The century-old social housing program in Vienna, Austria, has gotten a lot of glowing press in the U.S. as of late. Through a mixture of direct government ownership and heavy government subsidization, the Austrian capital has managed to create an affordable, amenity-rich "renter's utopia," as one New York Times dispatch recently described it. The U.S. could have this too if only we stopped relying on the private, for-profit provision of shelter.
But a new report argues the sterling reputation of "Red Vienna" is largely a mirage—a product of bad accounting, opaque bureaucracy, and the failure of social housing boosters to consider the extensive German-language literature examining the program's failures.
