The article states that Vienna's population in 1914 (at the beginning of WW1) was 2 million, vs 1.9 million today. I'm no housing policy expert, but isn't it possible that Vienna's rents are stable and low in part because they haven't had to increase their housing stock in over 100 years? It seems to me that a new-world city like Vancouver that has grown tremendously over that period wouldn't be directly comparable.
From the article:<p>> As both the Vienna model and Henry George[1] would suggest, the problem is forever and always the cost of land. Burdensome land costs, and the rentiers who gain massive wealth by passive land speculation, are the real enemies — not developers, not our homeowners, not our public officials.<p>[1] <a href="https://thetyee.ca/Solutions/2018/06/04/Tax-To-Solve-Housing-Crisis/" rel="nofollow">https://thetyee.ca/Solutions/2018/06/04/Tax-To-Solve-Housing...</a> (linked in the article)<p>EDIT: From the looks of it Vienna's policy isn't purely Georgist, but it has a few policies (namely land tax, particularly on vacant lots) out of Henry's playbook.
There is something called in Austria called "Freunderlwirtschaft". Its Austrian for "corruption but everybody is doing it so it is ok".<p>These "Gemeindebauten" (affordable cheap public housing) have good flats and good areas and bad flats and bad areas. So if you want to be in the really good ones, you better have the right "Parteibuch" (party affiliation) or a friend who has it.<p>Said that, Gemeindebauten are a great but flawed system.
So a hundred years ago the city imposed crazy taxes on land owners and then bought the land for themselves. Then the city built a lot of housing on the now city-owned land via non-profit construction.<p>The article doesn’t make a strong attempt to explain how their housing affordability is “solved” though. How easy it to find a new apartment to rent? How much does it cost? What do you get for that price? How does this compare to other cities in Europe? How does Vienna compare to other Austrian cities which did not buy up land?<p>It’s an interesting case study and I’d love to know more. But this article leaves a LOT of open questions.
Singapore does something similar, with 80% of the population living in HDB accommodations [1]. The other 20% is a free-for-all near as I can figure.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore</a>
Knowing Vienna quite well and knowing Vancouver at least a little bit, I'd say this is not apples-to-apples. In Vancouver it was the real estate boom that has fueled high-quality residential development: Given the circumstance where such development would fetch high prices, residential development was conducted that would deliver on a level of quality commensurate with high prices (namely: high quality!). A "Gemeindebau" in Vienna is a very different animal: They are built cheaply for the purpose of being cheap, and the quality you get ouf of that is in line with the principle "you get what you pay for" (namely: low quality!)
A sorta aside. The absolute best AirBnB experience we ever had was in Vienna. Of course it's an anecdote, but we had absolutely no trouble finding convenient, cheap, and large places to stay under $70/night. This made us think that the housing market there must be quite cheap compared to where we're from. We ended up staying in an absolutely beautiful flat about 20 minutes from the city center via U-Bahn for <$60/night -- a price we've paid for old bedrooms in lesser cities. The same flat where we live would easily cost closer to $3k/mo.
>"Vienna provides an interesting counterpoint. Because rent control disincentivized the private development of rental buildings, landlords were, for a time, removed from the market for urban land. Consequently prices finally went down, allowing the city to buy land at a much reduced price; often it was the only buyer in the market."<p>PDS: An interesting cycle (or set of cycles) of cause and effect...<p>Disclaimer: I am neither for nor against rent control...
Here's the gist: the government taxed the shit out of the landlords and forced them to sell their land cheaply. Europeans generally see nothing wrong with this strategy, whereas most Americans will feel shivers down their spines.<p>This difference comes from different attitudes around ownership. In places like China and Russia, owning a house means you get to keep the house unless enough people would benefit from you not owning it. In the US, you get to keep your house no matter how much anyone - including the government - would prefer you didn't.<p>Europe is somewhere in between on that spectrum, and this attitude extends to not just land ownership. For example, a popular ad campaign in Austria is demanding from the employees of BioNTech to leak the base components and production instructions so that other companies can steal those trade secrets and supposedly help generate more vaccines. If you read the comments in one of the videos on this topic, you will see them being mostly in favor of the campaign: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDnZd7UmBco" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDnZd7UmBco</a>.<p>It would be difficult to imagine many of my US friends advocating for stealing company secrets. I am not implying that either group has better ethics - they just have different attitudes towards the concept of ownership.
I legitimately wanted to evaluate the argument here but there’s so much backstory and political contextualization I gave up reading this without ever having found out what the Viennese did.
Vienna is the most dull and calcified city I've ever lived in, and it's not a growing city. It's not super useful to compare to cities that are thriving.
A city government manipulating the price of urban property so that it can purchase it? This doesn’t seem like a workable model. Doesn’t that reduce property tax revenue? Doesn’t that affect the value of other land in general? Why wouldn’t urban land holders sue the city for damages?
If we are going to get government involved in this, then why not shift to cheaper area? There's cheaper land in more rural areas that the government could develop and entice businesses to move to. This would be cheaper for the tax payer. There's also an exodus from many cities which leave abandoned buildings that could be converted to living space.<p>Maybe the article works for Vancouver (I've never been there), but I don't see it working in most places.<p>Why downvote with no reply?