This is the final post in this series examining America’s housing crisis. We’ve explored housing types, traced the policy decisions that created today’s emergency, and examined why market solutions alone cannot address the deepest affordability needs. Today, we examine proven solutions that are already successfully working, as well as the growing call for change.
The housing crisis facing millions of Americans wasn’t an inevitability. Around the world, many other nations successfully provide quality, affordable housing without the large, unhoused population, impossible waiting lists, and deteriorating conditions that we face in the United States today.
These international examples we’ll be discussing aren’t idealized models; they’re functioning systems that demonstrate that housing can be treated as both a human right and sound public policy. Communities across the United States are beginning to implement similar approaches, creating momentum for fundamental change, simply put, because we must. The current housing system does not work for all, and housing should be a human right.
Vienna: Mixed-Income Social Housing That Works
Vienna, Austria, demonstrates one of the world’s most successful approaches to social housing. Approximately 50 percent of all Viennese residents live in subsidized dwellings, either in municipal units or cooperative flats built with municipal subsidies. This comprehensive system has virtually eliminated homelessness while serving diverse populations.
The residents of those apartments pay a maximum of 25 percent of their income to live in flats that can be as large as four bedrooms. The quality is exceptional, featuring expansive balconies with colorful geraniums cascading down their front, looking out over courtyards graced with towering chestnut trees and modern playgrounds. These are places that are beautiful, safe, and functional, places someone would want to live.
Vienna’s success stems from treating social housing as infrastructure for the entire city, not a subsidy for the lowest incomes. The key to Vienna’s success is mixed-income housing. Most residents qualify for social housing under the high-income cap that encompasses 75% of the Viennese population. This broad pool of renters fosters sustainability, bringing together working- and middle-class families alongside low-income households. In Vienna, subsidized housing isn’t only for the lowest-income level. This creates economically diverse neighborhoods.
Finland: One in Six Units as Public Housing
Finland demonstrates that public housing can operate on a significant scale while maintaining quality and affordability. Finland’s approach eliminates profit gaps that can undermine affordability and quality in social housing. By removing the profit motive from social housing development and management, Finland ensures that public subsidies translate directly into better housing and lower costs rather than private returns.
This approach has contributed to Finland’s remarkable success in addressing homelessness. The number of homeless people has decreased from around 20,000 in the 1980s to an estimated 4,341 today, thanks to the Housing First policy, combined with robust social housing provision, according to the Group Housing First Europe Hub.
Author Fran Quigley shares a local example of the Housing First policy in action in the book Lessons from Eviction Court. He shares over a chapter about a former Knights Inn in South Bend, Indiana, which is now a housing-first shelter, Motels4Now. The goal is to approach housing as a human right, not something that is earned through a program. The success rate for this approach is high. According to the book, 80% of residents in this program who transition into permanent housing remain housed in the long term.
Singapore: Three-Quarters Live in “The Best Public Housing in the World”
Singapore offers the most significant example of successful public housing at scale. The World Bank has called Singapore’s system “the best public housing program in the world.” In 2023, 77 percent of the resident population in Singapore lived in public housing. There are about one million public housing apartments in Singapore. This concept succeeds because it operates public housing as the foundation of national development rather than a residual program.
Singapore’s developments feature mixed-income housing, each offering access to high-quality public transport and education, as well as the famous Singapore hawker (food stalls) centers, where all income classes and ethnicities come together to socialize, play, and dine. This integration prevents the segregation and stigma that have plagued American public housing. In Singapore, public housing is for all who wish to utilize it.
Confronting Corporate Housing Speculation
The success of international social housing models becomes more urgent when considering the scale of corporate involvement in American housing markets. As we documented in previous posts, corporate entities are increasingly controlling shares of rental housing while receiving massive tax subsidies that ordinary renters and homeowners cannot access.
These corporations often prioritize profit extraction and tax benefits over housing provision, treating homes as financial tools rather than a fundamental human right. This dynamic drives up costs and creates a perfect recipe for the housing crisis we find ourselves in today. With profit over shelter as the primary goal, this method reduces housing quality and tenant protections. While profit is not bad, it should not come at the expense of the housing insecurity and homelessness of millions of Americans nor be subsidized through tax dollars.
Some cities have begun responding directly to corporate housing speculation. In Berlin, over a million voters passed a historic referendum on September 26, 2021. The resolution urged their city government to seize the properties of corporate landlords that own more than 3,000 apartment units to convert these into permanently affordable housing under democratic community control. This move brought housing to those who needed it most. While this may seem drastic, the situation arose from a genuine crisis at the time. Eight out of ten city residents were renters, and their rent had increased by 42% in five years.
Spain has implemented similar approaches in some regions, with local governments seizing properties from large corporate landlords and converting them to social housing. These bold experiments demonstrate that communities can choose to prioritize housing as a human right over private, subsidized investment returns.
The Growing U.S. Movement: Innovation at Every Level
Despite decades of federal policy abandonment, innovative communities across the United States are developing new approaches that mirror successful international models.
Community Land Trusts: Permanent Affordability
The fastest-growing innovation is Community Land Trusts or (CLTs). Over 260 CLTs now operate across the country, demonstrating how local communities can remove land from speculation while maintaining democratic governance. CLTs provide between 10,000 and 15,000 homeownership units and close to 20,000 rental units across the United States.
CLTs work by separating land ownership from building ownership, keeping land permanently affordable and limiting profit while still allowing residents to build equity in their homes. This model prevents displacement due to gentrification while ensuring that housing remains accessible to future generations.
While not classified as a community land trust, Karwick Village uses this model as well. Homeward Bound Villages owns the land and buildings at Karwick Village, so that it will remain forever affordable, while tenants will rent their individual units. This approach protects the community so that it remains affordable forever.
A Path Forward: Concrete Solutions
The evidence is clear that successful social housing models exist and can be adapted to American communities. The resources already exist, we could provide subsidized housing to every eligible US renter, a practice that is already the law in the UK and Australia. The money currently flowing to wealthy homeowners and developers through tax subsidies could fund comprehensive social housing that serves working families, seniors, and others priced out of decent housing.
Housing as a Human Right
The most important lesson from international success stories is their foundation: treating housing as a human right rather than primarily as a commodity. Vienna’s approach explicitly recognizes that housing is a human right, not a profit engine.
Mysterious forces or individual inadequacies didn’t cause the housing crisis here in the U.S. It resulted from specific policy choices that prioritized private profit over public need for decades. Different decisions can produce different outcomes.
Vienna, Finland, and Singapore demonstrate that comprehensive social housing is effective when societies choose to implement it. Berlin’s referendum and Spain’s property seizures demonstrate that communities can challenge corporate speculation, prioritizing human needs over profit. Closer to home, over 260 Community Land Trusts demonstrate that American communities can implement alternatives when they decide to act.
The question isn’t whether America has the resources or knowledge to ensure decent, affordable housing for everyone. We do. The question is whether we’ll choose to treat housing as a human right or continue prioritizing it as a source of private wealth.
Communities across the country are already making that choice, building social housing models that prove alternatives work. The momentum exists for broader change if we’re willing to learn from what works internationally and scale successful innovations to meet the crisis.
Housing is a human right. The solutions exist. The choice is ours.
