---
author: Money & Macro
date: '2026-09-17'
guest: ''
layout: post.njk
source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S7wwmJtuac
speaker: Money & Macro
tags:
- public-housing
- rent-control
- housing-affordability
- urban-economics
title: 维也纳如何解决住房危机：可负担性神话背后的土地、税收与供给真相
summary: 维也纳因极高的住房可负担性屡获全球最宜居城市称号。其模式并非单纯依赖租金管制，而是结合历史低价征地、建设税与中产导向公屋构建了高供给体系。然而，该模式也面临内外部市场不公及难以复制的历史与财政门槛。
insight: ''
draft: true
series: ''
category: investment-assets
area: finance-wealth
project: []
people: []
companies_orgs: []
products_models: []
media_books:
- The Economist
status: evergreen
---
### 可负担性奇迹：维也纳与全球都市的租金落差
在距离奥地利维也纳市中心仅 20 分钟地铁车程的地方，坐落着大型现代公寓社区。那里的租户每月只需支付 600 至 800 欧元，就能租下一套宽敞的两居室公寓，并享有配套的日托中心、地下停车场、绿化景观以及屋顶泳池。相比之下，纽约类似配置和区位的公寓月租金接近 4,000 美元；阿姆斯特丹的月租金底线约为 2,000 欧元，普遍则在 3,000 欧元左右；而在伦敦，2,500 英镑几乎是最低门槛。
尽管纽约和伦敦的居民名义收入明显高于维也纳，但即使将收入差距计算在内，维也纳依然展现出了极高的**住房可负担性**（Housing Affordability: 居民收入与住房成本的合理配比关系）。维也纳租户平均仅将收入的 30% 用于房租，而在伦敦和纽约，这一比例往往高达 70% 至 80%。这种巨大的生活成本优势，正是《**经济学人**》（The Economist: 国际知名政经期刊）常年将维也纳评为全球最宜居或第二宜居城市的核心原因。
从表面上看，维也纳解决住房危机的方法简单直接：政府建造了大量公共住房。但深入剖析后会发现，维也纳的解决方案远比表面更为激进。在维也纳，传统意义上的**自由租赁市场**（Free Rental Market: 租金与供给完全由市场供求决定的机制）几乎不存在：
* 31% 的租户居住在市政府直接控制的公屋中；
* 26% 的租户居住在非营利机构管理的住房中；
* 33% 的租户居住在受严格租金管制的私人住宅中；
* 全市仅有 10% 的租户在支付由纯粹市场供需决定的租金。
这是否意味着，解决伦敦、纽约等全球城市住房危机的终极答案，就是转向类似维也纳的“住房社会主义”模式？事实证明，维也纳模式的表象之下存在着诸多摩擦与缺陷，而且其他城市在试图复制该模式时面临着三大难以逾越的壁垒。
Original English Source
This is out there like a massive apartment complex just 20 minutes away by subway from Vienna City center. Here, tenants pay around 600 to €800 a month for a spacious two bedroom apartment, complete with onsite daycare, underground parking, green spaces and rooftop pools. Similarly placed decked out apartments in New York are listed for almost 4,000 USD per month. In Amsterdam, the minimum is about 2000 per month, but 3000 is more common. Finally, in London, 2,500 pounds seems like the bare minimum. And here in London, in New York, people earn significantly more money than in Vienna. But if we account for that extra income, we can see that Vienna still appears to be an exceptionally affordable capital city where renters spend about 30% of their salary on rent, compared to 70 to 80% in London and New York. That massive cost of living gap is the primary reason why The Economist consistently ranks Vienna as the most or second most livable major city on Earth.
So how did Vienna solve the housing affordability crisis that is still plaguing every other global city on the planet? On paper, the answer looks simple. Vienna's government has simply built a lot a lot of public housing. But upon closer inspection, the Vienna Solution seemed way more radical than that. As you can see here, arguably the concept of a free rental market doesn't exist in Vienna. That is, 31% of renters live in city controlled homes, 26% live in nonprofit controlled homes, and then finally 33% live in rent controlled private homes. And it's really only 10% of Vienna's renters that pay a market determined rent. So is the answer to the global housing crisis that this, like London and New York, had just turn to basically housing socialism like in Vienna. Perhaps, although we have discovered that below the surface, Vienna's rental market is a little less perfect than it seems, and that there are three unique problems holding back cities from copying Vienna's approach.
### 红色维也纳历史：危机重压下的制度重构与土地征收
要理解维也纳公共住房体系的建立，必须回溯其历史根源。维也纳大学研究人员贾斯汀·凯里（Justin Carey）与沃尔特·马德森（Walter Madsen）的研究图表显示，维也纳大规模的公共住房建设始于 1922 年的大幅激增，并在 1950 年之后迎来了真正的爆发式增长。
维也纳曾是奥匈帝国的首都。随着一战在 1918 年结束、帝国解体，奥地利经济陷入崩溃并爆发了恶性通货膨胀。在物价飞涨的同时，维也纳实施了严苛的**租金管制**（Rent Control: 政府对房屋租赁价格设定的法定上限），导致私人租赁房产在一夜之间几乎失去商业价值。面对大批战后归来急需居所的士兵，私人房东因无利可图拒绝新建房屋，宁愿将土地闲置。
1919 年 5 月，社会民主工党在维也纳首次全面民主选举中赢得绝对多数。他们清醒地认识到，在严格的租金管制下，私人资本绝不会回流去建造可负担住房。大多数现代经济学家通常会建议废除租金管制以刺激私人建房，但当时的维也纳走上了一条完全不同的道路，开启了著名的“**红色维也纳**”（Red Vienna: 1919至1934年间奥地利社民党执政下的维也纳市政建设时期）时代：如果私营部门不愿建设，国家就亲自入场。
在极度财政困难的背景下，维也纳通过三步策略筹集资金并获取土地：
1. **空置土地重税**：在恶性通胀与租金管制的双重夹击下，持有闲置土地的房东还必须缴纳高额闲置税，被迫以和平时期 10% 至 15% 的极低底价将土地转让给市政府；
2. **住房建设税（Wohnbausteuer）与奢侈品税**：市议员雨果·布赖特纳（Hugo Breitner）引入了累进式住宅建设税（主要针对大型私人住房）以及针对汽车、高档酒店和娱乐活动等奢侈品与服务征税；
3. **公屋集中营建**：依托廉价土地与专门税收，维也纳在 1923 至 1934 年间迅速建成了约 60,000 套被称为“**市政公寓**”（Gemeindebauten: 维也纳市属公有高品质保障房）的高质量住宅，安置了全城约 11% 的人口。
1934 年，保守派总理恩格尔伯特·陶尔斐斯（Engelbert Dollfuss）发动短暂内战建立独裁统治，红色维也纳戛然而止。二战后民主秩序恢复，社会民主党重新执政，不仅恢复了大规模建设社会住房的政策，还通过严苛的租金管制进一步压缩私人房东的利润空间。加之市中心历史建筑遭受轰炸，私人房东纷纷选择将房产出售给政府或改作写字楼。这导致私有租赁房屋占比急剧萎缩，而由市政府及政府资助的合作社、非营利组织所主导的社会住宅项目（如 Alt-Erlaa 等大型高端社区）迎来大爆发。
Original English Source
But to understand this, we first need to understand how public housing took over Vienna, as this fascinating graph by University of Vienna researchers Justin Carey and Walter Madsen that shows Vienna's massive public housing project, shown in red and yellow, started with a big surge in 1922 and then really exploded after 1950. So what can explain these two massive shifts? First, we need to keep in mind that Vienna, for the longest time, used to be the majestic capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which fell apart after the First World War, which ended in 1918. In these circumstances, Austria's economy, of course collapsed, causing hyperinflation. But as prices everywhere skyrocketed, strict rent controls prevented landlords from raising the rent, meaning that rental properties essentially became worthless overnight and therefore, while returning soldiers needed new homes in Vienna, private landlords refused to build them, preferring to keep their land vacant instead.
So when, in May 1919, the Social democratic Workers Party won an absolute majority in the city's first fully democratic election, they recognized a clear economic reality and the strict rent controls private capital would never return to build affordable homes. Today, most economists would therefore probably recommend to abolish rent controls to incentivize people to build more homes. But this is where Vienna's story deviates from most other cities. This period came to be known as red Vienna for a reason. You see, if the private sector would not build, the state would just have to step in and do it themselves. But of course, this was easier said than done. Vienna was in deep financial trouble, so how were they ever going to be able to find the money to buy all that private land and build homes on them? Based on the history of Vienna, we have identified the following three steps.
The first step was the so-called body politic that heavily taxed vacant land. I mean, what would you do if hyperinflation had pushed up oil prices, but rent controls prevented you from raising your prices? And now, on top of that, you had to pay a tax if you left your land vacant. For many Viennese landowners, the answer was clear. There was no other option than to sell vacant land to the city at rock bottom prices, often 10 to 15% of peacetime values. In 1914, and once cheap land was secured, Vienna needed to find the money to build the new houses on this land. So City Councilor Hugo Breitner introduced two new taxes. The first one a residential construction tax known as von bath Toya, was levied progressively on the construction of larger, mainly private housing units, and the second one, a luxury tax, was levied primarily on luxury goods and services such as cars, hotel rooms and leisure activities to all to fund these public homes. And with this money and the cheap land combined, the city was able to relatively quickly build about 60,000 state owned, high quality apartments known as Gapminder Boughton housing around 11% of the city's population. Between 1923 and 1934.
But then something strange happened. It all stagnated. But what went wrong? Well, in 1934, Red Vienna abruptly ended when the conservative Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss became dictator and ousted Vienna Social Democrats after a brief civil war, and then after the Second World War, when democracy was restored, the social Democrats got back into power, and then they soon reinstated their old policy of building lots of new social homes. But as you can see here, not only did they build more homes, the private landlords really sold a lot of their homes. And that's because the Social Democrats essentially made it, again, very difficult for them to make a profit through very strict rent controls. And of course, together with the fact that Vienna's historical center had been bombed, where a lot of these houses were. There was now a super strong incentive for private landlords to either sell to the city or turn their properties into offices. And this is why, on the one hand, the number of houses rented from private owners decreased after the Second World War, while on the other hand, the number of social housing in red and yellow boomed. Where the yellow represents housing constructed by government funded cooperatives and nonprofits. And it's actually these entities that ended up being responsible for massive, upscale projects like Alt allowed. Only this full historical picture of very, very aggressive state intervention in the real estate market can explain why The New York Times referred to Vienna as a renter's utopia.
### 乌托邦的裂痕：内外轨失衡与供给维持机制
虽然媒体常将维也纳描绘为“租户乌托邦”，但按照经典经济学理论，高度管制与社会化的住房市场往往伴随着排队等候名单冗长以及“内部人与外部人”之间的割裂。维也纳的现实同样存在这些问题。
在租金单价上，居住在市政公屋或非营利住房内的租户，其每平方米租金远低于私有受管制公寓，更是只有完全自由市场公寓（每平方米约 12 至 13 欧元）的一半左右。这催生了明显的**双轨制租赁市场**（Insiders vs. Outsiders Market: 既得利益群体享受低价保障，新进入者被迫承担高昂市场价的二元结构）：
* 内部幸运群体能够长期锁定超低租金；
* 外部群体（如新移民、年轻工作者）只能在私有市场支付高价；
* 导致高收入的律师、医生在公屋中享受低租金，而低收入的移民蓝领家庭反而在私有市场承担高昂居住成本的不公现象；
* 市场甚至衍生出退租者向新租户索取高额“引荐费/茶水费”以转让低价房源租赁资格的灰色寻租行为。
然而，维也纳没有重蹈伦敦或阿姆斯特丹等城市的严重危机，其关键秘诀不在于“拥有公共住房”，而在于**持续的高强度物理供给能力**（Physical Supply Elasticity: 市场或政府能够按需求持续建造新住宅单元的实际交付能力）。在 2021 年，仅维也纳一市就新建了 16,000 套住宅单元，而人口仅 900 万的奥地利全国新增了 71,000 套住宅；相比之下，人口超过奥地利全国的美国洛杉矶，其住房建设增速还不到奥地利的一半。
由于维也纳市政府与非营利机构维持了充足的新房开工量，全市仅有 10% 的租户完全暴露在不受管制的纯私人市场中，使得双轨制带来的负面溢出效应被控制在相对较小的范围内，同时平抑了整体市场的租金水平。
Original English Source
But is that actually true? Is Vienna actually a renter's Paradise? That is. If we get back to this graph, we can again see that roughly 31% of renters live in city homes, 26% in nonprofits, and 33% of renters are under very strict rent controls. And then there's only 10% left in this so-called free market where landlords set the price freely. But of course, standard economics would tell us that in a fully socialized and controlled housing market, there would be massive problems, such as massive waiting lists for cheap housing and a big difference between a lucky in-group and an unlucky group of renters that has to rent on the private market. Is that also what the Viennese housing market looks like?
Yeah, if we look at rent differences, we can clearly see that that the very lucky people who are in municipal housing or in these nonprofit developments do pay a lot less per square meters than those in private, rent controlled apartments and especially then those in uncontrolled private apartments. They pay about 12 to €13 per square meters, whereas those in municipal housing pay almost half of that. So Vienna's rental market is not very fair. Just as with rent controls in other cities, Vienna's model does create a so-called in versus out rental market, where a lucky group can live inside cheap housing units, while an unlucky group gets to pay high prices on the private market. And as you can imagine, this can generate weird, unfair situations where high income lawyers and doctors and social housing pay almost half of what a working class immigrant family pays in the private sector. And not surprisingly, it's apparently also quite common in Vienna that outgoing renters demand large sums of money from new renters to introduce them to the landlord. So this is definitely not a renters utopia. It's not a perfect housing market.
However, a lot of these problems also exist in cities with some public housing and rent controls like London, New York and Amsterdam. And actually, even though Vienna's uncontrolled rents are almost twice as high as the cheapest municipal houses, they are still lower than rents in other big cities, indicating that while there are waitlists in Vienna absolutely on which there is no data, sadly they are probably not much longer than in other big cities like Amsterdam. So what's Vienna's secret? I don't think it's the fact that there is a lot of public housing on its own. After all, cities like Amsterdam and London also have quite a lot of public housing. Now, I think the real reason why Vienna has managed to stay relatively affordable, even though its population has been rising recently, is because it can actually build more homes, for example, not including additions to existing buildings. According to Statistics Austria, 16,000 new units were built in Vienna in 2021 alone and in all of Austria, where 9 million people live, 71,000 new housing units were added. And that's pretty substantial for such a controlled market. For comparison, Los Angeles adds housing units at less than half the rate, despite having more people than the entire country of Austria.
So the Vienna model is, yes, a largely controlled and socialized housing market. But because the city of Vienna and its nonprofits actually build enough homes, Vienna actually even has fairly reasonable rents in the private sector. But because only 10% of renters in Vienna rent in the uncontrolled private sector, the typical unfair in-out market dynamics that you see in other cities does not affect as many people in Vienna. So while far from perfect, Vienna's model actually looks a lot better than the model of most other global cities.
### 复制壁垒与实操启示：供给双轨制而非单纯管制
维也纳的核心启示在于：若仅在“强化管制”或“放松管制”的一维光谱上争论租金政策，便抓错了问题的本质。伦敦和纽约同样存在租金管制和公屋项目，但它们与维也纳的本质区别在于**维也纳能够持续规模化建房，而其他城市陷入了供给停滞**。
全球其他大都市若想直接全盘照搬维也纳模式，将面临三大现实阻碍：
1. **历史与人口收缩红利**：维也纳的大规模公屋建设计划是在帝国解体、人口下降的历史背景下启动的，较低的自然需求减轻了房价压力，使政府能在不引发极端供应瓶颈的情况下挤压私人开发商；而当今多数全球都市面临着持续的人口流入压力与机构执行力短缺；
2. **土地获取与建造成本不可承受**：维也纳依托百年前经济崩溃时的抄底征地积累了庞大的土地资产，现代城市若要在现行市价下筹集同等体量的土地，必须推行极具政治阻力的大规模加税；
3. **公平性政治博弈与中产覆盖**：维也纳公屋获得了长期的跨阶层政治支持，因其准入标准宽泛、直接覆盖了中产阶级；相反，美国或法国“郊区住宅区”（Banlieues）等仅面向极端贫困群体的公屋项目容易造成贫困聚集，在引发社会问题后导致公众对公共住房的政治支持度急剧下滑。
解决全球大都市的住房危机，监管本身并不是根本矛盾，**住房供给数量与执行力**才是核心所在。对于既非处于崩溃帝国之中、亦未经历战后土地重估的现代城市而言，最佳路径并非完全消灭私人市场，而是在大力鼓励私人建设的同时，协同推进面向广泛社会群体的高品质公共住房建设，通过双轨供给共同化解居住困境。
Original English Source
So should all cities adopt Vienna's model of public housing over private housing? Is a form of democratic socialism superior when it comes to housing? In other words, can Vienna's housing model solve the global housing crisis? Well, on the one hand, I think that Vienna teaches us that if you only look at the rental market on the spectrum of rent controls, more control or less control, then you get it wrong. You have cities like London and New York, where there are rent controls and where there is public housing, where there's a lot of control. And you have cities like Vienna. But what really distinguishes them is that Vienna actually builds homes, whereas these other cities do not. It's not about having rent control or no rent control. It's about having rent control and public housing and actually building more homes.
But sadly, there are three big problems that prevent global cities like New York and London from copying Vienna's model 1 to 1. And the first is that Vienna's unique decline story. That is when Vienna's government did build a lot of new homes. It did so against a backdrop of a shrinking population, a shrinking population means lower demand and less pressure on prices. And in this situation, it was possible for the city government to pretty much screw over private construction and replace it with social housing without facing severe bottlenecks. Sure. In Vienna, the population is now also rising. And if we look at prices in the private rental market, it really looks like so far the Viennese government has actually been able to keep up with construction better than private construction in other major cities, where construction is actually at all time lows. But of course, the Venice government now has a century of experience of building homes at scale. Other major cities simply do not have these sophisticated institutions to build public housing. That is a good quality and build it quickly enough.
And then, of course, there's more. The second major problem in trying to copy paste a Vienna model is that a massive social housing program is, of course, very expensive. Vienna is exceptional because it bought its land cheap during an economic collapse a century ago. Assembling that much land in any other city today would be incredibly expensive, requiring major tax hikes. And finally, the third major problem is about the politics of fairness. Vienna social housing has so much political support because it targets the middle class rather than the poor. And this is not very fair, of course. Social housing programs like those in the US or the French banlieues have often felt much more fair, but ended up making inequality worse as it cost poverty to concentrate in these large social housing projects. And these high profile failures helped reduce the political support for all social housing.
Therefore, my main takeaway from how Vienna solve the housing affordability crisis is that you shouldn't just talk about housing affordability in terms of more or less rent control. You can have cities like New York or Amsterdam, where the housing market is excessively regulated and they do not build enough public housing. But the regulation itself is not necessarily the problem. The building part is really the problem. Vienna figured out through decades of experience how to have a controlled market. And yet build more homes. But given that most cities today are not inside crumbling empires as far as we know, or have not recently been bombed, I think that for most cities, the takeaway should be that they should both encourage private construction as well as build more high quality public housing. That is not just for the poorest. The takeaway should be that they should do these things together, and doing them together can solve the housing affordability crisis, which is about building more homes.
But yeah, that's my take. Let me know what you guys think about the Vienna model in the comments below. And if you want to know more about the Vienna model or about the role of social housing in general, I highly recommend that you check out the following three key articles from our advertising sponsor, The Economist. For a critical view of the Vienna social housing program, check out this analysis on how the model pushes out the poor. And similarly, in Britain, The Economist highlights how getting social housing wrong is actually terrible for the economy. And finally, I recommend you go check out the latest livability rankings to see if Vienna is still number one or number two. And as these analysis show, The Economist delivers insights that truly help you to see the bigger picture. This is why I highly recommend you subscribe to The Economist, which now offers an exclusive 35% discount for money and macro viewers. Whether you prefer their daily journalism in The Economist app, or you're like me and enjoy catching up on the global economy over the weekend with a cup of coffee and print edition. You'll always stay on top of the latest global developments and support journalism that values factual information, integrity and an independent point of view. So don't miss out. Click the link in the description or the comment below, or head over to economist.com/money Macro to claim your exclusive 35% discount today.