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How Vienna residents can get the new €200 housing bonus

More than two-thirds of all households in Vienna are entitled to the new housing bonus, which is aimed at easing the impact of high inflation.

Published: 20 July 2023 17:14 CEST

A close up of a €200 note.

A close up of a €200 note. Photo: Turgay Koca/Pexels

On Monday, July 17th, the city of Vienna launched its new housing bonus scheme, which will help residents struggling to get by amidst high inflation by awarding them a €200 subsidy.

Austria currently has one of the highest inflation rates in the Eurozone, so the Austrian capital has allocated €140 million to support eligible households.

READ ALSO: Inflation in Austria: The products that are finally getting cheaper

To be eligible for the Housing Bonus 2023, households must have their main residence in Vienna and meet the income criteria.

Single-person households with a gross income of up to €40,000 from the previous year, and multi-person households with a combined gross income of up to €100,000 from the previous year, are eligible to apply. Only the incomes of individuals aged 18 and above are taken into account.

According to the city, there are nearly 700,000 eligible households, which make up around two-thirds of all households in Vienna.

The application process is entirely online, and all households in Vienna will receive a letter containing information about the Housing Bonus 2023 and an individual password to access the application portal.

The application period extends until September 30th and the €200 payment will be made a few days after the submission of the application either through a bank transfer or by postal order.

It’s important to note that there is no automatic payment for the Housing Bonus 2023, unlike the Vienna Energy Bonus 23. Therefore, all eligible households must submit a new application, even if they have previously received other bonuses.

What does not count as annual gross income?

There are some benefits that won’t be counted in the annual gross income calculation for the Housing Bonus 2023. These include study grants, Viennese minimum income support, Viennese basic care and housing support, AlVG and AMSG benefits such as unemployment benefits, emergency aid and retraining benefits.

Member comments

Anonymous - 24 July 2023 at 21:48 CEST

What is the website for applying for the bonus?

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Vienna Festival director Milo Rau hits back at anti-Semitism accusations

As the conflict in Gaza sharply polarises opinion, “we must be inflexible” in defending the free exchange of ideas and opinions, the acclaimed Swiss director told AFP in an interview this week.

“I’m not going to take a step aside… If we let the antagonism of the war and of our society seep into our cultural and academic institutions, we will have completely lost,” said the 47-year-old, who will inaugurate the Wiener Festwochen, a festival of theatre, concerts, opera, film and lectures that runs until June 23rd in the Austrian capital and that has taken on a more political turn under his tenure.

The Swiss director has made his name as a provocateur, whether travelling to Moscow to stage a re-enactment of the trial of Russian protest punk band Pussy Riot, using children to play out the story of notorious Belgian paedophile Marc Dutroux, or trying to recruit Islamic State jihadists as actors.

Completely ridiculous

The Vienna Festival has angered Austria’s conservative-led government — which is close to Israel — by inviting Greek former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and French Nobel Prize winner for literature Annie Ernaux, both considered too critical of Israel.

A speech ahead of the festival on Judenplatz (Jews’ Square) by Israeli-German philosopher Omri Boehm — who has called for replacing Israel with a bi-national state for Arabs and Jews — also made noise.

“Who will be left to invite? Every day, there are around ten articles accusing us of being anti-Semitic, saying that our flag looks like the Palestinian flag, completely ridiculous things,” Rau said, as he worked from a giant bed which has been especially designed by art students and installed at the festival office.

Hamas’ bloody October 7th assault on southern Israel and the devastating Israeli response have stoked existing rancour over the Middle East conflict between two diametrically opposed camps in Europe.

In this climate, “listening to the other side is already treachery,” lamented the artistic director.

“Wars begin in this impossibility of listening, and I find it sad that we Europeans are repeating war at our level,” he said.

As head of also the NTGent theatre in the Belgian city of Ghent, he adds his time currently “is divided between a pro-Palestinian country and a pro-Israeli country,” or between “colonial guilt” in Belgium and “genocide guilt” in Austria, Adolf Hitler’s birthplace.

Institutional revolution

The “Free Republic of Vienna” will be proclaimed on Friday as this year’s Vienna Festival celebrates. according to Rau, “a second modernism, democratic, open to the world” in the city of the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and artist and symbolist master Gustav Klimt.

Some 50,000 people are expected to attend the opening ceremony on the square in front of Vienna’s majestic neo-Gothic town hall.

With Rau describing it as an “institutional revolution” and unlike any other festival in Europe, the republic has its own anthem, its own flag and a council made up of Viennese citizens, as well as honorary members, including Varoufakis and Ernaux, who will participate virtually in the debates.

The republic will also have show trials — with real lawyers, judges and politicians participating — on three weekends.

Though there won’t be any verdicts, Rau himself will be in the dock to embody “the elitist art system”, followed by the republic of Austria and finally by the anti-immigrant far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), which leads polls in the Alpine EU member ahead of September national elections.

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