One of the caretaker government’s first measures dismantled the progressive tax system. Redistribution of wealth from the top to the bottom reversed, public housing projects were largely abandoned, rents rose, and social insurance and infrastructure were dismantled.'

'In February 1934, the Austrofascist government removed Vienna’s administration in the course of its military evisceration of the labor movement as a whole, and appointed commissioners to rule the city.

This demonstrates the city’s commitment to helping anyone who lived in the city remain there.'

Apartment allocation was conducted according to a points system; alongside need, current housing situation, employment status, and war injuries, the city privileged applicants born in Vienna, which counted for four times as many points as Austrian citizenship.

Rents were calculated to cover these operating costs and nothing more; in 1926, they averaged about 4 percent of a worker’s monthly wage.

The city administration continued to run public services like gas, water, power plants, and public transportation and pushed to take over private industries including garbage disposal and the canals.

Neither the complexes nor the various companies and services established to support them were intended to make a profit.

— a series of apartment units served by one central kitchen. Planners intended that the state would take over traditionally female reproductive tasks and relieve women workers, already stressed by the triple burden of wage labor, housekeeping, and raising children.

Architects integrated the feminist and labor movements’ demands into the building’s layouts, and discussions around rationalizing and centralizing the domestic economy appeared in how the construction of the kitchens, child-care facilities, laundry rooms, and the Einküchenhaus

The apartments themselves were generally about 125 and 150 square feet and consisted of an open-plan kitchen, one room, and sometimes an additional closet. All had running water and toilets.

The city connected these blocks to local infrastructure — like consumer cooperatives and schools — making residents’ daily lives easier by cutting down travel and shopping time.

These housing complexes were usually multistory apartment blocks with green inner courtyards that provided residents with natural light and strengthened community ties and solidarity.

When the famous Amalienbad (a public natatorium in a working- class district) opened, the bourgeois press worried that proletarian visitors would steal its beautiful decorations.

When construction began on the Karl-Marx-Hof, a massive housing complex of roughly 1,400 units, many critics claimed it was structurally unsound.

'Apartment complexes became the favored construction style, provoking the ire of the elites, who condemned the amount of money being spent on “red fortresses” — a label that points to the suspicion that they might someday serve military functions.

'The coalition government, consisting of the Social Democrats and the Christian Social Party... introduced a series of progressive reforms... such as the eight-hour day, paid vacation, the Works Council Act, ...the Chamber of Labor, and rent-control legislation.'