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What We Can Learn From Social Housing in Singapore and Vienna
The housing crisis is threatening to make the American dream impossible. What’s needed is the will and investment necessary to bring social housing—publicly developed homes for residents of mixed incomes—to California.
Oct 05, 2024
California is the epicenter of the national housing shortage. Over half of California renters—and four in ten mortgaged homeowners—are cost-burdened, which means they pay more than 30% of their income on housing. And I am one of them.
Yet of the 120 members of the California State Legislature, I’m one of the only five renters.
In the Bay Area district I represent, home prices average roughly $1.5 million and modest apartments rent for over $2,000 per month. It’s impossible for most working people to afford to buy a home in my district. Too many of my friends and family have been priced out of the communities we grew up in.
To address this urgent crisis, I have tirelessly pursued a policy that has successfully ended housing shortages in jurisdictions around the world: social housing.
Social housing is the public development of housing for residents of mixed incomes. I have introduced the California Social Housing Act every year since I took office. I fought to become Chair of the Select Committee on Social Housing, and I’ve participated in delegations to Vienna, Austria, and Singapore to study their social housing systems.
As that dream becomes impossible for so many Americans, there remains one tool that has realized that dream for millions of people around the world.
Vienna and Singapore have important lessons for us on how social housing can actualize housing as a human right.
In both cities, social housing emerged from crisis. After a crushing defeat in World War I, Vienna saw the collapse of its monarchy and extremely overcrowded living conditions. Singapore experienced destruction during World War II and emerged from both Japanese and British colonization with a severe housing shortage. Squatter settlements were devastated by fire in 1961, leaving about 16,000 people homeless. Today, the two governments are identified with opposite ends of the political spectrum—left-leaning Vienna compared to the more right-leaning Singapore—but both housed their populations through social housing.
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In Singapore, the Housing and Development Board builds 99-year leasehold flats that it sells to citizens. It has built so many units that roughly 80% of Singapore’s population live in them. Nine out of ten of these residents own their homes. Homeowners have the right to resell them, rent them out, and pass them to their heirs. These condos appreciate in value over time, enabling them to generate wealth. Only citizens and permanent residents may buy these flats, so no private equity firms, corporations, or speculators can game this system.
Vienna—sometimes referred to as the “Renters’ Utopia”—builds social housing for rent with indefinite leases that tenants never need to renew and can even pass down to their children. Over 60 percent of its residents live in social housing. As in Singapore, most residents qualify for social housing under the high income cap that encompasses 75% of the Viennese population. This income limit only applies when the tenant moves in. Without constant eligibility screenings, tenants may remain even if they make more money in the future, enabling socioeconomic integration of social housing neighborhoods. Residents pay about a third less rent than their counterparts in other major European capitals. Even private sector renters enjoy strong tenant protections.
While Singapore and Vienna offer different social housing models, both governments prioritize creating housing for the public good. The foundation of their policies are the finances, land banking powers, and expertise to build housing as a human right.
The result? Both are consistently ranked as the most livable cities in the world.
California today is well positioned to implement what Vienna and Singapore undertook in the past century. What’s needed here is the political will to bring social housing to our state. We can’t afford to wait.
The harsh reality is that California has roughly 30% of all people experiencing homelessness in the nation. The Golden State must build at least 2.5 million more homes by 2030 to end the current shortage. But California built just 85,000 housing units annually from 2018 to 2022.
California today is well positioned to implement what Vienna and Singapore undertook in the past century. What’s needed here is the political will to bring social housing to our state. We can’t afford to wait.
Today’s social housing proposals avoid the mistakes of the past by creating socioeconomically integrated, financially self-sustaining housing. And momentum is building nationwide. In 2023, my social housing bill was approved with two-thirds majorities in both houses of the California Legislature, but was vetoed. In 2023, Seattle voters approved a ballot measure to create a social housing developer. The state of Hawaii has passed legislation to develop social housing. Montgomery County, Maryland, is at the forefront of creating publicly developed, mixed-income housing through the Housing Opportunities Commission. The Commission serves roughly 17,500 renter households and owns more than 9,000 rental units.
Earlier this year, British Columbia, Canada, announced a CAD $4.95 billion (USD $3.67 billion) social housing initiative. Called BC Builds, the plan is to build 8,000 to 10,000 homes over the next five years, which could be the world’s largest new social housing program in decades.
The American dream has long been centered on having your own home. As that dream becomes impossible for so many Americans, there remains one tool that has realized that dream for millions of people around the world.
Let’s learn from our global peers and embrace social housing as a proven tool to solve our housing crisis.
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Vienna’s International Summit for Peace in Ukraine Issues a Global Call for Action
“The institutions established to ensure peace and security in Europe fell short, and the failure of diplomacy led to war," attendees said in a joint declaration. “Now diplomacy is urgently needed to end the war before it destroys Ukraine and endangers humanity.”
Jun 12, 2023
During the weekend of June 10-11 in Vienna, Austria, over 300 people representing peace organizations from 32 countries came together for the first time since the Russian invasion of Ukraine to demand an end to the fighting. In a formal conference declaration, participants declared, “We are a broad and politically diverse coalition that represents peace movements and civil society. We are firmly united in our belief that war is a crime against humanity and there is no military solution to the current crisis.”
To amplify their call for a ceasefire, Summit participants committed themselves to organizing Global Weeks of Action—protests, street vigils and political lobbying—during the days of September 30-October 8.
Summit organizers chose Austria as the location of the peace conference because Austria is one of only a few neutral non-NATO states left in Europe. Ireland, Switzerland and Malta are a mere handful of neutral European states, now that previously neutral states Finland has joined NATO and Sweden is next in line. Austria’s capital, Vienna, is known as “UN City,” and is also home to the Secretariat of the OSCE (the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), which monitored the ceasefire in the Donbas from the signing of the Minsk II agreement in 2015 until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“We are firmly united in our belief that war is a crime against humanity and there is no military solution to the current crisis.”
Surprisingly, neutral Austria turned out to be quite hostile to the Peace Summit. The union federation caved in to pressure from the Ukrainian Ambassador to Austria and other detractors, who smeared the events as a fifth column for the Russian invaders. The ambassador had objected to some of the speakers, including world-renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs and European Union Parliament member Clare Daly.
Even the press club, where the final press conference was scheduled, was canceled at the last minute. The Austrian liberal/left newspaper Der Standard piled on, panning the conference both beforehand, during and afterwards, alleging that the speakers were too pro-Russian. Undaunted, local organizers quickly found other locations. The conference took place in a lovely concert center, and the press conference in a local cafe.
The most moving panel of the conference was the one with representatives from Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, who risked their lives to participate in the Summit. Yurii Sheliazhenko, secretary-treasurer of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, is unable to leave the country and therefore spoke to attendees from Kyiv via Zoom.
“Like many Ukrainians, I am a victim of aggression of Russian army, which bombs my city, and a victim of human rights violations by the Ukrainian army, which tries to drag me to the meat grinder, denying my right to refuse to kill, to leave the country for my studies in University of Münster … Think about it: all men from 18 to 60 are prohibited from leaving the country, they are hunted on the streets and forcibly abducted to the army’s serfdom.”
Sheliazhenko told the Summit that the Armed Forces of Ukraine had tried to deny conscientious objector status to Ukrainian war resisters, but relented when international pressure demanded that the Ukrainian military recognize rights secured under the European Convention on Human Rights.
Several groups at the Summit pledged to provide support for conscientious objectors from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, and also took up a collection for Ukrainian families lacking access to clean water following the recent destruction of the Kakhovka dam.
Highlights of the Summit also included remarks by representatives from the Global South, who came from China, Cameroon, Ghana, Mexico and Bolivia. Bolivia’s Vice President David Choquehuanca inspired the crowd as he spoke of the need to heed the wisdom of indigenous cultures and their mediation practices.
“This weekend should be seen as just the start.”
Many speakers said the real impetus to end this war will come from the Global South, where politicians can see the widespread hunger and inflation that this conflict is causing, and are taking leading roles in offering their services as mediators.
Almost all of Europe was represented, including dozens from Italy, the country mobilizing the continent’s largest peace demonstrations, with over 100,000 protesters. Unlike in the United States, where the demonstrations have been small, Italian organizers have successfully built coalitions that include trade unions and the religious community, as well as traditional peace groups. Their advice to others was to narrow and simplify their demands in order to broaden their appeal and build a mass anti-war movement.
The eight-person U.S. delegation included representatives from CODEPINK, Peace in Ukraine, the Fellowship of Reconciliation and Veterans for Peace. U.S. retired colonel and diplomat Ann Wright was a featured speaker, along with former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who joined remotely.
Despite the uniform bottom line of the participants, which was a call for peace talks, there were plenty of disagreements, especially in the workshops. Some people believed that we should continue to send weapons while pushing for talks; others called for an immediate end to weapons transfers. Some insisted on calling for the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops, while others believed that should be the result of negotiations, not a pre-condition. Some put more blame on the role of NATO expansion and the interference of the U.S. in Ukraine’s internal affairs, while others said the blame belongs exclusively at the doorstep of the Russian invaders.
Some of these differences were reflected in discussions surrounding the final declaration, where there was plenty of back and forth about what should and should not be mentioned. There were strong calls to condemn NATO provocations and the role of the U.S./UK in sabotaging early attempts at mediation. These sentiments, along with others condemning the West, were left out of the final document, which some criticized as too bland. References to NATO provocations that led to the Russian invasion were deleted and replaced with the following language:
“The institutions established to ensure peace and security in Europe fell short, and the failure of diplomacy led to war. Now diplomacy is urgently needed to end the war before it destroys Ukraine and endangers humanity.”
But the most important segment of the final document and the gathering itself was the call for further actions.
“This weekend should be seen as just the start,” said organizer Reiner Braun. “We need more days of action, more gatherings, more outreach to students and environmentalists, more educational events. But this was a great beginning of global coordination.”
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The End of Gas Starts in Vienna
A way out of the energy crisis and toward energy security won't be achieved, now nor in the long term, by investing in new "natural" gas infrastructure. There is no energy security in a world of climate chaos.
Mar 18, 2023
Near the end of this month, from March 27 to 28, the European Gas Conference (EGC) organized by Energy Council takes place in Vienna. This conference brings together Europe's main gas suppliers to discuss "the security of supply and the new role for LNG on the continent" and how to "diversify supply and decarbonize supply chains to future-proof gas' role in the energy mix."
Total, Equinor, BP, BlackRock, and RWE are just some of the companies who will be represented in Vienna. These are also some of the companies who have registered record profits over the last year, mostly due to skyrocketing gas and oil prices. These are some of the companies whose conscious actions have pushed millions into energy poverty this winter, while pushing us all to climate collapse.
After their windfall profits, both Shell and BP have announced that they are slowing their energy transition. British Petroleum (BP) for example, is planning to invest $8 billion of their profits in fossil fuels, while also reducing their carbon reduction targets from 40% to 20% by 2030.
While announcing new investments in fossil fuels to secure the interests of profit-eager shareholders, these companies are smart enough to understand that they also need to secure their control over the renewable sector, and take advantage of the funding opportunities for the energy transition. This demands some social and greenwashing from their side.
That is why they organize conferences like the one I attended last January. I will try to give you a glimpse of the narratives and discourses that they are putting forward that expose greenwashing for what it is.
The conference in January—titled "Just Transition for the Gas Sector and its Workers"—organized by EuroGas saw the expression "social dialogue" repeated over and over throughout. As an activist with the Climate Jobs campaign, I acknowledge that an urgent phase-out of fossil fuels (including "natural" gas) cannot be conducted without a concrete just transition plan for the workers of this sector. This phrase apparently held distinct meanings for different people at the conference.
When they talk about the transition not happening without "the workers," they mean they need the right "skilled workforce," implying the need of the sector to anticipate the challenges in employment, jobs, skills, and plans for the future.
On the one hand, the need for a "skilled workforce" does not translate into current workers being ensured requalification or income and job guarantees in the transition. We saw many situations of fossil infrastructure closing down due to loss of profitability, companies moving on to new projects–often both in renewables but also in fossils, relocating fossil industry elsewhere—and the workers being left behind with no compensation, jobs, or income guarantee.
On the other hand, when it comes to planning and preparing for a world beyond fossil fuels, a disproportionate emphasis was placed on the challenges of doing so in small and medium companies, compared to big enterprises being better equipped for this task. In other words, some of the speakers interpreted the transition as a way for big companies to consolidate their power over the energy sector.
First, a just energy transition to stop climate change requires economic planning and preparation. This process should have started decades ago but has been constantly postponed due to intense investment by fossil companies to deny the climate change crisis or offer false solutions under greenwashing schemes.
The much-needed economic planning cannot be left to profit-driven mechanisms. On the contrary, it must be conducted with great public scrutiny and accountability towards civil society, especially workers.
Second, an energy transition to stop further damage on the climate and ecosystems requires a shift from extraction-intense and endless-growth economic and energy systems, to an economy based on people's needs and planetary boundaries. Private companies have, of course, a different view on this, resulting in an energy expansion—a growth in investment of both renewables and fossils—with greenhouse gas emissions still on the rise.
That is exactly why the Secretary General of Eurogas opened the conference by saying that "this is the beginning, not at all the end" and later said that "this is not a sunset sector." They do have plans to keep the sun shining for themselves. As it was explained in the conference, "the technologies to decarbonize the gas sector have been identified" and they are: 1) hydrogen and 2) biogas (mainly bio methane).
The strategy to add value to the existing infrastructure, while having an excuse to expand it, is to use it for biogas, as it can be transported and distributed via existing gas grids. Currently, bio methane accounts for only 1% of the gas production in Europe. Hydrogen, which is more complicated to transport and store, is their plan to expand energy infrastructure and energy production, while also being able to get their hands on the renewable energy production. Keeping in mind that an overwhelming majority of hydrogen is today produced using gas, we understand that both of these strategies came hand-in-hand with the prospects of extending the use of "natural" fossil gas as far out as possible.
Third, there was a common agreement that this transition is not possible without public subsidies and workers. When it comes to the subsidies, RePowerEU, the Resilience and Recovery Funds and the Just Transition Funds are the major subsidy packages of the European Union. The Just Transition funds are a good example of how European public funding has been been used as a way for companies to close fossil infrastructure that is no longer profitable instead of the money being used to ensure a social plan for workers, and to guarantee and plan their access to jobs in the new sectors. As for the RePowerEU, there are plans for large sums being used to support gas production and distribution, using the energy crisis as an excuse to delay the phase-out of fossil fuels.
A way out of the energy crisis and toward energy security won't be achieved, now nor in the long term, by investing in new "natural" gas infrastructure. There is no energy security in a world of climate chaos.
I would like to challenge the logic behind the mainstream discourse of public subsidies to support private investments, which then put workers in the hands of private companies' profit-oriented decisions, and thus the social dialogue becomes a way to avoid social unrest rather than a condition for fund allocation.
When it comes to key sectors for the transition and sectors providing essential services and goods—with the energy sector playing both roles—their future and of its workforce should never be left in the hands of private investments. Public funding should be channeled to public services and creation of good jobs in the public sector.
Just Transition Plans should be designed by putting the workers and communities at the forefront of the discussions, and should never be based on the interests of the companies who have for decades prolonged and benefited with the burning of fossil fuels, while well aware of their impacts on climate and livelihoods. This demands a shift towards renewable energy systems that are publicly owned, democratically managed, and freed from the imperatives of profit and economic growth.
Lastly, the conference I attended was closed by the Secretary General of Eurogas, expressing that "there is no gas sector, there are gas people" and wondering "what is the best way forward for gas people." Very well framed. I dare to suggest that the best way forward to the gas people is a planned phase-out of gas that guarantees 2024 is the last winter of gas. This plan should include massive public investment on the renewable sector, ensuring requalification and income guarantee for workers, and creating millions of Climate Jobs.
This is the plan to avoid cold houses in the winter and a burning planet in the future.
All of this proves why the climate justice movement needs to come together with other social movements—and specifically the labor movement—to create real social plans for a just energy transition. We need a strong program and a strong movement fighting for it, to make these industry conferences meaningless. That is also why we ought to come together from March 24 to 26 in Vienna, in the counter conference "Power to the People”—because we need to talk about how to make this the last winter of gas, and after that, blockade the European Gas Conference.
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