-housing units as public property, not commodifying and marketing them, and of proactively procuring land to provide building ground as a precondition for affordable housing.

Today, sadly, the municipality so provides not only for non-profit housing associations but also for private capital investments. In a way, then, one cannot blame investment banks for misusing ‘Vienna model’ as a label for PPP schemes that are ‘working well’—read profitable for some. The city administration falls short of sticking to the socialist and democratic policies, oriented to the commons and mass empowerment, that give the model its meaning.

What is more, today’s Vienna does not really gear its social-housing programmes to the working classes but excludes a significant part of them. Disenfranchised migrant workers are to a large extent denied access, through a regulation privileging access for those officially resident for over two years.

The administration has a euphemism for this anti-migrant measure, the Wien-Bonus (Vienna bonus). Under this nice-sounding name, the traditional paternalism of the city’s social-democratic government is given a racist slant, amid the increasingly harsh conditions of neoliberally induced scarcity of affordable urban housing. While in the last two decades the market has built a lot, it has generated speculative vacancy or high-price apartments which make no contribution to mitigating the housing crisis.

Racist reactions

Hence, even though nearly half of Vienna´s housing units are municipal dwellings (220,000 in total) or subsidised apartments (200,000), waiting lists and waiting times for both types of housing are very long. This scarcity in affordable housing provokes racist reactions, along the lines of ‘migrants should be last to get in and first to get out’.

A radical, democratic politics that remains true to its egalitarian heritage has to counter this racist political taint. Yet it cannot succeed only with appeals to an open-hearted cosmopolitanism which is nice for those who can afford it. It must combine the critique of racism with tangible reductions in the shortage of affordable housing, improving living conditions for all regardless of their ethnicised (or gendered) identities.

And even that is not enough today. Tackling the housing problem—while still taking pride in the houses and infrastructure built for the many over the decades—is not only, or even primarily, a matter of constructing ever-more housing blocks but of connecting the social questions of justice with ecological ones. It becomes about redistributing, refurbishing and bringing to affordable use what already exists. And it is about creating new imaginaries, possibly inheriting critically from lost futures in the past.

This is what would deserve the name of—and breathe new life into—the ‘Vienna model’.

This concludes our series, supported by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, on global cities

GabuHeindl
Gabu Heindl

Gabu Heindl is a professor and head of the department Architecture Cities Economies at the University of Kassel in Germany. She is also an independent architect, urban planner and activist. Her Vienna-based practice GABU Heindl Architektur focuses on public space, collective housing and urban justice.

Harvard University Press Advertisement

Social Europe Ad - Promoting European social policies

We need your help.

Support Social Europe for less than €5 per month and help keep our content freely accessible to everyone. Your support empowers independent publishing and drives the conversations that matter. Thank you very much!

Social Europe Membership

Click here to become a member

Most Recent Articles

u421983467e464b43d2 1 Why European Security and Sovereignty Depend on Its Digital SectorMariana Mazzucato
u42198346c3fba71fa474 0 As Temperatures Rise, European Workers Face a Looming ThreatMarouane Laabbas-el-Guennouni
u42198346741 4727 89fd 94e15c3ad1d4 3 Europe Must Prepare for Security Without AmericaAlmut Möller
6ybe7j6ybe Why Real Democracy Needs Conflict, Not ConsensusJustus Seuferle
u4219837 46fc 46e5 a3c1 4f548d13b084 2 Europe’s Bid for Autonomy: The Euro’s Evolving Global RoleGuido Montani

Most Popular Articles

u4219834647f 0894ae7ca865 3 Europe’s Businesses Face a Quiet Takeover as US Investors CapitaliseTej Gonza and Timothée Duverger
u4219834674930082ba55 0 Portugal’s Political Earthquake: Centrist Grip Crumbles, Right AscendsEmanuel Ferreira
u421983467e58be8 81f2 4326 80f2 d452cfe9031e 1 “The Universities Are the Enemy”: Why Europe Must Act NowBartosz Rydliński
u42198346761805ea24 2 Trump’s ‘Golden Era’ Fades as European Allies Face Harsh New RealityFerenc Németh and Peter Kreko
startupsgovernment e1744799195663 Governments Are Not StartupsMariana Mazzucato
u421986cbef 2549 4e0c b6c4 b5bb01362b52 0 American SuicideJoschka Fischer
u42198346769d6584 1580 41fe 8c7d 3b9398aa5ec5 1 Why Trump Keeps Winning: The Truth No One AdmitsBo Rothstein
u421983467 a350a084 b098 4970 9834 739dc11b73a5 1 America Is About to Become the Next BrexitJ Bradford DeLong
u4219834676ba1b3a2 b4e1 4c79 960b 6770c60533fa 1 The End of the ‘West’ and Europe’s FutureGuillaume Duval
u421983462e c2ec 4dd2 90a4 b9cfb6856465 1 The Transatlantic Alliance Is Dying—What Comes Next for Europe?Frank Hoffer

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI Report

WSI Minimum Wage Report 2025

The trend towards significant nominal minimum wage increases is continuing this year. In view of falling inflation rates, this translates into a sizeable increase in purchasing power for minimum wage earners in most European countries. The background to this is the implementation of the European Minimum Wage Directive, which has led to a reorientation of minimum wage policy in many countries and is thus boosting the dynamics of minimum wages. Most EU countries are now following the reference values for adequate minimum wages enshrined in the directive, which are 60% of the median wage or 50 % of the average wage. However, for Germany, a structural increase is still necessary to make progress towards an adequate minimum wage.

DOWNLOAD HERE

S&D Group in the European Parliament advertisement

Cohesion Policy

S&D Position Paper on Cohesion Policy post-2027: a resilient future for European territorial equity

Cohesion Policy aims to promote harmonious development and reduce economic, social and territorial disparities between the regions of the Union, and the backwardness of the least favoured regions with a particular focus on rural areas, areas affected by industrial transition and regions suffering from severe and permanent natural or demographic handicaps, such as outermost regions, regions with very low population density, islands, cross-border and mountain regions.

READ THE FULL POSITION PAPER HERE

ETUI advertisement

HESA Magazine Cover

With a comprehensive set of relevant indicators, presented in 85 graphs and tables, the 2025 Benchmarking Working Europe report examines how EU policies can reconcile economic, social and environmental goals to ensure long-term competitiveness. Considered a key reference, this publication is an invaluable resource for supporting European social dialogue.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Ageing workforce
The evolution of working conditions in Europe

This episode of Eurofound Talks examines the evolving landscape of European working conditions, situated at the nexus of profound technological transformation.

Mary McCaughey speaks with Barbara Gerstenberger, Eurofound's Head of Unit for Working Life, who leverages insights from the 35-year history of the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS).

Listen to the episode for free. Also make sure to subscribe to Eurofound Talks so you don’t miss an episode!

LISTEN NOW

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Spring Issues

The Spring issue of The Progressive Post is out!


Since President Trump’s inauguration, the US – hitherto the cornerstone of Western security – is destabilising the world order it helped to build. The US security umbrella is apparently closing on Europe, Ukraine finds itself less and less protected, and the traditional defender of free trade is now shutting the door to foreign goods, sending stock markets on a rollercoaster. How will the European Union respond to this dramatic landscape change? .


Among this issue’s highlights, we discuss European defence strategies, assess how the US president's recent announcements will impact international trade and explore the risks  and opportunities that algorithms pose for workers.


READ THE MAGAZINE

Social Europe

Our Mission

Team

Article Submission

Advertisements

Membership

Social Europe Archives

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Miscellaneous

RSS Feed

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641