Green Social Housing: Lessons from Vienna

Report published June 2025 by Climate and Community Institute

Vienna is the global capital of social housing. Over 40 percent of the city’s housing units are social housing, providing homes for the majority of the city’s renters. And, as the city’s population has grown over the past two decades, Vienna has continued to build affordable, beautiful social housing, where doctors live next to janitors and grandparents live down the street from their grandkids. Today, Vienna’s social housing shelters residents from both real estate speculation and climate breakdown.