Public housing in Aotearoa and Austria: A utopian comparison

Aotearoa is commonly understood to be undergoing a housing crisis, with some of the least affordable housing in the OECD. However, determining a crisis is not an objective diagnosis – it is an ideological construction, which makes assumptions about how a housing system ought to function and how it can be fixed. Within this context of ‘crisis’, public housing in Aotearoa is undergoing significant reform, largely centred around the encouragement of ‘third sector’ housing provision in line with the Austrian model. Drawing on Ruth Levitas’ Utopia as Method , this paper compares public housing provision in Aotearoa and Austria. Locating Austria in the place of utopia, this does not treat Austria as a ‘good place’ to be emulated but as a ‘no place’ from which to observe the ideological assumptions underpinning public housing provision in Aotearoa. Focussing on the establishment of public housing regimes in the early 20th century, the neoliberal turn in its final decades, and the ‘permanent crisis’ ensuing from the Global Financial Crisis, this paper argues that the distinct funding structures of public housing in Austria and Aotearoa are reflective of underlying ideological and wealth-distribution mechanisms. Ultimately, the ‘housing crisis’ in Aotearoa is not a temporary malfunctioning of an otherwise healthy system so much as a financialised housing system functioning exactly as can be expected.