Vienna's Radical Idea? Affordable Housing For All

Being from Austria, social housing is quality but there is a long list to wait. My brother waited close to 5 years to get the apartment he’s in now. It was well worth the wait.

By all cities I've been visiting and some - been living - Vienna is a pure gem. A historic - as well as modern masterpiece of urban planning. It's all about art and sharing an awesome life. Now I live here and I love it every single day and try to contribute.

As someone from Hong Kong, the world's least affordable housing place in the world for over 11 years, I felt so upset after watching this video. It's not like our government cannot solve the problem-- there are plenty of solutions. They just don't want to do anything with it.

The biggest takeaway for me is that they build not just public housing BUT also communities. They build public transport, kindergardens, clinics, shops, parks, etc. We do NOT do that in the US. Developers here just plop up bunch of townhomes in middle of nowhere and then leave it to the county or HOA to manage everything. Zoning has a lot to do with this but its crazy that cities and towns let developers get away with doing the absolute bare minimum...

"B-but what about shareholders? You're just building houses for people to live in? That's crazy talk!"

Affordable housing? Bloomberg: RADICAL IDEA!

One maybe important point missing here is that Vienna also has an excellent public transport system owned and managed by the city. When they develop a new part of town public transportation is often finished first which significantly helps to create affordable housing, high density and desirable housing units. The example given "Seestadt" got a direct subway line making it a relative convenient place to live despite the relative remote location.

As someone who works in the affordable housing industry in the US, the most staggering thing to me from the video was construction costs being HALF in Vienna than what they are in Seattle. If construction costs in the US would be cut in half, I think the housing supply could increase exponentially if paired with upzoning large amounts of land to multifamily & mixed use.

Bloomberg: uploads this Me: grabs popcorn and heads straight for the comments

As someone from Vienna, I feel like I should really apply for one of these buildings haha

Wow, that is amazing. Well done Vienna. I hope the city planners and mayors of my country are watching because we're beginning to have housing issues in our 3 major cities. And this would be amazing.

Bloomberg of course not even mentioning that the only reason for all of this is that Vienna has a social democratic government since 1919.

As a Viennese, I am overly proud of my city. I can confirm that every information in this video is 100% correct, altho there can be some added to it: Most imporant info is that these social houses CAN be passed down to your kids and to the next generation of family members. There are different tiers of social housing available under the program. There are some older social buildings (Gemeindewohnungs) that still need renovation, because some are in very bad shape, but they are fixing a lot of them every year. Then there is the Smart living category which is mainly focused towards young families and single young professionals who are either about to enter the workforce or just did. These are typically the newly built social houses with a lot better living standard compared to the old ones. All of these are price capped by the city goverment and make living in Vienna a lot better and cheaper. The only downside that isn't mentioned in the video is the waiting time on these projects are HUGE and sometimes takes 2-5 years to get a chance for an apartment. That said, the project is intended even for middle class people, as the income requirement for the program is under 50,000 euros for 1 person or 72,000 euros for 2 persons AFTER TAX. This means that basically about 95% of Vienna qualifies for this project because probably the only ones who make more than this are successful businessmen and CEO's.

Should do a clip on Singapore's public housing. About 80% of Singaporeans live in flats built by the Housing & Development Board (HDB). These flats are modern in design, spacious and very affordable.

"radical idea" can u please stop acting like affordable housing should be a "controversial" topic

I lived in Vienna for almost 8 years, now I'm in Switzerland... and I can tell you that Austrians have the housing problem solved...

Honestly, for someone like me. Owning such an apartment such as these ones remains a pipe dream. WOnderful houses I must admit

Any country also can achieve this IF the government is NOT in cahoot with developers

If only I could have been involved in designing my apartment block, people would be able to play music and make noise in there homes and not disturb a single person because the walls, floors and ceilings would completely sound proofed.

I haven't travelled outside of the EU, but Vienna is the best city I've seen in person. The rest of the world can only learn how to be better by their example.