Housing policy and housing subsidies in Austria

During the postwar decades, government subsidies for the construction of new housing schemes in Austria always played an important role and no government or political stripe ever really queried the point. Coalitions and monocracies passed a series of important housing subsidies acts which, though differing in some aspects, still always aimed at an increase of social housing activities. Even today, vehement discussions are heard on the political platform about the purpose and the future of public housing subsidies, but the ideas of the individual political parties are definitely far more apart from each other than in the past decades. Anyone dealing with Austrian housing policies must keep in mind the central mechanisms of the Austrian political systems prevailing during the years after WWII. Austria was characterized by a marked policy of consent, by a close cooperation between the parties and lobbies, and by the strong influence these lobbies exerted on the processes of political decisions and objectives. Ever since the Fifties, the Austrian labour unions, the labour chambers, as well as the employers organisations participated in constructing the public economic and social politics and succeeded in pushing essential particular interests in these fields. This participation was backed by the close cooperation of the unions, their joint central orientation and their manifold connections with the two ruling parties SPÖ and ÖVP. In Austria, the model of "social market economy" became generally accepted. It is basically still prevailing and has practically survived all types of coalition governments. In spite of a liberal economic trend the SPÖ - during the time when they were the government partners of the "Great Coalition" - and the influence the unions had on important political decisions assured the development of the social state. There was a historical compromise between employees and employers, aiming at the development of market economy and social state on obviously equal terms. The fact that there was a general basic consent, however, did not exclude differences with regard to various central problems - such as the problem of nationalized industries . The above principles of the Austrian political system is the suitable framework for a detailed study of the Austrian housing and subsidies policy after 1945. It is the target of this project to explicate the housing policies of the big parties SPÖ and ÖVP, using the example of the abovementioned subsidies laws and to make clear, to which extent these laws could represent a consent. We shall ignore the question of the lease and rent policy which was dealing mainly with pre-war housing and which did not directly concern the promotion of new housing schemes. Based on the international - here, specially the German - state of research we shall illustrate the deficiencies in the Austrian research, in order to eventually raise questions which can be set into practice, and dealt with, on an empirical basis.