I lived in Vienna for over 20 years. Social housing is part of it. There are enough apartments available to house roughly 1/4th of the population. Average waiting time is 1-2 years to get one. So it doesn’t work for everyone. But the requirements to get one are reasonable. The middle class has access to them.

On top of that, Vienna has some rent control. Houses built before 1953 have a legal maximum for rent. And a lot of buildings are older than that. Newer buildings that took advantage of government grants also have rent limits. And then there are Genossenschaftwohnungen. They are built by “non-profit” developers (not quite right but close enough). They also have rent control.

So there are a shit ton of affordable apartments available. And that keeps even the rent of units that aren’t directly controlled in check. Obviously there are a few buildings and locations that still charge outlandish rent. But no one is forced to take them.

Of course landlords find ways to go beyond the limit. But we are talking at most $100-200 a month higher. Not outlandish higher. Because there are a lot of easy to use tools to check your rent price. You just put in what you pay, where you live and it will tell you if it’s allowed or not. If they charge too much there are resources available to have the rent fixed and you get paid back what you overpaid.

Plus the law really favors renters. Perpetual rent contracts are the norm. Term-Limited rent contracts have a mandatory discount added to them. And they are limited to one extension. The second one would turn it into a perpetual contract. So landlords have a hard time getting rid of existing tenants/contracts. Or end up paying a lot for real estate agent fees.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

At only 26, he lives in a bright fifth-floor apartment with high ceilings overlooking a European capital city, 10 minutes from the central station and within walking distance of cinemas, theatres and bars.

In the place that last year retained its crown as the world’s most livable city in the Economist’s annual index, Vienna’s renters on average pay roughly a third of their counterparts in London, Paris or Dublin, according to a recent study by the accounting firm Deloitte.

Funded primarily through a hypothecated tax on luxuries such as champagne or horse-riding, the inaugural phase of socialist-governed “Red Vienna” saw 65,000 socially rented apartments shoot up within the city by the time of the Nazi coup attempt in 1934.

The most famous examples of Red Vienna social housing, such as the Karl Marx-Hof in the 19th district or the estates dotted along the “Ring Road of the Proletariat” on Margaretengürtel, look more like castles or monasteries, with art deco flourishes on their facades.

Talk to Gemeindebau residents such as 76-year-old Heinz Barnerth, a retired mechanical engineer who has lived for the past seven decades in the Reumannhof estate in Margareten, and he will be unswerving in his praise of the idea that brought his block into existence in the 1920s.

He criticises Wiener Wohnen for its opaque accounting, suggesting its finances are in direr straits than the Vienna’s senate admits, and that the city’s underspending on maintenance is driving the middle-income earners so desired for the social mix into private rentals.

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