InnovEU S6E1 - What Is Europe Missing About the Housing Crisis? | Michaela Kauer, Director of the City of Vienna’s Brussels Office

I know people who would say that you are manipulating the market.

You're not letting the market work.

You're imposing bureaucratic restrictions to the market.

You're over-regulating.

Do you think...

I know people who would really say that.

Do you think there is some reason there? Do you think the success of Vienna is in spite of all that overregulation or do you think that's necessary for this particular market?

Well, first, it's not an overregulation, it's a sound regulation.

And I know these people too, of course.

And I can assure you that, of course, we have a debate also in Vienna, especially in the private rental sector, where rents are really very high and people have difficulties in paying them or even getting a contract.

But with the big share of social and municipal and cooperative and for limited profit housing, we can handle that much better than other places.

And it's not in the interest of Vienna to, you know, be the best business model for institutional investors.

It's the interest of the city of Vienna to have good living quality, good life quality for everybody living in the city.

So that's one of the, I would say, first premises that you should understand when you look at the Vienna model.

But the second element is also with all these different instruments that we use, I can also tell you that the cooperative sector or the subsidized sector is faster in energy efficiency renovation than the private.

And this is real data from the last year, from what we would all over Austria, by the way.

We know that the business model of the cooperatives allows us to build reserves that have to be reinvested with the purpose of housing, which makes them much better equipped to adapt for climate measures or energy efficiency or any other kind of improvement that might be needed install for instance an elevator in in some places you do not have them yet so the the cooperative sector is faster than the private sector what we did in vienna also to help them is we set up a one-stop shop for the private sector that helps them really go for all the permits uh look into what can be funded where do you find a bank guarantee even technical advice is possible and we see there is a greater reluctancy of the private landlords uh to to take that opportunity that we really offer them so in a way yes uh we are we are committed to to to a sound and stable housing system and that means of course that we have interventions in the market where it does not deliver but we also offer the market a great variety of opportunities to help us for instance in achieving the climate goals.