What Vienna’s housing model can teach the Bay Area

The key reason Vienna is a model is that social housing is viewed as civic architecture, where public land, long-term financing, tenant protections and on-site supports combine to make housing both affordable and stable. More than 40% of Vienna’s residents live in some form of subsidized housing, which boasts one of the lowest rental rates among major Western European cities.

In contrast, the local housing challenges are immediate and growing. Recent Bay Area Point in Time counts — one-day snapshots guiding homelessness response — registered regional upticks in both overall and unsheltered populations, underscoring the urgency of more enduring, affordable options.

While Vienna’s approach isn’t a one-size-fits-all blueprint, it offers adaptable choices: long-term public ownership of land that stabilizes affordability, steady subsidy streams that bypass volatile short-term grants and the boom-and-bust cycle of development, mixed-income buildings that foster equity, and built-in social supports that reduce returns to homelessness — elements baked into decades of Vienna’s housing policy.

In the Bay Area, LifeMoves has seen at a smaller scale what consistent support does for people transitioning out of homelessness. The organization serves thousands annually across outreach, interim supportive housing, specialized services and prevention. These programs move families, couples and individuals into stable housing at rates comparable to the counties’ Continuum of Care benchmarks. Veteran-specific programs further show targeted supports paired with housing dramatically shifting outcomes. Those results matter when evaluating whether Vienna’s model could strengthen our own system.

Still, context matters. Vienna’s success rests on generations of public investment, legal frameworks and a different land market. The Bay Area faces acute land scarcity, high construction costs and a governance environment where alignment is often slowed by red tape.

That means we must be selective, prioritizing Vienna practices that are realistic here: permanent public land ownership, stronger tenant protections and committed subsidy pipelines. These efforts require acknowledging limits on an immediate scale.

Both the county and LifeMoves’ distinctive strength lies in combining modular, accelerated construction with integrated, whole-person services, an approach the Navigation Center in Redwood City has successfully demonstrated.

With that considered, we should examine three of the most practical steps for our region:

1). Inventory and commit public lands for long-term affordable housing development, much like the San Mateo County-owned 555-unit redevelopment in Daly City, Midway Village.

2). Pair rapid interim housing with formal pathways to permanent units that include supports like case management, behavioral health and employment specialists.

3). Pursue multiyear subsidy deals with state and philanthropic partners to stabilize operational funding for housing.

These steps reflect Vienna’s model but are calibrated for California’s regulatory and fiscal reality. If local counties and nonprofit partners commit to these shifts, we can reduce exits back to homelessness and create housing that endures beyond one administration or budget cycle.

Vienna teaches us that sustainable and humane housing policy is civic infrastructure and avoids episodic programming. We borrow the underlying logic without assuming our political, fiscal and land constraints are identical.

The lesson: We don’t need to copy Vienna wholesale to learn from it. We need courage to reframe housing as a long-term public good, discipline to finance it accordingly and compassion to ensure those we serve are partners in design. We owe nothing less to all our neighbors.

Lisa Gauthier is the District 4 member of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors and former mayor of East Palo Alto. Aubrey Merriman serves as the CEO of LifeMoves, the leading provider of interim housing and support services on the Peninsula.