← Front page

So Money with Farnoosh Torabi · Wednesday, August 5, 2026

Vienna's Subsidized Housing Offers Contrast to US Housing Costs

Georgia Lee Hussey contrasts the housing situation in Vienna, Austria, where a significant portion of residents live in subsidized housing and pay about 20% of their income for it, with the much higher housing costs in the US. This observation led her to reconsider how housing and childcare are approached in the US.

personGeorgia Lee Hussey

The tape

3 quotes
And what I noticed is, um, you know, when I was in Vienna, uh, half the city lives in subsidized housing. And that means that they're receiving money or stipends from the government to live in cities like this, which are beautiful.
Georgia Lee Hussey
And they were saying that they're paying roughly 20% of their income for housing. And here in the states, we are paying sometimes $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 a month for housing.
Georgia Lee Hussey
And that got her rethinking, what would it even look like if we stopped treating things like housing and child care as problems that we each have to solve alone?
Farnoosh Torabi
Heard on So Money with Farnoosh Torabi — “2018: When Paying for Our Values Gets Complicated, published Wednesday, August 5, 2026. Heardvine summarizes and quotes with attribution and timestamps, and links to the original everywhere.
Transcribed via Gemini audio transcription · $0.05
Vienna's Subsidized Housing Offers Contrast to US Housing Costs — Heardvine