Robert Smith
speaker
2,515 appearances
7 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 26 Aug
Robert Smith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 4.
Appearances
Planet Money · The continent nobody owns & everyone benefits from (Summer School) · 26 Aug 2026
podcast
As the student, Heine was able to browse a website with hundreds of options, tell the city how much she was making in income, and choose an apartment with a reasonable rent.
The only catch was she had to choose from the list without seeing the place.
So she did something clever.
Before she picked, she did a little snooping.
She made her choice.
And when she was offered that apartment, she got to say yes or no.
It turned out great.
Cute place, cheaper rent than the private apartment she was paying, but not by that much.
Because nonprofit housing is so common in Vienna, that pool of real estate competes with private apartments and keeps the rate of the private places in check.
One study showed that if you have a 10% increase in nonprofit housing, rents in the for-profit buildings go down 5%.
The biggest controversy about the system is even though there are income limits to get in the apartment, you can keep staying there, even if your income goes up.
Congratulations to summer school student Heini Miklos in Vienna.
It seems to illustrate the economic instinct that if you build more housing, the prices can remain steady and even perhaps become more affordable.
Our final graduation speaker today has an interesting twist on a finance system used around the world.
And in his country, if you want to make a big purchase, you can of course get a loan, but the interest rates are high, so people have come up with another way.
Consórcio, is that how you say it?
And what is the literal translation of that word?
A consorcio is what is known as a group self-financing system.
There are versions of this around the world called all sorts of different things: roscas, susus, cheat funds, and they work similarly.
Let's say you want to buy a car and your friend wants a down payment on a house, and another wants to remodel their kitchen.
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