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by em-bee 42 days ago
well actually...

the city of vienna mandates that 2/3rd of any new housing is subsidized. so instead of controlling the price all over, you control the price of a part, and make sure that every neighborhood has room for low income families. in other words you enforce mixing. singapore is another city with a lot of subsidized housing.

1 comments

And both have become massively unaffordable as a result, and have long lines to wait for housing. Vienna can't grow anymore as a result. The Christmas markets are still nice, but the city is frozen in amber.

Controls on housing prices make it easy to claim "look we made it cheaper" at the cost of forcing people to move away.

both have become massively unaffordable

that's every large city in germany too. except in vienna it only affects 1/3rd of the population because everyone else lives in affordable subsidized housing. exactly who has been forced to move away?

Vienna can't grow anymore as a result.

huh? vienna has been growing from 1.5 million to 2 million in the last 3 decades. and it hasn't even reached the peak population it had a century ago. it is also building whole new neighborhoods. i don't know how you get the idea that it can't grow anymore. nothing could be further from the truth. there is plenty of space for new development in the east for example.

Everyone who doesn't win the lottery for affordable housing has to leave.
it's not a lottery. it's based on need. if your income is high enough that you don't qualify then most likely you can afford regular housing. sure here are always edge cases, and some people slip through the gaps, and you also already have to be living in the city for a few years (the rule is now two years, it used to be longer), so it's not available to everyone, but if you are already a resident then it's unlikely that you'll have to leave.
I get that you really dislike what I'm saying. I'm sorry. I wish you understood that there were real criticisms.
i might understand that if you showed me the actual criticism and evidence that substantiated it.

the system in vienna may not be perfect, but it does better than any other large city in austria and germany and maybe even in europe. criticizing is easy, but i don't think it's fair when the situation everywhere else is worse.