The Austrian Social Rented Sector at the Crossroads for Housing Choice1

Since the early 1990s, the social rented sector has developed in different directions across Europe. This paper studies the role that the Austrian social rented sector plays at the crossroads of housing choices at different stages in the people’s life-cycles. It highlights the risks facing the Austrian middle classes that social renting may have to address in the future, and asks how the institutional setting of Austrian social renting can adapt to these changing risks in society. The approach is to view housing choice as a tenure sequence over the life-course. This includes not only the transition from renting to owning but also other potential switches, in particular the movements into and out of social renting. The tenure sequence is modelled using an econometric model of tenure choice based on cohort analysis, with Austria census data that cover the years from 1991 to 2003. This allows us to evaluate the factors arising from social change in the longer term, and how they may contribute to tenure choice in the future.