By Eliana Horn, Community Stewardship of Land Senior Policy Analyst
Permanently Affordable housing at scale is completely possible
In Vienna, over 60% of residents live in either municipally owned social housing or what they call limited profit association housing. Limited profit association housing is probably most akin to a community land trust model. This is truly unimaginable to me. We toured over half a dozen buildings, and these buildings had community rooms, art spaces, commercial grade kitchens, and roof-top swimming pools. They truly represented a renter’s paradise. And on top of it, they were all permanently affordable, independent of someone’s income. A resident’s income need to qualify (200% AMI) at the beginning of their tenancy, but never again after that. Rent is set in proportion to the size of the apartment, and in limited profit associations, according to the cost, to build the building. The rent increases by a predictable formula capped at 1% or 2% per year.
The cultural battle matters as much as the policy battle
In Vienna, some people live in private-market housing, and some people want to own their homes, but it is not the vast majority. Most people are not even thinking about homeownership as something that is essential in their lives or a goal to strive toward. People understand that their taxes (at a much higher rate than in the U.S., though rich pay considerably higher than those with less income) support healthcare, housing, and the ability to age with dignity. They don’t need to own a home to get those needs met, and people feel a lot of security living in a social housing unit. In the U.S. we need to think about the housing crisis as a cultural battle as much as a policy battle. Are we going to stay committed to the idea that homeownership is the key to basic life needs, or are we going to build those needs as common goods we all have a right to? Making it normal to have those expectations is half the battle.
Universalism without particularism is a problem that ignores racism and ignores the past
Vienna is amazing, and it’s got major problems, including a long history of deep racism and xenophobia that is active today. We heard from a Black activist who ultimately left Vienna after feeling unwelcome and unsupported. While the concept of “social mixing,” the idea that people across race and class should be living in mixed income buildings together to combat ghettoization and segregation is a lofty ideal, in practice it sacrifices community, belonging, and addressing the particular needs of particular communities, especially for minorities in a dominantly white city. Non-permanent residents are barred from accessing social housing, and we learned that about 20% of Vienna’s population are not citizens and cannot vote. Vienna has lagged behind other European countries in reckoning with their complicity and participation in the Holocaust, in which Jews, Roma, and the LGBTQ community was decimated, and the lack of capacity to really reckon with that history in an honest and balanced way, translates into flattened and simplified attempts to combat racism today.
Non-market affordable housing is a bulwark against the market, not the other way around
Urbanists argue that the key to affordable housing is making supply meet demand, or making supply surpass demand, and affordable housing should be built only to serve those most vulnerable, where the market won’t serve. Vienna shows us that the opposite is true. The more affordable housing we build, the more affordable the entirety of the market will be. Permanently affordable housing increases the supply of housing that is reliably and permanently below market rate. A comprehensive study of housing in Austria over fifty years, showed that a 10% increase in the share of non-profit housing associations leads to an average decrease in non-regulated rents of 30 to 40 cents per square meter.
Public land and the tools to acquire it are key to building the vision we need at scale
The key to Vienna’s success was two rounds of public land used for building public housing. The first was during the post-war period, when the municipality was virtually reconstructing an entire city that was decimated during the War. Vienna was wise to see that land was a vital resource and an opportunity they couldn’t squander and used the land to construct municipally owned social housing across the city, accounting for roughly half of today’s social housing. The second was in the mid 1980s, when the city established a land bank called the wohnfonds_wien, which aggressively bought agricultural land and brownfields within and adjacent to the city. The land bank remediates the land and works closely with the city’s planning department to create master plans for new neighborhoods. The land bank then sells the land for very cheap through a competitive process to nonprofit developers, and in limited cases, to for-profit developers. The land bank has been key in building the second half of today’s social housing, including limited housing associations, and expanding the city to meet population changes.
We need to hang out more as a movement to build the power we need
It was so fun and helpful to be with EDI partners, social housing advocates, labor, tenant organizers, legislators, and the affordable housing community on this trip. We all learned so much from each other and formed lasting relationships being in a new space and imagining a different Seattle together. It was invaluable, and we need to do more of it now that we’re back on Duwamish land.