Housing Vienna: The Socio-Spatial Effects of Inclusionary and Exclusionary Mechanisms of Housing Provision

Abstract

The provision of housing plays a decisive role in segregation processes. In a European context increasingly influenced by variegated neo-liberal housing policies, Vienna’s approach is characterised by generous access to social housing. This inclusive strategy aims at actively preventing segregation and the isolation of certain groups. Over the last 30 years, however, reconfigured multi-level arrangements and wider contextual changes have transformed Vienna’s housing governance. This article explores how. In particular, it aims at disentangling the relationship between housing policy reforms at multiple policy levels and the changes of the mechanisms shaping the access to tenure segments and residential segregation in Vienna. Through the use of process tracing, we identify critical junctures of housing governance and relate them to housing segmentation and segregation measures over a period of approximately 30 years. Our findings show that reforms on multiple levels produce an increasingly deregulated private rental market and an increasingly fragmented access to a diversified provision of social housing. From a spatial point of view, persistent patterns of segregation blend with new ones, leading to decreasing segregation characterised by a more even spatial distribution of low and high-status groups. At the same time, both groups show very low, but slightly increased levels of isolation. Tenant profiles in social housing are, however, generally still very mixed. Balancing the trade-off between a social mix and social targeting without excluding residents in need will remain the main challenge for Vienna’s social housing model.

Social mix and the city: Council housing and neighbourhood income inequality in Vienna

“…Despite the city's temporary withdrawal as a housing developer, rent subsidies were retained and the construction of apartments remained subsidised by the city for instance with so-called 'Housing Initiatives' (Hatz et al, 2016). The shift from constructing municipal housing to subsidising social housing affected the inclusionary mechanisms as tenants in the non-profit housing sector typically have to pay down-payments while tenants in council housing do not (Friesenecker and Kazepov, 2021). The city currently plans to build roughly 4300 new municipal flats by 2025 which is probably too little to keep up the share of council housing in the housing stock (Kadi et al, 2021).…”

“…Social housing popped up across the city and was not limited to specific low-income neighbourhoods. The era of Red Vienna ended with the political rise of fascism in 1934, but the construction of social housing accelerated after World War II and its provision remained a key element of Viennese welfare policies (Friesenecker and Kazepov, 2021; Kadi, 2015).…”

The Changing Role of Student Housing as Social Infrastructure

“…Debates broaching transitions of housing markets, in general, have become well-represented in academic discourses, also for the example of Vienna (for ongoing debates, see Aigner, 2020;Friesenecker & Kazepov, 2021;Gruber & Franz, 2019;Kadi et al, 2021;Kohlbacher & Reeger, 2020;Musil et al, 2022). However, discussions about eroding or missing social housing policies for institutional student housing and its implications for social infrastructure provision remain under-represented.…”

“…The potential consequences for students as a vulnerable group (see Berglund-Snodgrass et al, 2021) remain underresearched, though. As Vienna is renowned internationally for inclusive social housing policies (Marquardt & Glaser, 2020) and an affordable local housing market contributing to social mix (Friesenecker & Kazepov, 2021), the exemplifying case of Vienna raises general awareness of shifting outcomes in social infrastructure provision, which might cause a decline in sociality and living quality at the local level.…”

Vertical segregation in the apartment blocks of Athens and Budapest: A comparative study

“…Recent studies on socio-economic segregation in European capital cities (Tammaru et al, 2015) revealed that even though the levels of segregation in Europe are still relatively low compared with other parts of the world, ‘the spatial gap between poor and rich is widening’ (Marcińczak et al, 2015b: 358). The rapidly growing body of literature on social polarisation and increasing residential segregation (Friesenecker and Kazepov, 2021; Haandrikman et al, 2021; Hamnett, 2021; Hedberg and Tammaru, 2013; Maloutas, 2012; Maloutas and Botton, 2021a; Ouředníček et al, 2015; Tammaru et al, 2015, 2021; Van Ham et al, 2020, 2021) indicates the assumed social impacts of segregation.…”