This has come up more than three times in as many weeks in conversations I've had, and shocked everyone I explained it to.Vienna managed to control rents without rent control legislation.By cornering the market for land.Want to develop residential property in Vienna? You have to buy the land from the city, because the city got there first and bought it all. And the city has some pretty interesting terms if you want to buy from them.Oh, and by having a massive program of subsidized housing that is frankly luxurious. By flooding the housing market with wonderful, cheap options, they put private landlords in the position of having to compete on both price and quality.And there's lots of other lovely details. For instance, there's a means test (an income max) to get in to subsidized housing, but you only have to quality at admission. You don't have to move out if your fortunes improve. That's by design: their subsidized housing winds up having mixed income levels. So they don't become ghettos of poor people.This is but the barest summary from the article "Vienna Offers Affordable and Luxurious Housing" by Ryan Holeywell, Feb 2013, at Governing.org. Go there and read the whole thing. It's worth your time. Recommended.The article mentions that one of the consequences of Vienna's housing policy has been that 80% of people in Vienna rent; owning is not seen as advantageous. Something not mentioned in the article but obvious to me: so, clearly, homeowners are not a powerful and important political constituency, and Vienna can do things that American cities would never tolerate. Vienna controling rents is Vienna driving down the value of residential property including private homes. Americans use housing as investment vehicles, and Vienna doing things to force rents lower literally reduces (or at least limits the growth of) home values, which American homeowners would go ballistic over. Vienna thinks limiting the growth of the value of housing stock is a feature, Americans think that's a bug.