Vienna Greens seek ban on sale of municipal housing

Vienna’s Green Party wants to ban the privatisation and sale of municipal housing, ORF reported Thursday, after reported remarks by a district leader triggered renewed debate over the future of the city’s council flats.

The Greens plan to submit a housing protection bill to the Vienna municipal council in September. They are also calling for more construction of municipal housing and a major renovation programme.

The initiative followed reported comments by Ernst Nevrivy, the Social Democratic district leader in Donaustadt. During a conversation with Walter Ruck, who has since stepped down as president of the Vienna Chamber of Commerce, Nevrivy allegedly supported selling up to 100,000 municipal flats. He reportedly also described the construction of new municipal housing as “complete nonsense”.

The Greens presented their proposal outside a building in central Vienna that they said had stood empty for more than 25 years. Pühringer criticised what she described as speculation surrounding the building, which entered the city’s ownership in 1952. She said former housing councillor Werner Faymann of the Social Democratic Party later sold it to a private entrepreneur.

According to the Greens, the city sold 36 smaller municipal housing blocks containing about 600 flats in the early 2000s. They said some of the buildings had since become luxury properties rather than providing affordable housing. Prack said a comparable building in the Landstrasse district had also stood empty for a long time and was now being converted into flats costing 10,000 euros per square metre.

The Vienna Social Democratic Party rejected the Greens’ criticism as polemical. Municipal councillor Waltraud Karner-Kremser said no municipal housing block was currently for sale and that this would not change. She also said the building used for the Greens’ presentation had never been a municipal housing block.

Karner-Kremser said the Greens were casting doubt on a successful housing system. She stated that 60 percent of Vienna’s population lived in subsidised housing at rents she said residents of London, Paris and Munich could only dream of. She also rejected claims of a renovation backlog, pointing to ongoing refurbishment projects.