A virtuous circle: why Vienna’s approach to housing leads the way

The way Vienna treats its housing has caught admiring glances from administrators across Europe. Nearly half its stock is either owned by the city or limited-profit housing associations (LPHAs). The city has leveraged this position to encourage humanised design across both private and public builds. 

The current Mayor, Michael Ludwig, had previously been Vienna’s councillor for housing, giving him mastery of this brief by the time he was in overall charge of the city. But the city’s high-quality housing is not down to one Mayor. Instead, it’s the relative continuity of approach cross politicians that has refined the model over decades.

The LPHAs are the key ingredient of Vienna’s special sauce. These are private companies that, by law, can only make a small percentage profit, with the surplus reinvested in maintaining old or building new stock. Rents are capped at sums that reflect the production costs of structures, rather than market value.  

“Visual appearance is prioritised alongside social and environmental sustainability”

Private developers must compete with LPHAs to win land and projects from the city. Because of their reduced profit motive, LPHAs can invest more than in fulfilling the city’s competition criteria, which prioritise visual appearance alongside social and environmental sustainability. For the pioneering Gleis 21 housing project in Sonnwendviertel, for example, staggered balconies and a tactile wooden façade were part of the plans co-designed with residents.  

LPHAs search out the best architecture talent, to wow the competition juries, knowing that long-term low-interest loans from the city government will smooth the construction process if they win. 

This enviable quality of design has a knock-on effect on for-profit developments on private land. If a citizen can live well and affordably in an attractive LPHA-stewarded building, why would they pay more for a boring box elsewhere? Developers up their game, an example being the new Grünblick Tower, where wrap-around concrete balconies vary rhythmically in depth and length to excite the eye.  
 

Images

Top: Gleis 21 by einszueins arkitektur (image: Hertha Hurnaus)

Bottom: Grünblick Tower (image: SRABAG and Value One)