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The 'world's most livable city' has a proven, 100-year-old approach to affordable housing

More than 60% of this city of 1.9 million people lives in government-subsidized housing.

Photo by Jacek Dylag on Unsplash

Vienna, Austria, is the "world's most livable city."

My family recently spent a week exploring Vienna, Austria, getting a first-hand look at why it's been named "the world's most livable city" for 8 out of the past 10 years. As we enjoyed the efficient public transportation system and meandered the picturesque streets filled with gorgeous architecture, we did find ourselves thinking, "Yeah, we could live here."

Part of that feeling was prompted by the beauty of the place, but as we spent hours walking through the historic heart of the city, something else struck me. Unlike every other big city I've visited in recent years, I didn't see anyone sleeping on the sidewalk. No tents as makeshift homes set up anywhere. It was so striking, I kept wondering, "Where were all the homeless people?"

Vienna is home to 1.9 million people—more than twice the population of Seattle or Boston, where you can't walk for 5 minutes through downtown without seeing multiple people experiencing homelessness. I began to wonder if perhaps Vienna was a case of homelessness being shoved out of view into slums or something. But after digging a bit, I learned that Vienna does have some homeless population. It just doesn't have the numbers or the homelessnessproblem that most modern large cities do, thanks to its 100-year-old approach to affordable housing.

In the late 19th century, Vienna faced a huge housing and economic crisis. It was bad, even contributing to a tragically young life expectancy in 1900.

To address the problem, from 1919 to 1934, the city poured tax revenue into public housing—but not like any public housing most of us have ever seen. Known as as Volkswohnungspaläste, or “people’s apartment palaces," the homes that were built were multi-story apartment blocks built with quality materials and beautified architectural details. They included green spaces and playgrounds and were built with easy access to medical facilities, schools, libraries, post offices and theater spaces.

The ideas was that government housing should be conducive to a good quality of life for all. And this novel concept has been at the heart of the approach to housing in Vienna ever since. Today, more than 60% of the Viennese population lives in government-subsidized housing and nearly nearly half of the housing market is city-owned flats or cooperative apartments. There is no stigma attached to public housing, which is interspersed throughout the city.

While other European cities began to privatize and commodify housing in the 1980s and 90s, Vienna held the course, viewing housing as a human right. And now it's being named the "world's most livable city" almost every year. Go figure.

In the fall of 2022, a delegation of 50 American tenant and homeless leaders, organizers, researchers, and elected officials visited Vienna to learn more about their social housing programs. Here were a few of their impressions they shared with "The Nation":

"The attitude there is so different than what we have in the United States. We have it ingrained that public things are supposed to be nasty, supposed to be the lowest of the low. But to see what we saw in Vienna, it was like, wow, it is achievable to have housing that is government-owned, for the people, and beautiful." – Julie Cohon, lead housing organizer at Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition

"I work hard. And, I still don’t have a safe place to live. In Vienna, we saw regular people who had not only safe but beautiful spaces. [When we were touring Sonnwendviertel, a 5,500 apartment social housing development not far from the city’s main train station], I kept noticing a lot of kids. And we saw how space was really designed for them: lots of day care centers and beautiful, car-free streets. What we saw is when the profit motive is taken out of housing, it’s a game changer." – Dorca Reynoso, board member of the Met Council Action

"My main reflections from Vienna was how long the culture of housing for all has been in existence. The quality of social housing was also interesting: the Viennese government chose maintaining well-constructed buildings, rather than demolishing and rebuilding every 30 to 50 years. The very first municipal complex was built in 1924 and is still fully occupied today." – India Walton, senior adviser at the Working Families Party

Is it possible to apply what has been learned in Vienna over the past century to other places? Why not? Considering the unaffordability of housing in so many cities, it seems worth a try. Housing isn't the only thing that makes Vienna a highly livable city, but it definitely plays a huge role. When housing is reasonably desirable at every price point and people aren't worried about affording a nice roof over their heads, it's easier to address the other things that make life good. It at least seems like a good place to start.

This article originally appeared on 12.9.23

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My family just flew to three European countries and home again for $149 per person total

Here's how we traveled from the U.S. to London, Athens and Vienna and back again for less than the cost of one domestic flight.

Photo courtesy of Annie Reneau

My husband and kids sitting on Ted Lasso's bench in Richmond, U.K.

Our family of five just got back from a nearly 3-week European vacation—three different cities in three different countries—and we only paid $149 cash per person for all of our flights combined.

It sounds too good to be true, but it's not. It sounds like there's got to be a catch, and there is, but not like you might think.

Welcome to the world of travel hacking, where if you learn to play the points and miles game well, you can take vacations you (or at least I) never thought possible.

I started learning about the points and miles game in the fall of 2021 via the 10xTravel free course, and I started playing in earnest myself in February of 2022. As a result, in the past year and a half, our family has taken multiple flights and stayed at multiple hotels within the United States—including some schmancy resorts—for free or very close to free. (Certain taxes and fees on flights have to be paid in cash, so there's no such thing as a 100% free flight.) But this trip to Europe was our first foray into international travel with points.

Four people standing in front of a lit up tree

My family enjoyed the Rathaus Christkindlmarket in Vienna.

Photo courtesy of Annie Reneau

The one "catch" to travel hacking? It's a complicated, strategic long game that takes time and effort to learn. But it's totally worth it. The basic gist is that you maximize credit card sign-up bonuses to accumulate transferable credit card points or loyalty points/miles with hotels and airlines, all without spending any more money than you normally would. Then you learn how to redeem those points for travel, which makes them way more valuable than simply getting cash back.

I wrote an overview of how the game works in a previous article (which you can read here), but I figured a real-life example is the best illustration.

For this trip to Europe, I transferred 362,500 Chase Ultimate Rewards credit card points to United Airlines. (My husband and I have accumulated over 1.2 million points and miles in the past year and a half, so this trip was barely a third of our points.) That's what all of our flights to, from and around Europe cost, plus one more flight paid for with Southwest points to get all the way home. The taxes and fees for all flights came out to $149 for each of us.

three young people in front of the temple of poseidon

The Temple of Poseidon was a favorite of the whole family.

Photo courtesy of Annie Reneau

Our original itinerary was actually US > London > Athens > Tel Aviv > US, but obviously the Israel plans changed when the war began. We switched from Tel Aviv to Vienna for our music-loving kids just a couple of weeks before we departed. The flight from Vienna back to the US cost fewer points than the Tel Aviv to US flight, which made it so our added Athens to Vienna flight was covered by points we'd already spent. (We'd originally booked a one-way cash flight from Athens to Tel Aviv. That got refunded when the flight was canceled.) And thanks to United's Excursionist Perk, our London to Athens leg also cost us zero points—we only paid taxes.

So what you see here are the fees we paid out of pocket for three flights—Spokane to London, London to Athens, and Vienna to Chicago (where we stopped to see family and friends for a few days on our way home). The Oct 15 "date of purchase" was actually the date we changed our Tel Aviv flight to Vienna—we purchased the original tickets months ago.

As you can see, the fees for these flights were $112 per person:

Fees for flights from Spokane to London, London to Athens, and Vienna to Chicago

Screenshot via Annie Reneau

Here are the taxes and fees for the Athens to Vienna leg we added after the Israel changes, which were $31.40 per person:

Taxes and fees for flight from Athens to Vienna.

Screenshot via Annie Reneau

Finally, to get back to Spokane from Chicago, we booked flights on Southwest. We have a ton of Southwest Rapid Rewards points accumulated from playing the game as well as two Southwest Companion Passes, which means two of our kids traveled with us for free (only paid fees on their flights—no points needed). So we paid 14,345 Southwest points x 3 (43,035 points total) and the fees were just $5.60 each, which brings us to our grand total of $149 per person.

We paid $5.60 each for our flight from Chicago to Spokane on Southwest.

Screenshot via Annie Reneau

To reiterate, we didn't pay anything beyond our normal spending for the points we used to get these flights. We just strategically utilized new credit cards for all of our expenses every few months. Accumulating points is actually the simpler part of the game. Figuring how to find the best redemption deals for the points is where it gets complicated and the real work comes in.

It's not like I just went on the United website, put in our dates and destinations, transferred the points and got the tickets. I spent many hours poring over different airline websites and different city combinations and dates to see where the best deals were. (We weren't tied to particular cities or dates other than our religious pilgrimage to Haifa, which didn't end up happening anyway.) It took a lot of time to find these tickets for the price we did, but again, totally worth it to save thousands of dollars.

Our whole family at the tip of mainland Greece at sunset.

Photo courtesy of Annie Reneau

If there weren't as many of us, we could also have gotten hotels on points, but with a family of five it was more affordable to book Airbnbs where we were Europe. So it's not like this vacation cost us nothing—we still had accommodations, public transportation, a car rental in Greece for exploring outside of Athens for a few days, food (pretty cheap in Greece, more expensive in the U.K. and Austria), and any museums, attractions and events we enjoyed.

But getting the flights for a song enabled us to do the rest. The cash price for the exact same flight itinerary would have cost between $6,000 and $9,000 for the whole family, especially since most of our flights were direct and at desirable times. Even if we were to see the 362,500 Chase points we used for their straight cash back value ($3,625), we still got a good deal. But those points didn't cost us anything. And our family got to take the trip of a lifetime. Travel hacking for the win.

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Women were dying from childbirth at hospitals. This 19th-century doctor figured out why.

True

Today, we know that washing our hands is one of the most important steps we can take to avoid getting sick and spreading germs.

But how we came to know that is pretty fascinating.

Image via iStock.

Handwashing is actually a relatively new practice — even for doctors.

In fact, one of the first doctors to realize how important handwashing could be — Ignaz Semmelweis — didn’t discover this fact until 1847. And even after he did realize it, the battle to convince the rest of the medical community wasn’t easy.

The 19th century has been described by some historians as “a golden age of the physician and scientist” because for the first time, doctors were expected to have scientific training.

They were also expected to use symptom-based diagnoses to solve medical ailments. And to do this, of course, medicine relied on understanding what was happening inside the human body to get at the root of disease.

So, autopsies became all the rage.

Not only did they form a critical part of a doctor’s training, but the doctors who regularly performed them were the most respected in the medical community. An unfortunate byproduct of this, though, was the erroneous belief that the dirtier the doctor, the better the doctor.

In fact, there are accounts of doctors going directly from their last autopsy to deliver a baby or treat a patient without changing their clothes.

Enter Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis.

A portrait of Ignaz Phillip Semmelweis. Image via Jeño Doby/Wikimedia Commons.

In 1846, Semmelweis had just started his new job at the maternity clinic at Vienna General Hospital.

At that time, women were dying at staggering rates in hospitals shortly after giving birth from “childbed fever,” a disease also called puerperal fever. It was a cruel infection, causing raging fevers, painful abscesses, an infection in the uterus and birth canal, sepsis, and then finally, death — all within about three days of the baby’s delivery. And it was the single most common cause of maternal death at the time.

Being a man of science, Semmelweis wanted to understand why so many women were dying in his clinic. So he studied two maternity wards in the hospital — one staffed by doctors and medical students, the other by midwives — and recorded the number of deaths in each ward.

Vienna General Hospital, where Semmelweis worked. Image via Josef & Peter Schafer/Wikimedia Commons.

His results showed that women died at a rate nearly five times higher in the ward staffed by doctors and medical students.

But it wasn’t until one of his colleagues, a pathologist, got sick and died after pricking his finger in an autopsy of someone who had died from childbed fever that Semmelweis realized that anyone, not just mothers, could get sick from puerperal fever, and the reason the midwives' ward had fewer deaths was because they didn't do autopsies.

He theorized that there must be some “cadaverous particles” or “morbid poison” that doctors were getting on their hands during autopsies. And the doctors in the ward were then transferring these particles inside the women when they delivered the baby, which then made the women sick.

Today, these “cadaverous particles” are known as bacteria, such as streptococcus pyogenes.

A photomicrograph of streptococcus pyogenes bacteria, which causes puerperal fever. Image via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Wikimedia Commons.

Semmelweis immediately ordered the medical staff to start cleaning their hands and instruments before delivering babies.

They were told to use a chlorine lime solution, not soap, until they could no longer smell the bodies they had dissected.

And it worked — chlorine is actually a great disinfectant. The rate of puerperal fever fell drastically in the doctor’s ward.

The first edition of Semmelweis' published findings. Image via István Benedek/Wikimedia Commons.

Unfortunately, the Semmelweis' colleagues did not embrace his findings — they were outraged at the suggestion that they were the cause of their patients' deaths. Semmelweis was fired from the hospital and eventually committed to an asylum. He died at the asylum two weeks later. (Several historians believe that he died, after being beaten at the asylum, from sepsis — an infection in the bloodstream caused by germs.)

It would take about 20 years before his ideas would start to be accepted by the medical community. And even then, it was "germ theory" — and the work of Louis Pasteur in the late-1860s — that really convinced anyone of the importance of hygiene and handwashing.

Over a 150 years later, though, Semmelweis is finally getting the recognition he deserves because the simple act of handwashing is one of the most important tools we have in public health.

And its benefits extend well beyond the hospital. Washing your hands reduces the chances of getting diarrheal illnesses by 31%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It also reduces the occurrence of respiratory illnesses — including colds — by 16 to 21%.

That’s why in the 1980s, the first nationally endorsed hand hygiene guidelines were released by the CDC, after a series of outbreaks of food-borne and health care-associated infections. And over the next few decades, a number of other guidelines have followed to stress the importance to the general public.

Image via iStock.

Today, the battle to promote this public health tool is still not over.

Diarrhea and respiratory infections remain leading causes of death in the developing world — claiming about 3.5 million children every year — because people either don't know how important handwashing is or don't have access to a reliable, clean water source. There are also still over 1.4 million cases of health care-associated infections around the world. But through education initiatives, NGOs all over the world are hoping to bring about change with this one simple habit.

Proper hand hygiene is still one of the best ways to fight these infections and diseases — and we have Dr. Semmelweis to thank.

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This famous painting was just transformed into 3D touchable art for the visually impaired.

A museum in Vienna is making sure everyone, including the blind and visually impaired, gets to experience art.

You might recognize "The Kiss," a famous painting that lives in the Belvedere Museum in Vienna.

More properly known as "The Kiss (Lovers)," the painting was created between 1907 and 1908 by the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt. It's done in oil and gold leaf. It's pretty famous, so you've probably seen it before, although you might have not known the name.

Over a million people come to Vienna to see the painting every year.

Photo by Dieter Nagl/AFP/Getty Images.

Some even stage their own re-enactments of the painting's tender moment.

Photo by Dieter Nagl/AFP/Getty Images.

Knowing that some of those visitors couldn't actually see the painting — even if it could be described to them — the museum sought a way to enhance the exhibit.

So, working with a EU project known as AMBAVis (Access to Museums for Blind and Visually Impaired People), they created a miniature, touchable 3D relief of the painting.

Photo by Herbert Pfarrhofer/AFP/Getty Images.

Andreas Reichinger used a computer and 3D printer to model and translate the painting into a roughly 16-inch relief.

The relief lacks the bright colors of the original, but all the details, such as the texture of the ground or the patches on the pair's cloak, have been carried over. Visitors will be encouraged to touch and feel it.

There will even be sensors in the relief that can provide audio commentary when certain places are touched. Other museums have done similar projects with the works of Goya, El Greco, and Velázquez before, to rave reviews.

It's really cool to see this museum experimenting with expanding access to art.

In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that about 3% of people over 40 years old are visually impaired or blind. In Vienna, this means that the new version could bring the painting to thousands of new people.

"We want to open up a whole new chapter of making art available for the blind and visually impaired," Rainer Delgado from the German Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired said in an AFP report. He also suggested that, in the future, these kinds of reliefs could be widely available to anyone with access to a 3D printer.

Museums often are the first institutions to slowly push boundaries and tear down barriers to art.

It's awesome that the Belvedere is continuing that tradition.

Heroes

17 photos of people who know just how high the stakes of climate change are.

While world leaders were traveling to Paris to attempt to finally agree on what to do about climate change, people all over the world got together to hold their feet to the fire.

The ostensible goal of the COP21 conference in France is to produce a legally binding agreement that will help reduce emissions and slow down global warming. But climate change is already here, and the usual conference scenario — lots of important people talking a lot while getting little done — ain't gonna cut it anymore.

That's why this weekend, hundreds of thousands of people around the world gathered to send a message to their leaders:

Less talking, more doing.

1. Bogota, Colombia

A protestor holds up a heart-shaped sign that asks world leaders, "Are you ready for extinction?"

Photo by Guillermo Legaria/Getty Images.

Hopefully, she's exaggerating for rhetorical effect.

Hopefully.

2. New York

Everyone's favorite Science Guy, the one and only Bill Nye joined the crowd.

Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill Nye the Science Guy. Photo by Kena Betancur/Getty Images.

"The climate is changing. It's our fault, and we have to get to work on this now," Nye reportedly said at the rally, according to the New York Daily News. When even the best-case scenarios include scary outcomes like more flooding, bigger and badder droughts, and massive crop die-offs, it's hard to disagree with the (science) guy.

3. Sao Paulo

Photo by Nelson Almeida/Getty Images.

Hulk would very much like to smash climate change.

If only, Hulk. If only.

4. Oslo, Norway

Though Norwegian glaciers bravely held on until the late-1990s, they're now retreating just like in most of the rest of the world.

Photo by AFP/Getty Images.

Unless a comprehensive, binding climate agreement with teeth gets signed in Paris this year, the glaciers of Norway will likely be forever remembered as having peaked right around the time Smash Mouth did.

5. Santiago, Chile

Her sign reads: "People in charge: This is my Earth, and it's also yours and your children's. Don't destroy it."

Photo by Martin Bernetti/Getty Images.

Good — if dire — advice, Chile.

6. London

At the London rally, Welsh singer Charlotte Church performed a new song she wrote about confronting Earth's impending climate crisis.

Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images.

The song is still untitled as of publication, but might I suggest, "Wake Up and Do Something, You Dolts?"

Has a nice ring to it, is all I'm saying.

7. Amsterdam

A Dutch man with a killer beard carries a sign that reads, "This road is a dead end" — and not only because it appears he's about to smash into a giant scale replica of the Eiffel Tower.

Photo by Bart Maat/Getty Images.

He's referring to this road. The one the Earth appears to be on. Turn around much, Team Paris?

8. Frankfurt, Germany

Frank Rumpenhorst/Getty Images.

Should the worst-case climate scenario come to pass (a temperature increase in excess of two degrees Celsius, a world-altering mega-sea level rise of 20 feet or more, and millions of displaced people around the globe) figuring out how to fit bugs with World War I-era gas masks will be the least of our problems.

9. Mexico City

Photo by Yuri Cortez/Getty Images.

This mask: precisely 150% less scary than the effects of a sea level rise that conforms to even the most conservative estimates.

10. Nantes, France

A few days before the climate talks were set to begin, folks all across France got together to protest a ban on large gatherings that was imposed after the Paris attacks.

Photo by Jean-Sebastien Evrard/Getty Images.

Though some of the marches devolved into clashes with police, this one manifested as a nice, chill circle.

11. Johannesburg

In South Africa, thousands marched to draw attention to the connection between climate change and worsening poverty.

Photo by Mujahid Safodien/Getty Images.

According to a World Bank report, rising global temperatures could help lead 100 million more people down the path to extreme poverty, unable to afford even the most basic spooky skeleton mask.

12. Dhaka, Bangladesh

Photo by Munir Uz Zaman/Getty Images.

World leaders planning to bulls*** their way through the climate meetings should think twice before messing with these women or their brighly-colored flowers.

13. Montevideo, Uruguay

As a result of climate change, Uruguay has been contending with increased rainfall and more intense storms.

Photo by Miguel Rojo/Getty Images.

Thankfully, these protestors chose one of the decreasing number of bright, near-perfect sunny days to send a message over to France.

14. Ottawa, Ontario

Photo by Patrick Doyle/Getty Images.

A protester on Canada's Parliament Hill, modeling what many in coastal cities around the world will be forced to wear just to say afloat if too many glaciers melt.

15. Vienna

Photo by Joe Klamar/Getty Images.

According to a 2014 study published in Nature Climate Change, climate change could reduce the Antarctic penguin population by up to one-fifth, rendering it no longer possible to make it through "March of the Penguins," without bursting into tears for the wrong reasons instead of the right reasons.

16. Madrid

Photo by Gerard Julien/Getty Images.

Estimates released by the UN in 2011 clearly demonstrate that, if we really wanted to, we could be using renewable energy to meet 80% of the world's power needs within the next 40 years — and that still wouldn't be enough for these Spanish marchers demanding 100% renewable energy with their delightful yellow sun placards.

17. Geneva

"Hey world leaders, what's good?" — this polar bear. Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/Getty Images.

If arctic sea ice continues to melt at current rates — up to 9% per decade — polar bears may be forced to move to major cities around the globe and march defiantly in parades. Which is why the world needs to act — now.

'Cause let's be honest, leaving aside all the grave consequences drastic climate change might wreak, that would be super weird.