Meet Marlene Welzel, social entrepreneur and founder of the Vienna-based housing platform Wohnbuddy. For her, city making is about being innovative, about creating and providing solutions to the challenges you are identifying – and also about communicating, getting in touch with people from different organizations and gaining new insights.
Vision
“Our vision is to make intergenerational housing possible at large scale. We want to complement the housing market in university cities through our online platform “Wohnbuddy”. We want to change the way that we use our homes based upon a mutuality of needs of different generations.”
Project Owner:
- WGE! – Gemeinsam wohnen (public charity)
Founder:
- Marlene Welzl// Vienna- social entrepreneur & convinced of the enduring power of connecting the generations, background in diplomacy and International Development Studies and Chinese Studies. Click here to listen to the CITYMAKERS podcast with Marlene Welzl, talking about “Wohnbuddy”.
Target group:
- Elderly people living in their own flat or in a care home looking for a younger flat mate to live with, as well as students/ younger people searching for an affordable place to live and share it with seniors
Status (Oct. 2020):
- Until now “Wohnbuddy” matched 350 people to live together.
- Biggest achievements in 2020 are new cooperations with care homes across Vienna (10) and with the biggest social housing provider in the city starting in 2021. These cooperations will increase the number of offered shared flats significantly.
Goals
- Match 3650 people to live together in the next 5 years.
- Expand the project to other university towns and potentially to other countries.
Get to know “Wohnbuddy”
In the following video Marlene Welzl, founder of Wohnbuddy introduces the innovative matchmaking platform, shares her aspiration initiating the project and presents an example of successful matchmaking.
Interview with Marlene Welzl, Co-Founder of “Wohnbuddy”
In the following interview with Marlene Welzl, recorded during the peaks of the Covid-19 pandemic, Marlene speaks about the challenges of the pandemic in her field of work, the progress of her platform “Wohnbuddy” and the future- goals of her social business.