‘Housing utopia’ the place lease is £193 a month and residents can’t be evicted

In the 12 months to February 2023, rental prices for the UK, excluding London, elevated by 4.8 %.

It means renters have on common confronted £2,820 a yr enhance in rental prices during the last 5 years.

Not solely restricted to the private rental sector, tenants in social housing noticed their rents rise by seven % as of April 2023.

Many are reeling from the rises, however the image is way completely different in a single main European metropolis.

Vienna, Austria, has been described as a “renter’s utopia”, hailed for its progressive social housing insurance policies which started within the Twenties and 30s.

Today, that social housing sees greater than 60 % of the town’s 1.8 million residents residing in subsidised housing.

More than half of the housing market is both city-owned flats or cooperative flats.

A extra even enjoying subject means 80 % of Viennese are renters, because of strict rent control laws.

These legal guidelines make sure that folks solely pay 20 to 25 % of their revenue on housing. In some circumstances, they pay as little as eight %.

In Britain, at the least half of individuals spend at the least half of their pay on lease, in accordance with SpareRoom.

The common wage is between round £25,000 and £30,000, that means if Vienna’s coverage have been rolled out within the UK, renters might be paying as little as £166 a month.

Vienna’s Gemeindebauten — its council estates — differ from these seen across the UK. Rather than being painted within the bland and infrequently uninteresting colors acquainted to British equivalents, they’re high-quality and vibrant, usually that includes beautiful balconies and plant installations.

Also not like in Britain, they don’t seem to be completely for individuals who are much less well-off.

Some 80 % of individuals qualify for social housing in Vienna, such is the peak of the revenue cap.

Once permitted, renter’s contracts by no means expire — even when their salaries enhance.

This is claimed to result in better financial range inside the Gemeindebauten’s communities and make for a extra blended bunch of inhabitants.

Peter Pilz, a former member of Austria’s Green Party who took over his grandmother’s social housing unit, informed the New York Times in May: “If people don’t have to struggle all day long to survive — if your life is made safe, at least in social conditions — you can use your energy for much more important things.”

Mr Pilz discovered himself within the headlines in 2012 after it was claimed he was solely paying €66 (£57) a month to stay in his property within the Goethehof Gemeindebauten on the Danube River.

This was regardless of him making greater than €8,000 (£6912) a month from his job in parliament.

The UK Government has a number of instances been accused of ignoring social housing and renters in want of inexpensive housing.

This week, the Labour Party’s Shadow Housing Secretary Lisa Nandy is predicted to inform the Housing 2023 convention that her get together will ship “a refreshed model” that may “put social and genuinely affordable housing at the very heart of our plans to jump-start the housebuilding industry”.