Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

thetyee.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 109 posts

Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

#31

Post by giantg2 »

ch4s3 wrote: post #10
ghgdynb1 wrote: post #2

I 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.

Considering the article mentioned that the city was left leaning and also referenced Marx, I guess it's not surprise that they opted to tax people out of their property so that the city could acquire it.

Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

#32

Post by krisroadruck »

renewiltord wrote: post #29
kcorbitt wrote: post #8

The 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.

Interestingly, SF's population has only grown 13% from 1950 to 2020. The housing prices have grown rather differently, though. Curious to see, isn't it?

I imagine it has only grown 13% precisely because housing prices have grown drastically. If enough housing supply was added to keep rents reasonable, I imagine there would be a lot more people there. Instead raising rents allows the city to cycle out the less wealthy and exchange them for the more wealthy.

Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

#33

Post by giantg2 »

chrischen wrote: post #5
ghgdynb1 wrote: post #2

I 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.

Isn't that the solution to all - tax those who have (or are not part of our tribe) to pay for "us".

Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

#35

Post by phaer »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #6

So 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…

It's generally comparatively easy to find a flat here. Rents are low compared to most other cities of its size in central Europe, but rose by quite a lot in the last two decades. I pay about 650€ per month for a 1-bedroom-apartment in central Vienna, with good infrastructure

Hard to compare it to other Austrian cities, because those are generally much smaller (but can be more expensive than Vienna(.

Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

#36

Post by cheriot »

renewiltord wrote: post #29
kcorbitt wrote: post #8

The 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.

Interestingly, SF's population has only grown 13% from 1950 to 2020. The housing prices have grown rather differently, though. Curious to see, isn't it?

Yet employment increased 40% from 1990 to 2019[1]. Increasing employment while maintaining a cap on the number homes drives up the value of the homes closest to all those jobs.

[1] 2523.4/1798.7 = 1.4 from https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SANF806NAN

Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

#37

Post by aerosmile »

Here's the gist: the government taxed the shit out of the landlords and forced them to sell their land cheaply. Europeans generally see nothing wrong with this strategy, whereas most Americans will feel shivers down their spines.

This difference comes from different attitudes around ownership. In places like China and Russia, owning a house means you get to keep the house unless enough people would benefit from you not owning it. In the US, you get to keep your house no matter how much anyone - including the government - would prefer you didn't.

Europe is somewhere in between on that spectrum, and this attitude extends to not just land ownership. For example, a popular ad campaign in Austria is demanding from the employees of BioNTech to leak the base components and production instructions so that other companies can steal those trade secrets and supposedly help generate more vaccines. If you read the comments in one of the videos on this topic, you will see them being mostly in favor of the campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDnZd7UmBco.

It would be difficult to imagine many of my US friends advocating for stealing company secrets. I am not implying that either group has better ethics - they just have different attitudes towards the concept of ownership.

Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

#38

Post by dragonwriter »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #30
jeffbee wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Objectively, Vienna's housing price index is up 75% in real terms since 1990. While that's not the ideal 0%, it is much better than San Francisco where prices have gone up by 400% since 1990.

SF is an economics lesson on what not to do. Complete and catastrophic failure across the board. Low prices don’t mean much if there is no market availability. Many cities that are heavily rent controlled have horror stories of year long waits to get a unit. Or, far worse, black markets where controlled units exchange hands privately. The other responder to my comment suggests this is not the case in Vienna, nice! Th…

> Low prices don’t mean much if there is no market availability. Many cities that are heavily rent controlled have horror stories of year long waits to get a unit.

That's not an accident or paradox: rent control is a deliberate, conscious choice to prefer cost control for current residents over availability for new residents.

Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

#39

Post by ch4s3 »

giantg2 wrote: post #31
ch4s3 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Considering the article mentioned that the city was left leaning and also referenced Marx, I guess it's not surprise that they opted to tax people out of their property so that the city could acquire it.

Is that what they did? If by that you mean that they used the tax system to discourage the development of investment properties and undeveloped land as well, then yes I guess. However land value taxes aren't a marxist idea, in fact LVT has been advocated for by Smith, Ricardo, Friedman, Stiglitz, and so on. Even a lot of libertarians like LVT.

Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

#40

Post by dantheman »

gyulai wrote: post #25
r0f1 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vienna is the most livable city 10 times in a row now!

These economist rankings are done from the point of view of rich expats. I very much doubt that their lives have much in common with the lives of people living in Vienna's public housing.

Yeah, it's a provincial backwater; even as an expat - it's pleasant for awhile, but notice how people never want to go these top 10 cities... LA, NY, SF, London, Paris, Tokyo etc are not in these lists.
Post reply on HN