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Title: Could This City Be the Model for How to Tackle the Both the Climate
and Housing Crisis?

Link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/15/2072...

NPR looks at the "high-quality, climate-friendly apartments" in Vienna,
asking if it's a model for addressing both climate change and the housing
crisis. About half the city's 2 million people live in the widespread (and
government-supported) apartments, with solar panels on top and very thick,
insulated walls that reduce the need for heating and cooling. (One resident
tells NPR they don't even need an air conditioner because "It's not cold in
winter times. It's not hot in summer times." Vienna council member Nina
Abrahamczik, who heads the climate and environment committee, says as the
city transitions all of its buildings off planet-heating fossil fuels,
they're starting with the roughly 420,000 housing units they already own or
subsidize.... As Vienna makes an aggressive push to completely move away from
climate-polluting natural gas by 2040, it's starting with much of this social
housing, says Jurgen Czernohorszky, executive city councilor responsible for
climate and environment. City-owned buildings are now switching from gas to
massive electric heat pumps, and to geothermal, which involves probing into
the ground to heat homes. Another massive geothermal project that drills even
deeper into the earth to heat homes is also underway. The city is also
powering housing with solar energy. As of a year and a half ago, Vienna
mandates all new buildings and building extensions to have rooftop solar. And
Vienna's older apartment buildings are getting climate retrofits, says
Veronika Iwanowski, spokesperson for Vienna's municipal housing company,
Wiener Wohnen. That includes new insulation, doors and windows to prevent the
city's wind from getting in the cracks. The increase in energy efficiency and
switching from gas to renewables doesn't just have climate benefits from
cutting fossil fuel use. It also means housing residents are paying less on
electric bills... With city-subsidized housing, housing developers can
compete to get land and low-interest loans from the city. Officials say those
competitions are a critical lever for climate action. "As we can control the
contents of the competitions, we try to make them fit to the main goals of
the city," says Kurt Hofstetter, city planner for Vienna, "which is of course
also ecological...." Now the housing judges give out points for things like
increased energy efficiency, green roofs and sustainable building
materials... Now the climate innovations in subsidized housing are inspiring
the private market as well, Hofstetter says... The article notes that most of
the city's funding is provided in the form of low-interest loans, according
to a researcher at the Austrian Federation of Limited-Profit Housing
Associations. (And the average social housing rents are about $700 for a
large one-bedroom apartment, says Gerald K�ssl, researcher at the Austrian
Federation of Limited-Profit Housing Associations.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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