Inclusive Neighborhoods with Social Housing - Lessons from the Vienna Model and Potential International Application

Preparation: target the audience and focus on the participants: the interactive event will take into account the needs of the participating attendees and their countries. They will be asked to frame their interest in affordable housing models and the availability of public land for its development. The event will be structured in 4 parts: 1. A historic overview of the development of the Vienna Housing Model since its initiation in 1923 with the introduction of a progressive housing tax will be presented briefly to illustrate the difficult situation at the starting-point due to mostly private real estate ownerships and empty state coffers after World War I. The tax revenue facilitated the realization of different projects from garden-city settlements to large housing blocks; 1927-1930 Red Vienna constructed 60.000 flats. In 1934, Austrofascist regime ended the social housing expansion. World War II exacerbated the serious housing shortage and left 20% of Vienna’s housing destroyed. In 1945 rapid post-war reconstruction began, often prioritizing mass over quality. In the 1990s, a new system for assuring high-quality housing was introduced: developer’s competitions. 2. The development of the system from the 1990s until present differentiates between Social and Affordable Housing. The latter requires less public investment and is driven by housing developers following the rules set out in the open competitions for obtaining the public land at below-market prices. The leases for the apartments offer below-market rents and are open for citizens from different economic backgrounds, compared to the social housing system which is reserved for lower income groups and relies on public subsidies. The organizational model is based on the 4-pillar system to secure the award of the land to the developers based not only on economic grounds but also on high quality proposals. 3: Present and future: The successful system has evolved to respond to current challenges e.g. climate change and energy crisis which made it more complex and costly. Scarcity of materials, higher construction and energy costs and inflation lead to a significant reduction in new projects. 4.Transferability of the system: The last part focuses on the learnings based on the international feed-back from previous conferences, findings from on-going national and international research as well as the interaction with the WUF 13 panel from Latin America, Spain, Italy, Austria and the WUF participants.