Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)
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Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)
#2I legitimately wanted to evaluate the argument here but there’s so much backstory and political contextualization I gave up reading this without ever having found out what the Viennese did.
Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)
#3From the article:
> As both the Vienna model and Henry George[1] would suggest, the problem is forever and always the cost of land. Burdensome land costs, and the rentiers who gain massive wealth by passive land speculation, are the real enemies — not developers, not our homeowners, not our public officials.
[1] https://thetyee.ca/Solutions/2018/06/04/Tax-To-Solve-Housing... (linked in the article)
EDIT: From the looks of it Vienna's policy isn't purely Georgist, but it has a few policies (namely land tax, particularly on vacant lots) out of Henry's playbook.
Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)
#4There is something called in Austria called "Freunderlwirtschaft". Its Austrian for "corruption but everybody is doing it so it is ok".
These "Gemeindebauten" (affordable cheap public housing) have good flats and good areas and bad flats and bad areas. So if you want to be in the really good ones, you better have the right "Parteibuch" (party affiliation) or a friend who has it.
Said that, Gemeindebauten are a great but flawed system.
Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)
#5I legitimately wanted to evaluate the argument here but there’s so much backstory and political contextualization I gave up reading this without ever having found out what the Viennese did.
> If we don’t want Vancouver to go down this path, then perhaps we should heed Henry George’s advice: tax land and use the proceeds to build the housing we need.
Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)
#6So a hundred years ago the city imposed crazy taxes on land owners and then bought the land for themselves. Then the city built a lot of housing on the now city-owned land via non-profit construction.
The article doesn’t make a strong attempt to explain how their housing affordability is “solved” though. How easy it to find a new apartment to rent? How much does it cost? What do you get for that price? How does this compare to other cities in Europe? How does Vienna compare to other Austrian cities which did not buy up land?
It’s an interesting case study and I’d love to know more. But this article leaves a LOT of open questions.
Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)
#7A city government manipulating the price of urban property so that it can purchase it? This doesn’t seem like a workable model. Doesn’t that reduce property tax revenue? Doesn’t that affect the value of other land in general? Why wouldn’t urban land holders sue the city for damages?
Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)
#8The article states that Vienna's population in 1914 (at the beginning of WW1) was 2 million, vs 1.9 million today. I'm no housing policy expert, but isn't it possible that Vienna's rents are stable and low in part because they haven't had to increase their housing stock in over 100 years? It seems to me that a new-world city like Vancouver that has grown tremendously over that period wouldn't be directly comparable.
Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)
#9There is something called in Austria called "Freunderlwirtschaft". Its Austrian for "corruption but everybody is doing it so it is ok". These "Gemeindebauten" (affordable cheap public housing) have good flats and good areas and bad flats and bad areas. So if you want to be in the really good ones, you better have the right "Parteibuch" (party affiliation) or a friend who has it. Said that, Gemeindebauten are a great…
I think a much better effect has the "Altbaumiete" (old pre world-war-II housing) which are rent controlled. Kinda great living, slightly windy and sometimes smelly and there may be lead in the pipes, but at least affordable.
Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)
#10I legitimately wanted to evaluate the argument here but there’s so much backstory and political contextualization I gave up reading this without ever having found out what the Viennese did.
They have a steeply progressive land value tax and further escalate taxes on vacant land. They also slashed taxes on development and construction. This encouraged productive use and efforts to keep assessments low which also drives down housing costs.