One Page Summary

In the last 10 years, renting prices in Vienna increased by 40%. Housing is expensive, especially for young adults like students: Today, students spend twice as much money for housing as the average Austrian. At the same time, many people in Vienna, especially people above 65 are in the following situation: They have more space than they need; consider the monthly housing costs as a financial burden; or/and need help to manage the everyday household duties. Furthermore, the majority of elderly people want to live at home independently as long as possible and do not want to move into a retirement home. Thus, there are also empty and unused apartments (mainly those created for couples) in retirement homes in Austria and other European countries.

WGE!-Gemeinsam Wohnen changes the way we use our homes based upon a mutuality of needs of different generations: Young people (e.g. students) are moving into an elderly person´s house or into an empty room in a retirement home. In order to match the right people, we developed a sophisticated algorithm, in addition to personal contact with and support for the home-seeker and the homeowner. Our service includes a legal solution (contracts, agreements etc.) for shared flats across generations. We have been arranging mixed generation housing for two years: Through using already existing living space and through creating an offer that is open to everybody, we go beyond the state of the art in intergenerational housing with our solution.

With our service, elderly people can reduce their housing costs, get company and/or get a helping hand for managing the household (e.g. doing the groceries, the cooking, etc.). Young people are benefitting from low rents (or even get accommodation for free) and from the life experience of an elderly person. Thus, WGE! reduces the poverty risk of post-retirement people and young people in education, contributes to a more sustainable way of living through using empty rooms in existing living space, counteracts loneliness, fosters the dialogue and solidarity among generations as well as intercultural exchange.

For providing our service we rely on manual work to a large extend. As a result our service is very time intense and we are rather limited in scaling. Therefore we want to develop a digital solution in order to facilitate the matching process and the management of the legal framework (contracts, agreements etc.). So far, we have been charging a one-time fee for matching the right people from homeowner and homeseeker. With a digital solution we could create a regular revenue stream and avoid charging at a point where neither homeowner nor homeseeker have experienced the benefit of intergenerational living.