The city of Vienna, Austria, famous for its rich cultural and architectural heritage, is also recognized for its unique social housing program. In practice for nearly a century, Vienna’s social housing system is known as an effective and innovative model for providing superior, affordable housing to the city’s residents. The Vienna model was recently the subject of an exhibit in New York City hosted by the Austrian Cultural Forum that generated substantial interest among those in the U.S. working to improve the quality and accessibility of affordable housing for American families.
The model showcases the innovation, creativity, and freshness of design with which well-known architects, working with different private sector developers, have helped to shape Vienna’s affordable housing. More recently, on November 12, 2013, the Housing Opportunities Commission of Montgomery County, Maryland and the Montgomery Housing Partnership hosted a discussion about this remarkable social housing program. The term social housing is used extensively in Europe to refer to government-owned or regulated affordable housing. A comparative study of social housing programs in European nations finds that they vary substantially — in their histories of origin, who they serve, where housing is located, the physical nature of the housing stock, the means of financing new housing, and even how their housing subsidies work.
