Easterfestival

The issue of satisfactory housing preoccupies the public and politicians like hardly any other topic. However, this is by no means a recent phenomenon. That is why this exhibition focuses on cramped and precarious living conditions in Innsbruck over the last 120 years. The barracks built in various parts of the city after the First World War were used for a long time afterwards. After they were replaced by new residential buildings in the 1960s and 1970s, precarious living conditions shifted to historic and outdated buildings in the city center.

Today, only refugees live in substandard housing—but the overheated housing market limits the square footage that ordinary mortals can afford. This always raises the question of what politicians and administrators should do. “Affordable housing” has long since degenerated into an empty slogan on the election posters of all political parties. In the years after the Second World War, for example, housing conditions were carefully surveyed and systematic allocations to private apartments were made. Today, the introduction of a vacancy tax is heating up tempers.