Housing
Vienna’s Social housing has a tradition of more than 100 years
Today, Vienna is considered the model city par excellence when it comes to affordable housing in high-quality apartments. The foundation for this was laid over a century ago: Around 1900, the majority of Vienna's population lived in dark, cramped, and damp apartments, and a full 15 percent of the population lacked housing. It was only during the era of "Red Vienna," that is, the 1920s and early 1930s, that a broad-based housing program was initiated to remedy this dire situation. This marked a milestone particularly for the socially disadvantaged parts of the population: instead of having to live in dark, cramped, and damp apartments, people could now hope to live in one of the newly erected municipal residential buildings. Those residential buildings, built, operated and owned by the municipality of Vienna, were designed not only to be bright and hygienic but also to enable children to grow up in a healthy environment—after all, child mortality was significantly higher back then than it is today. Since then, with the interruption during the years 1933-1945, the tradition of social housing in Vienna has continued. In the 1950s and 1960s alone, the city of Vienna built almost 100,000 new apartments.
Investments in the construction of new housing
Housing policy has not only been a priority for the city of Vienna in the past century: Vienna continues to invest in new housing construction as much as almost nowhere else in Europe. The principles of affordability, high quality, and ensuring balanced social diversity remain key tenets of Vienna's municipal housing model. In addition to the ongoing construction of municipal residential buildings, Vienna's housing model has been supplemented in recent decades by the construction of subsidized housing projects. Nowadays, no fewer than 200,000 subsidized apartments ensure that Vienna remains an affordable major city in the European context despite significant population growth over the last decades. The city has also responded to the changing housing needs brought about by societal changes: specially constructed so called SMART apartments offer high-quality, compact living space, particularly suitable for small families, couples, and singles, with a focus on affordability for tenants. With Vienna's approach of operating an own scientific housing research program, the city also ensures that high-quality, innovative, and sustainably built housing continues to be created in sufficient quantities in the future.
Vienna as city of affordable housing
Vienna is growing significantly faster than most other major cities in Europe, with the city’s population exceeding the two-million-mark in 2023. With its urban development plan, Vienna is responding to the city's steady population growth and the challenges, associated with it, by planning the entire infrastructure within new urban development areas holistically and with foresight: From housing to areas for new businesses and corporative settlements, public transportation and green spaces to sufficient healthcare facilities, kindergartens and schools. Despite this, housing costs have risen less than in many other major European cities and remain at a comparatively moderate level. In other German-speaking cities comparable to Vienna, such as Berlin, Hamburg or Munich, you sometimes have to pay significantly more for housing than in Vienna. There is a reason why the amount, which has to be spent by the average inhabitant for housing, is relatively low: Vienna's housing policy. Not only has the city of Vienna never sold the 220,000 council apartments, that were built since the 1920s, making it the largest municipal housing owner in Europe, ongoing housing construction programs have also ensured for decades that there is sufficient high-quality and affordable housing even in the face of strong population growth.
More than half live in social housing
Nowadays, around 60 percent of all of Vienna’s residents live in social housing, which includes municipal housing, subsidized housing or housing, built by housing cooperatives. One in four Viennese even lives in one of Vienna’s 1,800 municipal residential buildings, which are directly owned by the city of Vienna. By building different types of social housing, the city of Vienna continues to invest in the creation of affordable housing in Vienna - after all, housing is a human right, as stated by the United Nations.
Plenty of green spaces and good public transportation in new urban areas
Around 50 percent of Vienna's urban area consists of green space. To ensure that the proportion of green space remains high, when developing new districts, sufficient green spaces and bodies of water are created within. In addition, the focus is primarily on using already sealed areas such as former industrial or commercial sites for the creation of urban development areas. Examples include the Nordbahnviertel on the site of a former railway station and the Sonnwendviertel on the site of the former freight station. In the course of the construction of these two urban development areas alone, parks covering more than 20 hectares were created. In the Seestadt Aspern urban development area, on the other hand, a 9-hectare lake, surrounded by public parks, was created. In addition to maintaining a high proportion of green spaces, the city of Vienna is also concerned about good public transportation for its residents: besides maintaining a dense net of public transport in already existing city districts, the city of Vienna is keen on providing good public transport in new urban development areas from day one. In specific terms, this means that urban development areas in Vienna are integrated into the public transport network even before the new residents move in.
Further information on Vienna’s housing policy are found here:
https://www.wien.gv.at/english/living-working/housing/
Link to the PDF-file „Brochure Vienna in Figures 2023“
Link to the PDF-file „Poster Vienna in Figures 2023“
Link to the PDF-file „Brochure Municipal Housing in Vienna. History, facts & figures“