the system in vienna may not be perfect, but it does better than any other large city in austria and germany and maybe even in europe. criticizing is easy, but i don't think it's fair when the situation everywhere else is worse.
your first claim: vienna has become unaffordable because of its subsidized housing.
that claim in itself makes no sense because subsidies are what makes housing affordable. if your argument is that it caused the prices of the private market to go up, then that is false too because munich and berlin have average rents that are even higher, and other german cities are on par. vienna private rent prices are not out of the ordinary for a city that size. in other words subsidizing housing can't have had any worse effect on the private rental market than whatever those cities in germany do.
your second claim: Vienna can't grow anymore as a result.
vienna is building almost 10k homes every year and has been doing so for the last decade or more. that may not be enough, but that's certainly not for lack of space. there is still plenty of space for the city to grow, especially in the east part of the city where farmland is within the city borders.
i am countering your claims. what do you expect me to ask here? do you have any evidence for your claims?
you say you wished that i understood that there were real criticisms.
well, what are these criticisms? again, compared to other large german cities which are mostly worse i find it hard to believe that there is any valid criticism against vienna's approach. but let's hear it, i am willing to accept that i am wrong because i may have missed something. so what am i missing?
