Social(ist) Housing – Housing as public interest, political demand and architectural task

The “Vienna model” is today regarded beyond Europe as a paradigm for social housing and thus for a welfare-state approach to crisis-like phenomena in metropolitan housing supply, which have been exacerbated by urban growth and the capitalization of urban space. Nevertheless, also in Vienna, rising social inequality is becoming increasingly apparent: In the private rental sector, 43 percent of tenants’ housing costs exceed 40 percent of their income. This hits low-income households dependent on private-market housing particularly hard.