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Who’s entitled to Vienna’s higher rent subsidy?

The City of Vienna announced that it would increase rent subsidies to help cushion rising living costs. But who is eligible?

Published: 18 January 2024 17:05 CET

Who's entitled to Vienna's higher rent subsidy?

Vienna city Mayor Michael Ludwig (SPÖ). (Copyright: C.Jobst/PID)

In a closed meeting held at the Wien Museum, the Vienna city government has unveiled a series of amendments and increases to the rent subsidy, along with an extension of support for new building construction. These decisions, slated to take effect from March 1st, aim to alleviate the impact of soaring housing costs and provide substantial assistance to families.

Mayor Michael Ludwig (SPÖ), Deputy Mayor Christoph Wiederkehr (NEOS), and Social Welfare Councillor Peter Hacker (SPÖ) announced the rent subsidy adjustments during a subsequent press conference this Thursday.

READ ALSO: Vienna launches initiative to help stateless people get Austrian citizenship

Who will benefit?

The primary focus of these changes is to benefit families, particularly supporting single parents, the authorities said.

For instance, a single parent who already receives minimum income support from the city with two children and a monthly rent of € 650 is expected to receive € 361.04 per month, marking an increase of approximately 120 percent from the current € 163.95.

Even those who do not receive minimum income but are in a group “at acute risk of poverty” will also receive increased support.

According to Hacker, the total costs for both measures have been estimated at around €150 million per year, with around €60 to €65 million likely to be spent on support linked to the minimum income. The measures will be valid from March 1st.

READ ALSO: What is Vienna’s MA 35 doing to offer better service for immigrants in Austria?

Higher subsidies for house cooperatives

In addition to housing-related measures, amendments to the New Construction Ordinance are planned. Non-profit housing developers will receive increased subsidy rates, and higher loans will be available for renovation and decarbonisation measures.

READ ALSO: EXPLAINED: How to get free vouchers to learn German in Vienna

Tenants making environmentally friendly changes, such as replacing gas stoves with electric ones, will also be eligible for funds, the authorities said without giving more details.

“Making Vienna liveable and affordable – consistent measures in challenging times” was the motto of the closed meeting.

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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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