Housing in Austria: From a social infrastructure to a financial asset
Authors: Christian Zeller, Andreas Van-Hametner, Christian Smigiel und Karolin Kautzschmann
For the last decades, Austria was a prime example for a social housing policy. Especially Vienna is well known for its long tradition of social housing. However, lately rental and property prices have risen rapidly in many Austrian cities. Housing as social infrastructure provided by a corporatist welfare state gets less important.
The article published in PROKLA refers to the question of rising living cots and characterizes the changes in Austrian housing policy towards a specific capitalist configuration of a finance-dominated accumulation regime. The federal organisation of housing policy results in regional differentiations of the housing market. Salzburg and Linz are examples given to illustrate these developments. The authors state that the main character of the social housing policy in Austria, Gemeinnütziger Wohnbau, still exists in a deformed shape. However, the results of the analysis show a general trend that housing becomes a commodity. The state supports homeownership, which leads to a higher dependency of private households on the capital market and promotes the capital markets indirectly. Adequate housing becomes an individual issue and is less provided by a welfare state. Residential property gets more important regarding old-age provision and reveals tendencies of responsibilization.
