City of Vienna Pushes for Rent Cap
The City of Vienna has called for an Austrian-wide rent price cap since it does not want to implement these regulations on its own. The rent price cap is heavily debated in Austria at this moment because the guideline value for rents might increase too much in April.
The City of Vienna Calls for a Rent Price Cap Amidst the Possible Rent Increases in Austria. / Picture: © Pedro Szekely from Los Angeles, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
The city of Vienna does not want to implement a rent cap on its own but calls for a nationwide solution for the soon possible sharp rise in benchmark rents, which has been missing so far. With around 100,000 municipal apartments, the federal capital could take action itself, ORF reported. According to the report, the legally possible waiver will not be used. The city wants a general solution for Austria.
"It is the responsibility of the federal government to amend the relevant law," said a joint statement by Mayor Michael Ludwig and Housing Councilor Kathrin Gaal. The city of Vienna does not want "isolated solutions. Tenants throughout Austria need a universal solution so that the constant inflation-related rent increases do not continue to grow over the heads of the people in Austria.” according to Vienna.at.
275,000 apartments in Vienna have guideline rents, for the 100,000 municipal apartments, the city could avert the threatened increase of 8.6 percent as of April 1, after there is no federal regulation so far. OEVP and Greens could not agree for the time being, a solution failed - at least for the time being - in the previous week. Yesterday, Chancellor Karl Nehammer announced an "overall package," though without naming a date. The People's Party is also concerned with measures on land transfer tax, as stated by ORF.
As reported by Kurier, Across Austria, the issue involves around 375,000 indicative rental apartments and also around 135,000 apartments with category rents, where in turn costs could rise by 5 percent in July. The AK also wants, for example, a rent cap for another 400,000 or so household with indexed, free rents. The SPOE and the trade union federation also demand that rents may only be raised once a year and not by more than 2 percent.