Will a huge residential area be built in Budapest?

If the government is serious about supporting housing projects in Budapest, it should support the construction of “Park City”, a project including affordable housing in the city’s 14th district, rather than earmarking the area for the “mini Dubai” office and apartment complex, which will drive prices up further and deepen the housing crisis, Mayor Gergely Karácsony said on Wednesday.

Commenting on statements of Gergely Gulyás, the head of the PM’s Office, at a regular press briefing earlier in the day, Karácsony said on Facebook that instead of supporting a Chinese investment in the south of the city, the government could throw its weight behind Student City, a project aimed at improving student housing.

Budapest is ready to start the largest housing programme of the past 30 years. In the coming years, the municipality will spend 20 billion forints (EUR 50.0m) on rent support, affordable housing, and on bringing empty apartments into the programme, the mayor said. “I realise more would be needed, but that is up to the state, and this is still a lot more than what has been spent on housing in Budapest in the past decades.”

One of the most important causes of the crisis is that only 4 percent of Hungarian apartments is community property, one of the lowest ratios in Europe, he said. In Vienna, 25 percent of flats is owned by the municipality: “That’s the direction we should take, if the government ever manages to surpass its antiquated fixation,” Karácsony said.

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