A Home Truth

Thanks to the Santa Barbara Foundation for addressing our housing crisis and to the Independent for reporting on it and other housing news. As Nick Welsh reported, 55 percent of our renters spend more than a third of their take-home income on housing, and 30 percent spend more than half, leaving little for the other necessities of life.

By contrast, look at Vienna, Austria, one of the most attractive and affluent cities in the world. A May 23 article in the New York Times noted that there, because of aggressive government intervention, 80 percent of all households choose to rent, and those in market-rate apartments pay an average of just 26 percent of their income on rent and energy. Those living in the 43 percent of housing that is subsidized (so-called “social housing”) pay only about 22 percent of their income to housing. The Viennese rental housing is quite beautiful, and the low cost gives renters the freedom to enjoy life in many ways beyond subsisting.

As the Santa Barbara Foundation report urges, public and private entities here must do more to address the cost of housing. If we want to be able to provide nearby housing for our essential workers, our housing stock may need to include up to 40 percent subsidized affordable units, rather than the small percentage that we have now. This will involve an enormous shift in our past assumptions; but we have a new reality, and it is time to study what is possible in cities like Vienna.