**3.1 Adapting the legal framework**

Housing commodification can be mitigated through a deliberate reform of the legal planning framework without getting inevitably in conflict with the overarching private property legislation. One option in this regard is to reactivate housing vacancies (including, where possible, office vacancies). Vacancy rates are significant in most Austrian cities, such as Salzburg, as has been mentioned above. The federal states of Salzburg and Tyrol have adopted a vacancy levy in July 2022, whereby the fee depends on the size and the construction type. For instance, in Salzburg, a maximum of 400 € (and 800 € for newly built apartments) can be charged annually by the municipality for housing units up to 40 square meters. The overall maximum charge is 2500 € (5000 € respectively) [25]. Several exceptions exist, some of which are reasonable from the de-commodification standpoint: derelict apartments are excluded, as are those with care-dependent persons who moved to sheltered accommodation. Other exceptions like housing vacancies dedicated to the future retirement of the next generation are less well justified.

A second and closely related option would be a revision of the second-home status. A strict(er) definition of "second homes" is needed and should be reduced to only a few exceptions for students or persons who live in the city for at least six months (verification can be obtained through power meter measurements).

The growing touristic usage of apartments is another profit-seeking market development that fuels commodification since turnover is significantly higher than it, is with permanent residents. Public control of the proper use of apartments is difficult to realize because landlords and landladies can command their private property as they wish to do. However, political intervention in the social housing sectors is possible as they have dedicated rules on how to use the homes accordingly. Austrian cities have recently – and partly successfully – started campaigns to persecute and penalize commercial offers of social housing units, for example, at Airbnb.

Another major driving force of housing commodification, in general, is not caused by the housing unit itself but the land underneath. If farmland is planned to be transformed into residential land use by the municipal government, then the capital value is commonly skyrocketing, most likely in urban and suburban regions. With this declarative shift of land use, the landowners become very rich. Although they are legally required to enforce the governmental decision – it is, in fact, based on an application submitted by them – within a timeframe of 10 years, very often nothing happens except that the capital value of the land is further growing. A decommodification policy on dedicated residential (or commercial) land use would be to (i) reduce the 10-year timeframe significantly, (ii) execute the law consequently and (iii) introduce a tax on the profits generated with the land use change.

A further political instrument in housing de-commodification would be the introduction of temporarily limited and regionally adapted building moratoria. The idea is to pause the construction of new residential complexes in the future and thus interrupt the profit dynamics. Moratoria have been valued as a proper strategy in general [26] and have been introduced recently in some Austrian municipalities, for example, "Haus im Ennstal" and "Velden am Wörthersee" [27].

In order to strengthen collaboration between municipalities in housing planning, the local planning rules should be legally and strictly tied to the regional level. This shift would mitigate both the competition for residents and companies and the lavish commerce with land and resources. While the planning of housing estates would leave the territorially bounded container space, the concrete realization of where to build new apartments would remain within the local territory. This option, however, would affect a transformation of spatial thinking (and public budgeting) and will, therefore, be discussed in the next chapter.
