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RENTING

Austria’s City of Innsbruck announces rental control system

The Innsbruck City Senate decided on Thursday to introduce its own rent brake in an effort to fight the housing crisis in the Tyrolean capital. Here's what you need to know.

Published: 6 April 2023 16:49 CEST
Austria's City of Innsbruck announces rental control system
(Photo by Niklas Jeromin / Pexels)

After an agreement on an Austria-wide rent brake for guideline rents failed in the federal government, the Innsbruck city senate decided to apply it to apartments owned by Innsbruck’s real estate company (IIG), according to a government press release. 

The Tyrolean capital followed the model of the city of Graz after the federal government had opted for housing cost assistance as a one-off payment instead of the rent brake.

In Innsbruck, the rent is set to increase by two percent per year, the City said. The first increase will occur on May 1st, 2023, and the city will partially compensate IIG for the resulting revenue shortfall. In total, the IIG will receive a subsidy of €615,000, with one-third of the sum paid out to the city-owned IIG in 2023, 2024, and 2025, according to an ORF Tirol report.

READ ALSO: ANALYSIS: Can Austria’s government get inflation under control?

The motion was passed by a resolution in the City Senate, with the support of the Greens, FPÖ, and SPÖ. However, a further resolution in the municipal council is still pending. 

“In the absence of a nationwide solution, we are taking the path followed by other Austrian cities and intervening where we can – in our case, with the affected apartments of IIG,” said Innsbruck Mayor Georg Willi (Greens).

What was the federal solution?

The Austrian government debated a rent brake for several months, but they ultimately decided to replace it with a one-off payment after coalition partners failed to agree on the details. 

Instead of capping rental increases, the centre-right ÖVP and left-leaning Greens announced a €250 million boost in housing aid for Austrian households. The agreement was revealed last month, just before benchmark rents were due to increase, which are rents in older buildings regulated by the government and based on the inflation rate.

READ ALSO: Renting in Austria: When can my landlord increase the rent, and by how much?

Social Minister Johannes Rauch of the Greens and ÖVP club leader August Wöginger presented the new plan, as reported by The Local. Rauch stated that the housing allowance is a one-time payment that must be actively applied. Wöginger said that households that qualify for it would receive an average of around €200 and approximately one million low-income households would be eligible to receive it.

The income limits for eligibility are determined by the federal states, which also pay out housing cost subsidies, the government said.

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HEALTH

Patients in Vienna face long waits for specialist health appointments

Waiting times to get appointments with health specialists in Vienna have increased significantly, a new study has revealed.

Published: 17 May 2024 09:56 CEST
Patients in Vienna face long waits for specialist health appointments

Accessing essential healthcare within a reasonable timeframe is becoming increasingly difficult for Viennese residents.

The Vienna Medical Association presented their new study this week which shows that waiting times for appointments with health specialists have increased significantly in recent years.

The study, which involved contacting over 850 doctors’ practices via so-called “mystery calls,” revealed that child and adolescent psychiatry currently had the longest waiting times in the city.

Patients can expect to wait an average of 90 days for an appointment.

Other specialisations where patients have to wait long to receive help include radiology (57 days), neurology (45 days), ophthalmology (44 days), pulmonology (36 days), internal medicine (33 days), and dermatology (28 days).

The waiting time for seeing a gynaecologist has increased fourfold since 2012, with patients now waiting an average of 32 days.

READ MORE: Why are there fewer public sector doctors in Austria?

No new patients accepted

In certain specialist areas, there is no capacity to accommodate new patients. The situation where no new patients are accepted occurs particularly often in paediatric practices, where more than half of the public healthcare practices have put a freeze on admissions.

In child and adolescent psychiatry, 40 percent do not accept new patients, and among gynaecologists, it is almost a third (30 percent). Family doctors also struggle with welcoming new patients, and many of their practices have already reached full capacity.

The Medical Association calls for immediate action, urging the health insurance sector to become more attractive and receive better funding. This could involve measures to incentivise doctors to work within the public system, potentially reducing wait times and improving patient access to care.

During the study presentation, Johannes Steinhart, president of the association, described the increased waiting times as the result of neglect within the established health insurance sector. He said he believes that the public health system is massively endangered.

Naghme Kamaleyan-Schmied, chairwoman of the Curia of the resident doctors in the association, pointed out that while the population of the federal capital has grown by 16 percent since 2012, the number of public doctors has fallen by 12 percent in the same period.

The association now wants to make the public healthcare system more attractive to doctors, which could cut down waiting times and make it easier for patients to receive care. The association’s demands for this to happen include increasing flexibility in contract options, integrating health and social professions in individual practices, reducing bureaucracy, and improving fees.

ÖGK, Österreichische Gesundheitskasse, Austria’s largest public healthcare fund, is currently creating 100 additional public health positions, with almost two-thirds of the positions already having applicants, as well as planning for another 100 positions. They also aim to create a central telemedicine service and a platform for making appointments by phone and online, which is meant to reduce waiting times and improve access to care.

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