As someone from Hong Kong, the world's least affordable housing place in the world for over 11 years, I felt so upset after watching this video. It's not like our government cannot solve the problem-- there are plenty of solutions. They just don't want to do anything with it.

Being from Austria, social housing is quality but there is a long list to wait. My brother waited close to 5 years to get the apartment he’s in now. It was well worth the wait.

"B-but what about shareholders? You're just building houses for people to live in? That's crazy talk!"

By all cities I've been visiting and some - been living - Vienna is a pure gem. A historic - as well as modern masterpiece of urban planning. It's all about art and sharing an awesome life. Now I live here and I love it every single day and try to contribute.

The biggest takeaway for me is that they build not just public housing BUT also communities. They build public transport, kindergardens, clinics, shops, parks, etc. We do NOT do that in the US. Developers here just plop up bunch of townhomes in middle of nowhere and then leave it to the county or HOA to manage everything. Zoning has a lot to do with this but its crazy that cities and towns let developers get away with doing the absolute bare minimum...

Affordable housing? Bloomberg: RADICAL IDEA!

One maybe important point missing here is that Vienna also has an excellent public transport system owned and managed by the city. When they develop a new part of town public transportation is often finished first which significantly helps to create affordable housing, high density and desirable housing units. The example given "Seestadt" got a direct subway line making it a relative convenient place to live despite the relative remote location.

As someone who works in the affordable housing industry in the US, the most staggering thing to me from the video was construction costs being HALF in Vienna than what they are in Seattle. If construction costs in the US would be cut in half, I think the housing supply could increase exponentially if paired with upzoning large amounts of land to multifamily & mixed use.

Bloomberg: *uploads this* Me: *grabs popcorn and heads straight for the comments*

As someone from Vienna, I feel like I should really apply for one of these buildings haha

Bloomberg of course not even mentioning that the only reason for all of this is that Vienna has a social democratic government since 1919.

As a Viennese, I am overly proud of my city. I can confirm that every information in this video is 100% correct, altho there can be some added to it: Most imporant info is that these social houses CAN be passed down to your kids and to the next generation of family members. There are different tiers of social housing available under the program. There are some older social buildings (Gemeindewohnungs) that still need renovation, because some are in very bad shape, but they are fixing a lot of them every year. Then there is the Smart living category which is mainly focused towards young families and single young professionals who are either about to enter the workforce or just did. These are typically the newly built social houses with a lot better living standard compared to the old ones. All of these are price capped by the city goverment and make living in Vienna a lot better and cheaper. The only downside that isn't mentioned in the video is the waiting time on these projects are HUGE and sometimes takes 2-5 years to get a chance for an apartment. That said, the project is intended even for middle class people, as the income requirement for the program is under 50,000 euros for 1 person or 72,000 euros for 2 persons AFTER TAX. This means that basically about 95% of Vienna qualifies for this project because probably the only ones who make more than this are successful businessmen and CEO's.

I haven't travelled outside of the EU, but Vienna is the best city I've seen in person. The rest of the world can only learn how to be better by their example.

If only I could have been involved in designing my apartment block, people would be able to play music and make noise in there homes and not disturb a single person because the walls, floors and ceilings would completely sound proofed.

I lived in Vienna for almost 8 years, now I'm in Switzerland... and I can tell you that Austrians have the housing problem solved...

Honestly, for someone like me. Owning such an apartment such as these ones remains a pipe dream. WOnderful houses I must admit

Should do a clip on Singapore's public housing. About 80% of Singaporeans live in flats built by the Housing & Development Board (HDB). These flats are modern in design, spacious and very affordable.

Not letting people starve, Feeeze, And die outside due to the fact that their Rent/Mortgage payments are so high that they'll need like, 6 Jobs to Survive is NOT a Radical idea.

"radical idea" can u please stop acting like affordable housing should be a "controversial" topic

Any country also can achieve this IF the government is NOT in cahoot with developers

Wow, that is amazing. Well done Vienna. I hope the city planners and mayors of my country are watching because we're beginning to have housing issues in our 3 major cities. And this would be amazing.

Bloomberg praising affordable community housing based on ideas of the squatter's movement and built buy the municipality? These are truly exciting times we live in

Vienna is my dream city. I hope I can move there someday. It's just so absolutely beautiful, so stylish and filled to the brim with culture. If you live in Vienna, consider yourself among the luckiest people in the world. ❤

Yea I really like how the system is set up, taking advantage of market forces by subsidizing private developers (people who have lifetimes of experience building things people actually want to live in) and then using competition to incentivize great design. Actually quite an elegant synthesis of socialism + capitalism. Like the best of both IMO

Note that at no point is there any mention of real estate speculators that cause spiraling prices.

It’s not that affordable housing is a radical idea, it’s the concept of collaborative social housing, which works in countries where social trust is high. Won’t work in the USA where personal freedom is of the highest importance.

California’s governor just eliminated massive single family home zoning for this reason. Areas that have room for affordable housing and even median priced apts are blocked by zoning, thus making building more dwellings limited. Every city has affordable housing initiatives, but block apts, large condos, etc. Maybe this helps

This is something that the New Zealand government should be doing! Well done indeed to the Viennese government for their innovative and clever affordable housing projects!

One of the major keys they mentioned is that residents aren’t pushed out if they start to make more money than the threshold that made them eligible in the first place. This is one of the main factors in why these projects fail in the US and elsewhere; if a person becomes “too successful” they must leave, and therefore, they are disincentivized to work hard… or work at all. This maintains an impoverished population and ultimately grows it. It is often the engine for class stagnancy and entrenchment. Keep in mind that those who write these policies will ultimately lose their jobs if they’re SUCCESSFUL at them, as well.

The difference is valuing the humans, not hiding away those who need housing, making it for everyone and ensuring the quality is worthy of anyone. It removes stigma, entices all people and creates diverse community. Thank you. Also I prefer small spaces, large spaces now gross me out if they're not all used. If you've got rooms you don't use you don't need them. Same for material items. Things don't make us happy experiences and people do.

why is building affordable housing radical?

I was hoping they'd at least talk a little about how the city consistently finds the money for all of this. I wonder what their tax rates and policies are like, and how they make them work efficiently enough to be able to sustain this kind of intensive investment in construction and maintenance. In the meantime, even just fixing the broken zoning laws alone would lead to significant progress in the US on this front. If you make it too much of a nuisance to build at all, no one will bother, subsidies or no subsidies.

ah yes, the radical idea.... that's almost antique.

"Social housing is a middle-class subsidy" - one simple idea that would solve most of America's housing crisis.

I love how hard they danced around the word "socialism" so hard, the "development during the 1920's" was due to socialdemocratic party taking office after WW1, "squatters and people wanting to live in solidarity" just means anarchists and socialists, and they didn't even mentioned Austria's biggest social housing unit, the Karl Marx Hof, lol

It's not radical at all; and it is not just an idea. Social housing has been here in Vienna since the 1930s, and it's a time-proven policy. The main thing to understand about social housing is that it isn't a sign of lower status, or shameful even. It's just how some people live. Yeah, it's cheap, but people are still paying rent for these, and they also have to wait for an extended period of time to get approval. There's several ways to get prioritized up though; up to the point where you will get an apartment pretty much instantly. When my mum became paraplegic, she had to find a new place to live in with her wheelchair. She applied for social housing and got an accessible apartment in the span of a month, because she would have had nowhere to live otherwise. That's where the social part comes from. Not status, but need.

Would be nice if these buildings were actually built in a Viennese style, rather than just being something rootlessly cosmopolitan.

* Affordable Housing * Bloomberg: This sounds like communism

US would never want to do this they'd rather let the people suffer

Yugoslavia did smth like that-great architecture, urban planning, public space and housing for all kind of people to live in harmony.

This is what I call "Honest Capitalism". Everybody can have a better life with guaranteed education, healthcare, jobs, environment...This is a textbook way of life to learn from and put into practice for decades to come. Well done Austria! Hope one day to visit this clean and organized country.

Many comments here are true marvels of intellect.

Affordable Housing is a radical idea according to Bloomberg

Here in Toronto, 90% of condo units are for investment purposes. 10% are lived in and of that ten percent 9.5% are rented by their owners rather than a large corporate rental agency. We build less than 1% of the units as affordable and less than 1/10 of 1% are built as deeply affordable as low-income and social housing. In the last five years, we have built 100,000 units a year and in total less than one thousand of those, each year have been social housing. Less than one thousand have been affordable and none have been subsidized co-ops. But we need 3 million units of new housing in the next decade for immigrants who have no skills, English language or understanding of the Canadian work culture. It's expected that 95% of those 3 million will end up on social assistance on a repeated cycle making minimum wage and living in shelters because they will not be able to earn enough to afford $4000 a month rent for a 9 square meter basement apartment. It's likely the third-generation children of the immigrants will finally be able to have jobs and a place to live but that is 50 to 60 years from now.

I lived in apartments for a long time. The biggest factors that ultimately drove me away from it was noise, pollution and poor access to reasonably natural spaces. The most important things they do right here are the access to public transport and the ample park areas. Also the public maintenance of such buildings. Most cities delegate the upkeep of such buildings to a owner association of sorts which tends to be poorly funded - While this is ignoring the public savings brought about by having people willing to choose denser accommodation options. It doesn't take a very large building to replace the need for an entire single family home neighbourhood, along with all the public expense that entails. It's a little dishonest in some ways. A detrimental cycle, as such buildings inevitably become more decrepit through poor management over time. Wiping out much of their initial benefit. This while those cities happily spend serious public funds on large sprawling low density neighbourhoods. It's really destroying public capital over time. Most places where there is dense urban living options are also extremely busy. And, currently that means it's a 24/7 ICE car extravaganza. And, I don't care how attractive a building is when new. Under those conditions, in no time any place becomes a bit grotty. That greasy ICE soot. And, the noise is just horrible. I think as the electrification of transport progresses dense urban living options will become more attractive again. Cities in general will probably become more humane spaces. And, maybe if some of this model becomes adopted elsewhere - Doubly so.

Affordable housing works quite well...... if you build enough. We have a massive housing crisis in the Netherlands there aren't enough houses and it isn't becouse of natural population growth.

Maybe not the best title, but nothing short of a fantastic video! Never did I take actual, physical, notes while watching a video for leasure and curiousity, until now!

Western Governments like to give more money to companies that in turn pay dividend or profit sharing (not with Employees). They think somehow the private sector that strictly for profit will solve the problems like Housing access, Healthcare, Education and transit. The fact is all our leaders wants is to enrich themselves and their cronies rather than spending directly for the benefit of the people directly. We have a housing crisis in Canada and building 2000 sq ft town homes and single homes will not solve the issue as they are unaffordable and increases household debts. It's a fact that it cost more to build and support these kinds of development. Denser housing is needed in many places and the special government body should be executing them to keep them affordable.

Here, in AustRAlia, it is our many homeless who encourage the other wageslaves to ever greater efforts.

Austrian here - I can confirm that even when you're living alone and have net 1600€ per month left, you can afford your rent, gas, electr, water, and food and STILL you'll have a couple hundred euros left (mainly depending on how much you monthly spend on food).

the social houses of vienna has more quality of and quality of life than downtown lisbon

remember in Soviet Russia jokes? well in Modern America the housing market lives on you

It is wonderful what can be achieved when your country is not run by scam syndicates.

everything is cheap in Vienna when you compare it to the salaries, sometimes it seems that it is cheaper (more affordable) than smaller cities in Austria with the same QoL features.

Here in Rotterdam (Netherlands )we have waiting list of 300.000. A potential neighborhood had great potential to meet that demand, but they build 6 villas instead……

Why is showing someone living a "comfortable lifestyle" always coupled and associated with holding a glass of wine?

I'll never understand why people did not push for something like Seestadt Aspern at Tempelhofer Feld in Berlin instead of having a big nothing in the middle of the city and high rents in the rest of the city.

Thanks a lot, this video has given me some interesting ideas myself and I applaud the work that has been done in Vienna

I heard a lecture about housing in Vienna in my country, and I was amazed that they most affordable houses in Europe. It's been calculated as how long you need to work in order to buy a house and it seems shortest in Austria.

Seeing the Bus line 66a in the end😂 feels great as I take it twice a day. Great video. Greetings from Vienna

This helps highlight the contradiction in our economies. On the one hand people need shelter and a place to live, but on the other hand real estate is an investment and everybody wants profit. This video makes it seem like we need a comprehensive approach that encompasses many aspects of modern life and not simply the building you live in.

Bravo Vienna! This is such a great approach to urban planning and developing a city. Human scale buildings, roads, city, life.

Toronto need this desperately! Instead of overpriced condos and houses for the few. Doug Ford is selling off our city and it's about to collapse.

Definitely a radical idea since Singapore only did this since like the 1960s and only 95% of people live in public housing in Singapore

Vienna should mentor/partner with other cities to assist them with implementing the same business model worldwide.

I hope that one day, in the not too distant future, we will see for-profit housing as a radical idea

As a vienna born person; Yes there are a lot of this projects in the corners of the city. But also problems. The old districts are mainly unaffordable as a low to mid earner. For example the first district (in the center) only a view old people actually left living there. Most houses are owned by not residency (russians) or big shopping brands. The old rent contracts are on purpose closed so the owner can rent it for a new horrendous price after reconstruction.

Great video. I absolutely loved it. It was very informative.

Great video! The most important aspect of public housing is the architecture and consultation with public. If this 2 things is looked into, it will always be great to stay there .However, in india govt's are just building without looking into the needs of the people and without consultation. That's the only draw down..

There are some minor mistakes in the video. I am living in the house with the beautiful painting on it (7:06, yeah - really strange coincidence). Most buildings in this neighborhood are not subsidised by the government. In fact this is on of the richer neighbourhoods of vienna where most of the housing is private. They could have filmed this in other way "poorer" neightbourhoods to display their content.

Why are construction costs so much more in Seattle and other areas in the USA? What is driving costs?

Vienna looks so beautiful. I wish to come there someday.

Thank you for sharing and great effort. Unfortunately, social housing is corrupted. Here in Canada, they make fortune out of government ( tax payers) money and offer minimum service. They always expand though, as the service shrink. Maybe you have a better way, but it's not the case here.

The reason other places don't have this is because many have deeply internalized the idea that those who cannot thrive in a capitalist system are in some way incompetent and therefore their input shouldn't be taken into consideration when designing their own housing. However, we've had enough failed housing projects to learn what types of housing contribute to unhealthy and criminal lifestyles. At some point just through trial and error we hopefully give this model a try. It's not a guarantee it will work but at least its shown some success here.

As someone that currently rents in the US I think that zoning laws and public transportation go hand in hand since honestly having a garage is so much more convenient in my opinion

Toronto and Canada in general can learn a LOT from this!

The US could never adopt this. We already have a shortage of homes here, and the zoning laws in most cities prevent these types of housing. So we would have to overcome policy change, NIMBYs, and the shortage of reliable public transportation in most cities first before we could even begin with these. Almost no cities in the US have subways, and those take years to complete. I can only see this working in cities in the US that are already somewhat on this track, furthering the divide between walkable and non walkable cities in the US

Такая конфигурация (форма) дома, была нарисована в книге 80-х годов "Твоя родина - Советский союз" . А именно, там где рассказывалось о Москве.

I'd love to visit this beautiful city.

This concept is not possible for all cities. Vienna is an incredibly rich city even for European standards. It concentrates an enormous part of the Austrian economy and money within its borders. Almost all big Austrian companies have their headquarters in Vienna and pay taxes there, the City of Vienna is extremely rich. Therefore it's just very easy for the city to invest huge amounts of their budget into affordable housing. Berlin for example was also a rich city in the Golden 20s and also invested in many affordable housing projects at this time. After 60 years of chaotic history Berlin was poor and lost all of its big companies and industries. In the late 90s the city was nearly broke and in a process of economic and demographic decline, so they selled many public housing units to the private sector. Progressive Urbanism is easy, if you have the money. The same goes for incredibly rich cities like Kopenhagen, Paris or Amsterdam. But all of them are united by the fact, that they are the dominating capitals of their centralist countries concentrating gigantic amounts of tax money because of economic power.

Having a background in construction I get to find pretty much anywhere I go that the people who have ideas about it(how to make it affordable etc) are the kinds of people that have not spend A MINUTE on a real construction site. It baffles me how can one talk about something that they know NOTHING about.

Meanwhile, Germany is kicking itself for dropping the ball by privatization. And Berlin, during the last election, passed a nonbinding referendum calling for deprivatization through confiscation.

Italy tried shared living, it failed and turned into a ghetto. A lot of cities tried it in the past and ended up calling them tenaments and tearing them down. Every city has problems and the solution is to oversupply. Most citites will actually stop you from oversupplying. If I flew to San Fran with 50 billion and said I was going to make 150,000 apartments in a year, and I would supply them to the city for half the current rent price, and I would keep doing it until 5% of the apartments were empty and people were roating through them as they moved from different parts of the city. They would refuse me planning permission.

#1 problem with public housing, nobody's in charge. Everyone is either a resident or an employee. I live in housing in the USA.

A big miss that they did not cover any of the financial aspects of any of this. Sounds like the city is buying / giving away land, pays for construction, effectively does property management and upgrades existing units at a very large scale. It collects subsidized rent, but I don't believe it could possibly cover the true full cost. I wonder how much of the local taxes go into this and why does it make sense to fund your home through taxes in this manner. They should also cover how efficient this government apparatus is.

Watching this video from Budapest makes me wanna cry. The answer of our government to the housing crisis is so flawed... They should have just travelled 3 hours to get a much better example.

I think the most successful Public Housing project since Soviet era is Singapore Housing Development Board (HDB)

The pace and the length of the vid are on point. great reporting

1920s Red Vienna still working today ... another reason why rifts in ideology should never exclude ideas the ideologies had or have.

The pandemic has shown that for many, working from home really works well. This may leave some business real estate vacant. I hope some of the vacant urban buildings can be remodeled into affordable hybrid living/working spaces. It might save the real estate investors from having empty buildings while making cities more livable.

This is the answer to the question : „why should we do xyz (insert energy saving, renewables, etc.), if some other person does not do it?“ … because you become a rolemodel like vienna in affordable housing. This is something others want to copy

This is amazing! This needs to be standard!

It's all about subsidies that are putting the magic, rest is an ideal city planning concept and implementation.

Key word here "Building". Cities in America, particularly in California, make it so difficult to build with regulation and red tape, that the only thing people build is luxury apartments, otherwise, it isn't worth building anything.

There needs to be a bit more balance in these places. I have been renting a "micro-unit" a 300 sq ft condo unit with a balcony. It's great for cooking, and sleeping, but not much more. I would love to see these types of units available as public housing, as a transitory 1 or 2 year stay while people build up their ability to move elsewhere.

I feel all your comments. Affordable housing is a huge problem for our generation. we have something called BTOs in Singapore as well. BTO is built to order. it takes 3 years to be completed previously but now you have to wait 5 years due to supply chain shortages because of war and covid lease is 99 years But recently 2nd hand public housing have been sold for 1 million, our resale market is not making sense.

I wish they implement the same model in the Netherlands.

Wow thoughtful planing and common sense.... Crazy!!!

I've been thinking about this so much lately! A multifamily building can be it's own little economy and culture. I think this is the future of how we will live, even in high-income areas.

There is zero reason that this isn't true in the US. We have HUGE expanses of available land. We have vast forests and other raw materials. Instead of utilizing them we have human beings sleeping in tents on sidewalks. Why? Because some people are so miserly that they can not stand the idea of someone getting something that they didn't ... even to the point of ignoring all the things they DID get.