Lessons from Vienna
- Shiloh
- Oct 22, 2025
- 5 min read
Updated: Nov 20, 2025
Imagine if you lived in a world where you never had to worry about having a safe and secure home. That world exists in Vienna.
This past September, I joined a delegation of 25 leaders from across the state as a part of the Global Policy Leadership Academy’s Social Housing Study Trip. In this blog I’ll talk about:
- Why Vienna
- Takeaways
- Why the Water District
Why Vienna?
This slide says it all.
Vienna is one of the most affordable places to live amongst European nations and it constantly ranks at the top of the world’s most livable places. How do they do it? Links to the nuts and bolts for you to peruse are below as I can't do a better job describing it.
But to back up for just a minute, I’ve been on several study trips throughout my career: Berlin to study public transit while at the Leadership Group and in preparation for BART, the Netherlands to learn about bike policy (along with then Councilmember Sam Liccardo when he was an up-n-comer!) And also as a part of a nationwide cohort that visited Austin to learn about anti-displacement solutions.
And now, Vienna. (Thank you to Silicon Valley Community Foundation for the scholarship to participate.)
With all of these trips, there is one throughline. What a society can achieve is rooted in that culture’s values. In Berlin and the Netherlands as well as Vienna, the communal ethic runs strong and has led to the creation of highly desired cities where people believe it is the resonsibility of society to care for each other.
More specifically, in Vienna they start from the premise that housing is a right. As a result, 2/3rds of their housing is “social housing”. Also:
- Health care is covered.
- Education is covered.
- Housing is covered.
Imagine how differently you would live if life's necessities weren’t worries. Would you be as driven to build wealth? Would you focus on caring for others? Regardless, in Vienna, the notion of housing as an asset, as a wealth-building tool, that notion is muted. And because of that, the Viennese are able to accomplish a lot.
Takeaways: We’re not Vienna
Realistically, Americans are nowhere near being able to bend its capitalist culture to focus on the "we" instead of the "I." American culture prides profit. We reward externalizing environmental and human costs for personal gain. The notion of housing as a human right is antithetical to a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps rugged individualism ethic. But we can still learn from Vienna. On that, I'll highlight two things.
1. Inspiration: It is humbling and inspiring for those of us from the land of American Exceptionalism to be confronted with a society that does not have our problems. And, being a little bit competitive, one might ask oneself, if Vienna can do it, if they can make sure that housing is not a worry, why can’t we? Why can’t we build upon our own cultural strengths, of which there are many, and create a society in which people are not living with mental illness in our creeks? If they can do it, we can too. Heck, we here in Silicon Valley are the center of innovation. We solve problems!
2. Relationships: Each cohort is carefully selected by the Global Policy Leadership Academy with the intent to inspire and build relationships amongst people who can effect change. Flying to a different country to witness something incredible, to experience, process, and learn it together, this results in stronger bonds upon which, back home, we can then do incredible things together.
Already, that is happening. Participants from Silicon Valley have met and shared some of their takeaways in a conversation about next steps. Highlights included:
Public Benefits: Because social housing is a widely held benefit, it is also very popular. That popularity leads to its ongoing success. Think of it like our mortgage interest deduction, our biggest housing subsidy. So many people benefit from it that it would be political suicide to suggest getting rid of it.
Scale: The sheer number of acres (>500 a project) Vienna is working with is amazing and beyond anything we have available here. Size opens up lots of opportunities.
Social Mixing: Everywhere we went, the Viennese emphasized the importance of social mixing.
Decommodification of Housing: Housing is not an asset and therefore not a wealth building tool. I'll also note, public housing quality in Vienna runs the gamut. You can be in a small studio, dormitory style, or something more posh. But you will have a roof over your head.
Ecosystem of Support: Not only is housing taken care of, there is an ecosystem of supports. Housing is one very important part of that ecosystem but the society has lots of ways of making sure people are taken care of.
Why the Water District?
At the Water District, we are tasked with three things:
1. Making sure whenever you turn on the tap, clean safe water comes out
2. Flood protection
3. And environmental stewardship towards those two purposes
With the lack of housing, people are forced to live outdoors, on friends’ couches, in their cars. Most disruptive for the Water District is people living along the streams and creeks. Trash, pollution, and the safety of those living outdoors hinders the District from achieving those three goals.
Before I was elected to the Board, the organization had already started to figure out how to get involved. At this point, there are two main paths the organization is on:
1. Providing land for emergency interim housing: We currently are partnering with the City of San Jose at the Cherry Avenue site, property we own. We’ve also done an inventory of Water District land to assess other locations that can be helpful to cities.
2. Adopting a no encampment zone ordinance: This zone recognizes that there are areas where we can’t allow people to live. Importantly however, the ordinance recognizes that kicking people out of the creeks when there is nowhere to go doesn’t solve the problem. So, we implement the ordinance in a more compassionate way and allow people to live in low priority areas as long as they are abiding by certain rules.
There is much more that the Water District could do. This trip was a part of the organization’s ongoing learning in order to build cross jurisdictional partnerships, and to continue to assess how the Water District can help solve our shared challenges in housing. If Vienna can do it, we can too.
For more info about Vienna's social housing, click through to the links below.
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