Відео

I've been living in my Gemeindebau apartment for about four years now, and while the rent has gone up quite a bit, I still pay under 400€ including electricity and gas. Wiener Wohnen is not perfect, but I love my flat and the area it is in and am so grateful for it. I'm hopeful that things can change in the US, with such dedicated people trying their best! :)

2:00 they should cover it with green roofs to get some shades

I was expecting a video about France, and not a video pushing socialist BS. Yes, there is some nice things about France but the question is - Who is paying for all this? In a country where the government spending makes almost 60% of GDP its not hard to answer that question. It is exactly all the “social and diversity policies” that are ruining the majority of French cities.

A lot of your story is similar to mine when I lived in the US, especially the not having a car and not having stable housing (I managed to avoid the debt part, thank gawd, but it was still rough). And then I saw an opportunity to move to South Korea for a job, with a government contract, and I took it, lived there for 5 years and it was the most stable I'd ever been in my whole adult life. Met my partner while there, who is French. I wanted to stay there but the Korean government defunded most of the program I was in so it was becoming too expensive for them to keep me on and it wasn't possible to move into a new job sector there because of the type of visa I had. So me and my partner decided to settle in France. We decided against the US for infrastructure alone, too many disadvantages. I'm not gonna lie the transition to France was much harder for me than Korea and I don't know exactly why, I haven't had many bad experiences here, I think it might've been just me, like I had way more culture shocks here than I ever did in Korea, maybe it's because I'm from California and am used to many different kinds of Asian cultures, lol, I don't know. But infrastructure where I live, just in the banlieues of Ile-de-France, is still much better than it ever would've been back in the US, I don't need a car here (though I wish my town and the ones near me were more bike friendly, they seem like they would be but they aren't), most of what I need is in walking distance, I can afford the healthcare here, I now own my home, sure it's a smallish 2 bedroom condo in a pretty big building and I have co-op fees to pay even after the mortgage is payed off, but I have a home that's mine that I'm not gonna lose. I would love to live in Nantes though, but it's not an option.

I hate to say it, but the title should say "2 months living in Nantes" and not France. I've only spent a weekend there, and I will take ALL the pouring rain Nantes givesme over living where I do in the banlieues of Ile-de-France, lol. Don't get me wrong, my banlieue is one of the better ones in Ile-de-France, I lucked out there. But man, Nantes is impressive. We even bought a year long museum pass since it works for like 90% of places there and we have no idea if we'll be going that often, lol. It just sucks that my partner's company doesn't have offices there, hence why we're still where we are.

Ce que j'ai appris en France ( où je ne Voulais pas Revenir ) c'est que je préfère Repartir à l'étranger ! Les Français sont les plus mauvais élèves Européens concernant la pratique de L'Anglais qui est pourtant la langue de communication Internationale ! Et il suffit de Surfer sur Google et UA-cam pour avoir des Dizaines de Milliers de Réponses sur des Sujets ou Produits que les Français vous jugeront que ça n'existe pas ! Pour finir en Asie, en Afrique et en Amérique Latine il y a encore une VIE DANS LA RUE et avec de la " Street Food ". Ce qui est INTROUVABLE en France ...

Nantes is a SHITHOLE ! DONT COME !

Hey, that‘s my house (2:10) 😄

Just a quick note: while you're right on the money that none of this came by accident, and certainly a lot of progress... came from progressivists :P the right here as been often part of the journey because the right in France is way more statist than in the US. France present state came by from a Monarchy that was far from leftist yet in its odd way cared about the People in ways capitalists do not necessarily. So yup, big powerful state organizing the global well being is an idea that's very old here. No working on Sunday for instance cames from the Catholic values, not the left (although if you ask me Jesus was unambiguously communist :P). Pensions were established by far right - Marechal Pétain (often forgotten by the left here). Reasons are complex but in Europe (and probably even more in Germany than France) capitalism was labelled "familial". The owner of the factory would also be its CEO but also kind of responsible for his workers and their families well being. If you ever go to Bruges in Belgium the "workers" house (nowaday everything but cheap) are a striking exemple of the wealthy having strong ideas and sense of responsibility toward their workers. Of course that era is long gone but a right wing mayor here will be more sensible on making sure the RE value of properties go the right way but nearly always work seriously within the framework of guaranteeing 20% housing for "low income" families, force mixing of kids from various income bracket in public school, etc. They may not like it too much but this is completely out of their hand as those are ruled by nation wide laws and at that level, free healthcare is a given for every party, including conservative. As you say this isn't a magic system and there are definitively cons but it goes beyond left and right politics. IMO it's a deeper cultural difference.

What a nice video!

Oakland is full of the developmentally disabled . They need it there . Like all the other totally subverted places . NYC , DENVER , CHICAGO , lots and lots of babies born there with developmental disabilities . Just look at the way they vote . Turn on the news . Read a history book . Or don't bother . You know the way the elections going . Deportations , The restoration of Justice in Law . All that stuff . A lot of people going to prison and places like Rowanda .

I've lived in Nantes for 25 years and I really appreciated your video. But the French right and far right parties are going to hate you, especially the ones from Nantes 🙂

I’ve been living in Nantes for three years, and sadly, I’m leaving in a week. I’ve lived all over France, but Nantes is my favourite city. I’m originally from Canada, but I feel much more at home in France, despite the large amounts of paperwork here.

Vienna restarted to build these houses in the last years and plans to build many more as the rents were rising since covid.

Idk this is all very inspirational but Seattle is a shitshow. It's progressive policies are bonkers, there's no hope, the political duopoly can't and won't serve the people

I hate how some immigrants get cheap housing in vienna, but people who are not viennese and coming from other parts of austria have no right to get them, although living literally 5km away from the viennese border, growing up there and working there.

And also a Rwandan nibber set fire to the Cathedral before slitting a priest throat later on, while the streets are filled with racial strangers and aggressive beggers. While rents are making it a very expansive gutter. No wonder you almost only speak about commodities and so few about people (that you don't show in the pictures).

In Vienna, there are currently around 220,000 municipal apartments. Additionally, there are over 200,000 subsidized apartments. The planned new municipal apartments account for 0.89% compared to the total number of municipal apartments in Vienna. If the 200,000 subsidized apartments enter the free market and are bought by investors, the number of affordable apartments would effectively be halved. The new municipal apartments are more of an image boost and a drop in the ocean rather than a substantial solution. I am confident that the housing and real estate situation in Vienna will significantly worsen in the coming years, becoming more like other major cities around the world, rather than the world looking up to Vienna as a model. I was born and raised in Vienna, received a good education, and have a stable job. However, I notice that living in Vienna is becoming increasingly difficult. One only has to walk around the inner city or along the Danube Canal in the evening to see how many apartments have no lights on. I am convinced that allowing apartments to be used as investment goods is one of the biggest mistakes worldwide. In the long run, this will lead to an unequal distribution of wealth and a widening gap between the rich and the poor

Aren't censorship enabled echo chambers awesome!!!?

The US is not, and will never be Europe. Stop trying to make us like them. If you love it so much, go there!

Not sure that anything like this would work in any of the big coastal US cities unless you did something that would eliminate investors from competing for access to the inventory. I mean, let's be realistic here, the amount of influence that developers and investors have with politicians of all stripes in the US is really quite incredible. Among other problems, again in the big coastal cities, are the massive amount of regulations that apply to building projects, the NIMBY mentality, and also the huge number of people that would be in line to get one of these apartments. In California, for example, you have the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) which allows any person or entity to file a suit to stop land use projects, and has been used numerous times to stop the building of residential housing, commercial real estate, etc...lastly, what would be the formula to determine who gets this housing in what, at the present moment, are some of the most desirable places to live in the US? Would it be limited to US citizens? Would undocumented immigrants have access to the housing? This is really a hugely complicated issue...

Sadly there are a couple of half truths in this video. True, the Wiener Gemeindebau is the biggest real-estate company in Europe, but only about 25% and not 40% live in a public housing. About 40% live in public housing + private non profit social housing + rent controlled housing built before 1945. This video makes it sound as if the Social Democrats "Red Vienna" invented this type of housing or were the first to focus on providing housing with proper amenities and sufficient living standard, or were the only ones building this. This also not true, a hundred years ago the (conservative) federal government was building public housing, the neighbouring municipalities were building public housing (some later were annexed into the city proper), before the First World War, churches, unions, collectives and non profits were building social housing. What is true, is that the Social Democrats brought this already existing idea to a new level and went on a massive building spree between and post Wars. That is worthy of mention and it is proper to credit the Social Democrats of that era, but if you listen to some of them today then often the other players are forgotten about and the idea is attributed only to the socialists. The most recent Gemeindebau project opened in 2019 to 2022 and not in 2004. www.wienerwohnen.at/gemeindewohnungenneu/fontanastrasse.html www.wienerwohnen.at/gemeindewohnungenneu/gaswerkleopoldau.html www.wienerwohnen.at/gemeindewohnungenneu/eisringsued.html Yes, there has been a twenty year construction pause, caused by the election of the "New Labour" style mayor Haupl, who did not really believe in public housing and sold off many communal assets. But since his retirement there has been a tentative effort to restart public construction. Maybe the better thing to do would be to expand the existing Gemeindebauten by one or two levels, or even demolish and rebuild the oldest to modern standards.

1:52 I think that social housing can (only) work with a well build public transportation System. Simmering ist the South Western district in the 90s and up to the 2010s it was known to be comfortable. You had the best of both words living in green but have full access to the public transportation and have all the most important places around you

youtube at its best!

Most countries are facing a housing crisis. Vienna & Singapore seem to have public housing models that are working for them, but can it be replicated everywhere? Both cities are rich, so the question is: is there a "one size fits all" housing model, or do we need separate models for developing & developed countries? One of my favourite cities is Curitiba (Brazil) - they also have an innovative approach to housing... Another aspect worth discussing is population growth. In some parts of the world fertility rates are falling so technically the availability of social housing should be stable. In developing countries fertility rates are still high so demand for social housing will also be high... & will continue to be for a few years still. Given that demand for social housing is great & urgent (with millions living in slums), is there any "special" housing policy that would work here? The other question re social housing is what happens when people retire and incomes drop dramatically? In the past owning your own home means that once you retire hopefully your home is paid for and is now "free". With social housing is the rent still affordable once a person retires? Perhaps residents should be sold life rights to an apartment up to a certain value then the rent tapers off (to cover maintenance costs) and then when the "owner" leaves or passes then the unit reverts back to the city for some-one else to occupy?

As a Viennese i have the thank Wiener Wohnen as they saved my life. I was very close to be homeless - but then, they gave me a ticket to search for a flat and what can i say… this flat is better than ANY private flat i ever rented!!! Instead of living in the city (which is a hell-hole in the summer), i enjoy living in a 2 room apartment (alone), with lots of green - when i look out the window there is a park, with old trees which cool down the hot temperatures when the sun sets, no noice, a subway station 2 minutes by foot (in Vienna you‘ll find every 150 m a public transport opportunity), everything i need is no more than 10 minutes (by foot) around me. And the best thing: the rent. You can have the flat for a lifetime and pass it on to a relative, the rent is just 350,- euro/month, if you can’t afford a washing machine or a dryer - it’s all there in the same building!!! And now it gets even better, the thing this guy talks about is called „Genossenschafts Wohnung“ - if you have 10.000 Euro you can get an even better flat, which is subsidized by the City of Vienna and whoever builds it (it has at least 2 living rooms, balcony, etc) - the place where i live is inhabited by all sorts of people from all over the world (they gave so many flats the refugees from Syria or Ukraine). You can walk there day or night, i haven’t been robbed one time in my life… A flat for everyone here is considered a human right…. Wish every country/city would do the same, i was struggling but now (after haven’t been working for 10 years), i‘m back on my feet and going to study electrical engineering (which is also free). It’s proven that the city prospers if everyone is taken care of - also if the taxes here are very high, i 100 % prefer this instead of living in USA - tbh I would be dead there, for years… Hope you manage to do the same, everyone deserves this!!! BUT you have the have lived here for 2 years, realistically 5 years before you get one of these flats. And what i love most about Vienna - you don’t need s car. I never owned a car, what saved me sooo much money… i have to pay 18,- Euro a month to use all of public transportation - i live in the outskirts of Vienna, but it takes me 15 minutes to get into the city. And as i said before, everything (really everything), like supermarkets, doctors, pharmacies, fitness centers, parks, subway, all is in walking range. And another thing i love about Vienna - nearly everything is free ( especially the health care, university etc.), for everyone! I even don’t have to pay for drugs (medicine), as I write these lines i realize how lucky i am. And don’t think this services are second class or something - they are top notch, the Saudi aristocracy comes here to be treated… of course there are problems, like the flood of refugees who came 2015 - but, they HAVE TO learn German (for free), to get these services, but this is the only way that multi culti can work - even if there were problems first, they all integrated here. There is literally no crime here in Vienna. I have 0 doubt taking a walk at 3am, sometimes young immigrants want to play gangsters - they are young and make mistakes, but nothing compared to what happens in the US. Next cool thing: LGBTQ is absolutely no issue here, in the contrary, the City of Vienna promotes that everyone should live as they are pleased to do. I have some American friends made over the years, they always say the city (within „the ring“ looks like Disneyland, as everything is clean). Vienna isn’t perfect, but i can’t think of any city which provides all this things to everyone, whether you’re rich or poor, everyone is treated the same (ofc there are some idiots who think they are something better, but this is the very minority). Wish you the same in the US like we have it here.

It will never happen in the United States. Capitalism is too strong . Oligarchy is too fierce. Those empower want those without to have even less. And as soon as the name, Karl Marx is mentioned, they will definitely be against it

In order for public housing projects to work in the USA, the culture must change. Inevitably, the current American paradigm of public housing eventually has the complexes devolving into rundown crime ridden ghettos.

Social housing in Vienna is absolute garbage

I would seriously lose it if the US came anything close to Vienna in terms of housing and transit. I know it's not radical and I know it's practically common sense but the US is the US and I find it hard to hold out foe hope, as much I'd like to. I also need to acknowledge how inspiring and beautiful this video was.

0:39 "Just like that, in the course of 30 seconds i had emigrated to France". This is soooo different from the experience of the non-white immigrants. What thing for sure though is that Nantes is definitely fucking awesome. What is missing is the gentrification that pushed poor communities for away from the city center and that is the left's doing (i'm a pretty far-leftist black immigrant living in Nantes).

Hey, welcome to the world capital of the roundabouts. Nowhere else in the world has as many as Nantes, and it isn't close. We've got them in all flavours; square roundabouts, rectangles, ovals, peanut shaped, double roundabouts, triple roundabouts, with tram lines crossing in the middle or not, the Loire Atlantique alone has half as many roundabouts as the entirety of the USA :P.

Vive la gauche ah ah ah !

It’s so far away.

Heeyyy wait a moment, isn't that Nordbahnviertel? There's a really good bubble tea place there...

Thank you for this. I am French, been living in the US for almost 40 years, and, man, do I miss home and its values. I learned a lot in my stay in the US, having the real privilege to stand with the poor and racial minorities. I have learned to appreciate solidarity and compassion, values I took for granted in my youth.

Before watching the video I would say Vienna-style social housing would NOT happen in the US. That country is based on debt, credit. Take that away, and the economy will stall.

Welcome to France !

3:00 it s litteraly next to my house

If you find downtown Nantes safe at night, Seattle's safety level must be horrendous 😅

Good

Being 30 minutes away by car from Nantes, i have mixed opinion about Nantes. On one side, its not a bad city to live in, on the other, Nantes is not all that great, its beautiful but its not amazing either, its safe but its not THAT safe, its growing but the devellopement is not always adapted, more than one area became pretty much abandonned because the city was too ambitious and since everything is in the center or the north the local commerce left these areas etc... And since pretty everything in Loire Atlantique relies on Nantes St-Nazaire you need to live with it Overrall, Nantes is a nice place to live in, but that doesnt mean its really any better than other big cities in France. Xept Paris, because f Paris

Hi ! I live in Nantes for 8 years now, and overall I really enjoy it. Nice to see that you understand how cities like this one come from, because yeah, it's all about politics. Feel free to reach if you want to hang out, discuss, debate ! I always love to meet people, and I have to improve my English :D

I LOVE this!

Vienna style social housing, wherein renters pay for improvements and can request reimbursement from the new tenants. All this amidst a declining population. Good luck with all that.

Vienna has started again building real social housing, called Gemeindebau Neu. The first new building was finished in 2019. Currently 1.151 new flats are finished.

I like how people are so neutral about portraying the European countries, if not giving the European countries a rosy picture, and then turning around to China and saying that China is "completely different". How is China different? In China, people may pay rent as well, and the rent may go directly to the government or to a private landlord. So, the landlord is the government. There are also mortgages, but that's more of a modern thing. When China did the reform and opening up policy, housing was all very affordable for everyone, and the employer might even include the housing as part of the package, with rent tied to the employer. Whatever Europe does is good; whatever China does is bad. (lol) Even if a European country does exactly the same thing as China, it's good. China bad.

🙌

Neoliberal ideas are also demonstrably false. If anything, a non-profit sector is *necessary* to curb for-profit excess.

It should be. Local business should be all over it, or more broadly non-market housing, which includes co-ops and land trusts, because stable affordable housing is stable affordable wages and stable disposable income to them. Importantly that kind of housing stabilizes the private market, preventing price gauging and staunching landlord negligence.