Up First from NPR - Two Problems, One Affordable Green Solution

Episode Date: June 15, 2025

The U.S. faces a housing crisis and growing threats of climate change. One global city is tackling both problems at once, and U.S. cities are paying attention. In this episode of The Sunday Story, NPR's Julia Simon travels to Vienna, Austria to see how they make affordable housing that's resilient to climate change. And she meets politicians trying to build this "green social housing" in America.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Ayesha Roscoe and this is a Sunday Story, where we go beyond the news to bring you one big story. On the show, you know, we often talk a lot about the problems facing our country and our world. But today we have a story about a solution. It addresses two of the biggest problems affecting people across the country, housing and climate change.

To tell us more, we have NPR's climate solutions correspondent, Julia Simon. Hello, Ayesha. Today, I want to take you to a place that's working to combat climate change through their housing. That place is Vienna. So, Vienna, Austria? You're not talking about like Vienna, Virginia. No.

Vienna, Austria. Okay. Okay. Julia, like how did you find yourself reporting on climate and housing in Vienna? And it seems like you're very good at getting these good gigs. Oh my goodness. You are right. And like many great adventures, this one started at a happy hour, a happy hour for climate researchers. And these climate researchers, they kept repeating one word over and over. Vienna, Vienna, Vienna.

And I was like, what is the deal with Vienna? I had to find out. A few months ago, my colleague Ryan Kellman and I traveled to the Austrian capital. My hat just flew off because it's very windy. We were in this big grassy park with playgrounds full of kids. There's a bunch of apartment buildings around this park, but one stands out. It's a modern building. It's lots of wood, lots of windows.

On one of the top floors, I see a guy in a beanie waving. That's him waving to us. And we finally catch up to him. How are you? I'm fine, and you? Great. This is Sebastian. Schublach, if you need the full name.

Yes. Schublach works at a think tank. He's lived in this modern building for about six years with his wife and two young daughters. He loves talking about his apartment building, so he takes us on a tour. Should we go upstairs? Yes, let's do it.

It's six floors, plus a basement, 34 apartments, lots of shared amenities. Look at how beautiful. It's like a library. Another sunlit library. A rooftop garden. And rosemary. A lot of rosemary.

Ceilings for rosemary. A lot of rosemary. Ceilings for rosemary. A sauna. Nice sauna. With a view. It's a really beautiful view on the roof. You see the city, the mountains in the distance. You can almost see Hungary. Oh wow. Wait, that far? Wait, where's Slovakia then?

Schublach shows us his apartment. It's a lovely four bedroom. Another balcony. Another balcony. Very nice. And Ayesha, there are a lot of climate friendly aspects, things that help the building reduce planet heating pollution.

The plants on the roof, they help keep the building cool in the summer, so it uses less energy. There are solar panels. They're on the rooftop. Oh just over there. There are cool window shades on the outside of the apartment that help keep out the sunlight and the heat in summer. Schublack uses a switch to put them up and down. Do you mind showing us? This all sounds really nice but but I mean, he must be paying a lot for this. Well, for a four-bedroom, utilities included plus the shared space, he pays about $1,700

US dollars a month. Which is not cheap, cheap, but it is definitely affordable. Oh, God, you don't want to know what people are paying in America. You don't know what people are paying. Ayesha, the whole reason we came to Vienna is because this climate-friendly apartment, it's not some fancy private apartment. It's actually subsidized by Vienna's city government. It's something called social housing. And so social housing, is that public housing?

Like what exactly is that? Social housing, it's kind of like public housing. It's the government playing a role. And look, we're in this moment when the Trump administration is proposing big cuts to public housing, cutting funding to reduce climate pollution. You might think now is a bad time to learn about climate friendly housing in Vienna. But in places like Chicago and Denver, government officials think now is actually a great time. Officials like State Representative Emily Gallagher

in New York. This is serious. This is not a pipe dream. Today on the show, a climate and housing solution from Vienna and the US politicians who've traveled to Vienna and are now trying to build this dream in the US. See, we're all Vienna Pell. Stay with us.

We're back with the Sunday story. This whole week, NPR is focusing on climate solutions and the communities where we live. Julia, before the break, you were talking about how social housing in Vienna addresses climate pollution. But what exactly is social housing in Vienna? Well, there are two main types of Viennese social housing. Basically, there's city-built housing and there's city-subsidized housing.

If you're a housing nerd, that's Gmindebau and Gmiennitzik. Anyway, the city-built housing really comes out of the post-World War I era. After World War I, there's lots of starvation. There's a huge housing crisis in Vienna. In 1919, the left-wing Social Democratic Party wins control of Vienna City Council. And this party says, we are going to build a ton of high quality housing to improve people's quality of life. They pay for this new housing by taxing the wealthy. They made lots of new regulations on private landlords.

The city builds more than 60,000 new apartment units in about 15 years. These apartments, they were airy, they had nice courtyards. They were built to last, and many are still standing today. Today there are about 220,000 units of this type of city-built housing. So what about the second type of housing, the city-subsidized housing? This is what Chou Block lives in, that apartment with the sauna.

This housing is called limited profit housing because they have to invest the profits back into maintaining housing or making more housing. The way city-subsidized housing works is that developers compete to get these low-interest loans from the city. That's the subsidies. They compete for the land from the city to make the housing. Today, there's about 200,000 units of city subsidized housing. So if you add all that up, the city subsidized housing and the city-built housing,

today about half of Vienna's residents live in it. So around a million people. That's a lot. It is a lot. And Vienna is now known as the social housing capital of Europe, if not the world. And this social housing, it ends up being a key tool in Vienna's plan to tackle climate change. The Austrian capital of Vienna, the Wien River, overflowed its banks, forcing evacuations there. Last year, Vienna saw a thousand year flood event. In this era of human-caused climate change,

Vienna isn't immune. They're seeing more heat waves. And today, Vienna City Council is still led by the Social Democratic Party. This party has aggressive goals to cut climate pollution. In recent years, the city realized that all those 400,000 plus apartment units that they own or subsidize, that could help them reach their climate goals. So how are they doing that?

Well let's start with the city built housing. With the new city built housing, it's all mandated to have solar panels. Many have efficient heat pumps. The city is also heating buildings with something called geothermal energy that involves drilling into the earth to heat homes. And the city is retrofitting old buildings. We saw one building from the 1950s. They put in new insulation, new windows, doors.

So we were looking at a new door, looks thick and a good glass. Not the most exciting stuff, but all this adds up to increase energy efficiency and reduce climate pollution. So the city has a lot of control over buildings that they own, but what about the city's subsidized housing? Like, how do they get that to be climate friendly? Okay. For city subsidized housing, the developers get land and subsidies from the city. The

city doesn't just give them the money and land. There's a formal competition process. The city says, you housing developers, you want this land and subsidies, you got to compete for it. There's actually a jury that awards points for how many nice qualities the building design has. And one of the main ways that you get points is for sustainability. If the project has more climate friendly aspects and the developer gets more points to win. So that's a lot of motivation for developers to make a climate-friendly design.

Right. There's land on the line and money on the line. And this right here, this housing competition, researchers say it's key to a lot of Vienna's innovation in climate-friendly housing. Schubleck's building, Gleis 21, it's a great example. About a decade ago, the city had this land, this rail yard. They were turning into social housing. About 20 people, they made a group and they said, we want to build an apartment together. We have our eyes on this beautiful plot right on the park. So they got an architect, they made a design, and this design had so many climate aspects. I talked to the architect who helped design Schubloss building and he remains convinced that the climate friendly elements of the design

were what helped them beat out the competition. And Aisha, there's one more key way Vienna is tying social housing and climate resilience together. Researchers say the success of green social housing in Vienna isn't just about the housing itself. It's also about these climate-friendly things that surround the housing. Some of the climate-friendly things are really obvious, like how the housing is often so close

to public transportation, like trains and trams, also bike lanes. But there were other things like landscaping to protect residents from floods, trees that provide shade in dangerous heat. This all helps the city adapt to climate change. I mean, this all sounds really cool, but it also sounds expensive. How is Vienna paying for this social housing and this climate stuff? I talked to Daniel Aldana Cohen about this. He's a sociology professor at Berkeley, a co-director of the Climate and Community Institute, a think tank, and he researches Vienna's green social housing.

So the thing with the Vienna model of social housing, it's not that the public sector has to pay for the literally entire thing. That would be extravagantly expensive. The city does pay a big chunk of upfront costs, but there are lots of sources of money. Some money comes from a tax on people's salaries, the employee pays part of it, and the employer pays part. Also banks give loans and profits are reinvested. A little bit of funding is typically reserved from every project to then be a seed fund

for the next project. Some of the climate investments can have high upfront costs. But researchers told me many investments to make the city more climate resilient will pay off big time as the world warms. And investments to switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy also save money in the long run. As one Viennese politician told me, the sun doesn't send an energy bill. The sustainability of Vienna's social housing adds to its quality. Solar reduces your bills. In summer, the good airflow and insulation keeps you cool. Social housing is popular in Vienna

and people around the world are noticing. I have been absolutely inspired by Vienna's work. This is Jung Yoon. I'm the chief of policy for the mayor's office in Chicago. Yoon went to Vienna last April to learn about Vienna's social housing and there were lots of representatives from other US cities on her trip. There were some folks from Nashville, from Seattle, from Philly. She went to Schubleck's place. It's like a wooden smaller... Casana.

Yes, we went there. It was beautiful. Yoon was inspired to bring back lessons from Vienna to Chicago. And it is starting. Here's Chicago's ABC7 Eyewitness News. City Council handed Mayor Brandon Johnson a major victory today by green lighting his green social housing ordinance. When we come back, Vienna's green social housing crosses the Atlantic.

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Consider this from NPR as a podcast that helps you make sense of the news. Six days a week, we bring you a deep dive on a story and provide the context, the backstory, and analysis you need to understand our rapidly changing world. Listen to the Consider This podcast from NPR. We're back with the Sunday story. Julia, before the break, you were saying that US policymakers want to make green social housing here in America, including in Chicago. Tell us more about what's going on in Chicago and what they're learning from Vienna.

This spring, the city of Chicago passed an ordinance that basically will help allow the city to develop and own new apartment buildings. 30% of the apartments will be affordable and it will have regulations that reduce the energy use and the climate pollution of the buildings. So how are they paying for this? Yeah, so last year Chicago passed this big $1.25 billion bond measure. The city plans to use some of that money, $135 million, to pay for building these climate-friendly developments. Like Vienna, the profits from the

first projects will be reinvested into future projects or used to increase the affordability. Like Vienna, a lot of the land will come from the city of Chicago. And like Vienna, Chicago sees housing as a key way to reduce their climate pollution. Youn says more than two-thirds of Chicago's greenhouse gases come from buildings. So how much progress has Chicago made? They expect the first groundbreaking for this new green social housing next year. I mean, we just passed this ordinance, so we have some work to do to implement and get this off the ground. But Aisha, it isn't just local politicians getting inspired by Vienna.

I am Tina Smith and I am United States Senator from Minnesota. Senator Smith went to Vienna a few years ago. She was on holiday, but she couldn't help herself from researching the housing. I'm constantly thinking about this because I'm always trying to figure out how cities are dealing with the housing crunch, which is such a huge issue in America. When Senator Smith got back to Washington, she got together with her colleague in Congress, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Last fall, they introduced something called the Homes Act. It would establish a new housing authority to make affordable housing and provide money for climate upgrades.

The upfront money to be able to make the kind of energy improvements that are so important to lower costs for people in the long term and also deal with climate pollution. The bill hasn't gone anywhere yet. I mean, that's not too surprising. I mean, the Trump administration seems to be moving in the opposite direction. It's proposing massive cuts to housing programs and it's already made really big cuts to climate programs. Totally. I brought these concerns to Senator Smith. You know, we're in this moment in the US where there's a lot of backtracking on climate action

on a federal level? Well, the Homes Act is out there as a beacon for a different way of thinking about how to build housing in this country. It's important to have a big idea out there for what we are shooting for. I mean, when you use the word beacon, that sounds like aspirational, that sounds like

a goal, not something that will really be widespread anytime soon. Well, maybe not on the federal level, but on the local level, again, in cities, it's a different story. There already are examples of green social housing popping up, Aisha. There's an affordable housing building in Seattle with solar panels and energy efficient air conditioning. There's an affordable housing building in Yonkers, New York for older people. It has really high energy efficiency standards. Baby steps, but it's starting. Aisha Gray I have to imagine though that there are other

obstacles in the US for green social housing to get off the ground. Yeah. A big one is NIMBYism. It can be hard to get community buy-in to build new big housing projects in America. And it can be even harder with public housing projects, because many people think neglected buildings. They don't think high quality buildings like you see in Vienna. But I wanted to go to a place in America where they are trying to build green housing. So last month, NPR producer Justine Yan and I went to Brooklyn where we met Emily Gallagher. She's a New York State representative representing.

Beautiful green point. She too has been to Vienna. We're all Vienna-pilled. Gallagher showed us this gleaming white apartment building under construction in her district. We were on the water, the East River. This building is 37 stories tall. It has amazing views.

Is that the Empire State Building? Yes. Direct view of the Empire State Building. You can see the Chrysler Building. You can see all of the East Village. And this building has climate-friendly aspects. Just like Vienna, it has geothermal energy. It is going to be the largest geothermal building

in New York State and one of the largest in the country. And it's gonna have some affordable housing. The building is getting state tax credits to do affordable units. 30% of the building's housing will be designated as affordable, according to a release on the developer's website. And look, many people in the US have told me that they don't think of social housing or public housing as a place where people of different classes come together. But Jung Yoon of Chicago says they're being really deliberate, making sure that the green

social housing that they're building is mixed income. This mixed income model of social housing is absolutely integral to the success because if people of all walks of life are benefiting from this, it is going to be much harder to unwind and much easier to defend politically and for everyone to see that they are benefiting from it. Yeah. So if this is something that serves everyone, then theoretically it would get more buy-in, right? Yes, that is the hope.

And Cohen and other climate researchers, they really do have a lot of hope for green social housing. They're excited because they're seeing new coalitions forming between climate advocates and housing advocates. One of the reasons why I think this all could happen, Julia, and I really believe it, is that the climate movement is turning in a massive way. It's wild. It's like they've all suddenly realized, oh my God, housing is the. The apartment movement is turning in a massive way. It's wild.

They've all suddenly realized, oh my God, housing is the number one issue. People can't afford their bills. They can't afford rent. They're losing their minds. Look, Ayesha, there will still be people in the US who want their house in the suburbs. They want their white picket fence. But as those houses become more threatened by wildfires and as it gets harder to get insurance, some

people might have to rethink what their housing dream looks like. Schubach in Vienna doesn't think that's a bad thing. He grew up in the Austrian countryside, which he says is like America in that dream. I think it's very similar to the American dream of owning a single-family house in the countryside, yes. to the American dream of owning a single family house in the countryside. Yes. And the downside is that this dream for most people has become unaffordable and it has become ecologically unaffordable.

So yes, this dream still exists. Some say it has become kind of a nightmare. So it's really a dream which cannot be fulfilled by many. But Schublach says he's found a new dream. In his green social housing, he's found a sense of community. In his apartment building, the oldest inhabitant is almost 80 years old, and the youngest is less than a month old. They're all there for each other.

If somebody needs a banana at 8 p.m. because the kid would not eat anything else, then you get a banana within one minute. And the next time there's a storm or a heat wave, because there will be a next time, Trüloch says he will be there for his neighbors and they'll be there for him. Aishino, I keep returning to this one thing this climate researcher told me. She told me in Vienna a hundred years ago they probably didn't imagine that now there would be thousands of green social housing buildings, beautiful climate-friendly apartments. They started with one building, just one building. That was their North Star.

That's NPR Climate Solutions correspondent Julia Simon. This has been a part of NPR's climate solutions week. To find more stories and to see photos of the people featured in this story, go to npr.org. Slash climate week. This episode was produced by Justine Yan and edited by Jenny Schmidt. The reporting for this episode was brought to us by NPR's climate desk. Neela Banerjee was the editor. Fact Checking by Katie Doggart. Mastering by Jimmy Keighley. Special thanks to photographer Ryan Kelman and Armin Puller. The Sunday Story team includes Andrew Mambo and our senior supervising producer Leona Simstrom. Andrew Sarulnek is our fellow.

Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. Up first is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend. Decades ago, Brazilian women made a discovery. They could have an abortion without a doctor, thanks to a tiny pill. That pill spawned a global movement, helping millions of women have safe abortions, regardless of the law.

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