Housing entry pathways of refugees in Vienna, a city of social housing

Abstract

This article presents the findings of an empirical study investigating refugees’ difficult entry into Vienna’s ‘tight’ housing market. Arguing that newcomers’ access to housing can be better understood by a closer look at the actors involved in the housing search process, an actor-centred approach is used. Complementing the constructivist pathway framework with a model of search based on Bourdieu’s theory of practice, four types of housing entry pathways could be identified. This study draws on semi-structured in-depth interviews with forced migrants who arrived in Austria in recent years. The analysis of newcomers’ housing entry pathways not only sheds light on the coordination structures at work in a city of social housing, but also on ‘good’ and ‘bad’ rental housing submarkets that have emerged in the course of the recent refugee movement. The paper concludes that a high proportion of social housing does not provide any indication that newcomers are granted better access to secure affordable housing.

Keywords:

• Urban refugees
• housing pathways
• housing access
• social housing
• Vienna
• Austria

Notes

1. The number of first time asylum applicants in Austria more than doubled in 2015 from last year’s level to 88.098 (Asylum statistics 2015, Austrian Ministry of the Interior), that is 10 asylum seekers per 1000 of population – significantly more than in Germany with 5,4 or in the UK with 0,6 (Eurostat press release 44/2016, 4 March 2016). The recognition rates are significantly lower: Austria in 2015 showed a rate of 71% positive first instance decisions; for comparison, Germany 57%, UK 37% (Eurostat press release 75/2016 20 April 2016).

2. Stressing that others can take over the task of finding housing, the objection could be raised that some forms of allocation contradict the notion of ‘search’. This is particularly true for forced migrants being at the mercy of bureaucratic regimes governing the allocation of (temporary or permanent) housing. But a lack of agency (for whatever reasons) should not conceal the fact that most people in housing need are objectively involved in a process of search. As there are search activities (such as recreational online search or ‘property porn’; Botterill, 2013), which, although they do not aim at finding housing, are conceptualized as search, also situations where others take over search activities can be considered as search.

3. The support of vulnerable newcomers is regulated in the Basic Welfare Support Act (Grundversorgungsgesetz GVG-B 2005). The dispersal of asylum seekers over the territory and the financing is regulated in the Basic Welfare Support Agreement (Grundversorgungsvereinbarung GVV Artikel 15a B-VG). A critical analysis of the adoption and implementation of minimum reception standards, laid down in the EU Directive 2003/9/EC, was presented by Rosenberger & König (2012).

4. Until July 2015 asylum seekers were obliged to present themselves, respectively, assigned to one of the two federal centres for initial reception (Traiskirchen or Thalham); since then the admission procedure takes place in seven federal distribution centres (‘Verteilerquartiere’).

5. Welfare benefits depend on the type of accommodation and the provisions of the specific laws of the Länder. In Vienna, the financial support for organized accommodation amounted to 570 Euros per person and month in 2016 (19 Euros per day for the facility operator if full board is provided; in the case of self-catering asylum seekers get 5 Euro thereof). For individual accommodation significantly less money is provided, a single person received only 320 Euro (120 Euro rent subsidy and 200 Euro meal allowance) in 2016.

6. In Vienna support for couples amounts to 628 Euros per person, 419 Euros for adult children, 226 Euros for minor children; see website of the City of Vienna: https://www.wien.gv.at/gesundheit/leistungen/mindestsicherung/mindeststandards.html [15 June 2017].

7. The new allocation system allows applicants to move forward in the waiting list for three months per five years of residence in Vienna (up to nine months for a maximum period of 15 years). This change, which in public discourse is termed as ‘home advantage for Viennese’, can be seen as a soft version of welfare chauvinism, i.e. a politics, which wishes to reserve welfare-state services for locals and those who have paid into the national social insurance system for a certain period of time. As in the first year after introduction, 69% of the applicants have received the maximum bonus of nine months (Der Standard, 14 July 2016), structural disadvantage for recognized refugees can be assumed.

8. The collected visual data include photographs of respondents’ present homes and city maps showing interviewees’ residential stations and whereabouts in Vienna.

9. According to statistics published by the Ministry of the Interior 388 resettlement refugees were admitted in 2014 and 758 in 2015 – that corresponds to about one per cent of the total of asylum claims in Austria. As application for international protection in Austria can only be made on national territory, government assisted refugees also have to visit the reception centre but are not transferred to organized accommodation. Having received asylum status within a few days, they are directly accommodated in the sector of ‘very social housing’.

10. Prekarium is a contractual basis for using a flat or a room free of charge but includes the right of withdrawal.

11. The quotations stem from own investigation, taken from the real estate website ‘Willhaben’ (15 August 2016).

12. Following the comparative overview of Flatau et al. (2015), asylum seekers in these three countries experience a more difficult pathway to housing than sponsored/offshore refugees.