I recently had the opportunity to take part, in the company of the mayors of Montreal and Sherbrooke, in a study mission on housing in Vienna. The Austrian capital is a globally recognized model in terms of housing: 60% of its population lives in public or non-profit housing at different prices depending on household needs! The resulting widespread affordability consistently places Vienna at the top of global rankings for residents’ quality of life.
Like Rome, the affordability of the Viennese housing stock was not built overnight: it is the result of more than 100 years of deliberate investment in non-profit housing. Since the 1920s, housing that has been built in Vienna on public land or with the aid of subsidies has been owned by public or non-profit organizations. These organizations, which are similar to what in Quebec is called the social economy, have a mission of continuous housing development and add on average some 5,000 new sustainable affordable housing units in Vienne each year.
Several ingredients make Vienna’s recipe the success it is known for in terms of residential affordability: stable and predictable funding for organizations, in particular through tax tools, regulatory and urban planning measures aimed at obtaining or reserving land at a good price for social and affordable housing, the construction of quality and ecological projects where life is good, to name a few.
This ecosystem, combined with the strength of organizations that preserve the affordability of the housing they manage over time, ensure that a large proportion of rents on the market are not subject to the pressure of the financialization of real estate which is pushing here the prices up. In fact, the opposite is happening: the high proportion of non-profit housing calms the market, so that private housing in Vienna is also cheaper than in comparable neighboring cities.
Affordability in perpetuity as a cardinal criterion
With less than 5% of social and community housing, Quebec is of course far behind in terms of non-profit housing, and it is not tomorrow the day before that we will close the gap with the Austrian capital. However, we can take inspiration from it and put in place public policies that promote the development of a housing stock that will remain affordable in the very long term.
The time is right to redirect our actions in this direction since we are currently experiencing a pivotal moment in housing.
Several large-scale projects are underway, in particular a reform of the Planning and Town Planning Act, the implementation of the National Policy on Architecture and Land Use Planning, and the preparation of a new Urban Planning and Mobility Plan for Montreal. The directions we choose today will determine the trajectory of the housing industry for decades to come.
To follow the path traced by Vienna, it is necessary to make the sustainable affordability of built housing the cardinal criterion that guides public action in the field of housing. This explicit preference for the development of a housing stock which escapes for good from the speculative logic of the market must be expressed in a transversal way in our policies and percolate, of course, in the financing programs, but also in the regulations of planning and in decisions regarding the use of the many public lands to be redeveloped.
Failing to choose this path, we will remain prisoners of this vicious circle where we encourage today the construction of too expensive housing of tomorrow.