The Right to Housing in Vienna – An Overview

Housing is a universal basic human need. To be housed means much more than having a roof over your head: Housing serves the needs of regeneration and protection; it makes retreat, privacy, and self-determination possible. Moreover, social and political participation, as well as access to the labor market, are closely bound up with having a place to live. Yet across the world, especially since the 2008 financial crisis, housing has increasingly been transformed from a durable good into a financial instrument—a development that has not spared Vienna.