The importance of housing as a fundamental right and basic human need is recognized and covered by international and European documents that highlight the need and necessity of ensuring access to suitable, safe, and affordable housing. In recent years, there has been an increase in housing unaffordability in the cities of the European Union due to reduced investments in social housing and the general economic, health, and energy crisis. Although the housing system is one of the key elements of every welfare state, we are witnessing the relentless commodification of housing and speculative pressures on the market. Such dynamics continuously create challenges, affect the growth of real estate prices, and put pressure on the income of households, as a result of which housing loses its status as a social good. In this regard, European states and cities recognize the importance and their own role in protecting the housing sector from market pressures and ensuring access to affordable housing, placing it increasingly in the center of interest through various initiatives, strategies, and models. The paper presents the framework of the housing policy of the Republic of Croatia through the periods of socialism and independent state, in order to identify the basic characteristics and challenges, but also to create new solutions and to investigate good practices and approaches of other countries. In addition, a summary overview of the state of the housing system in the European Union was provided for the purposes of choosing a member state as a state of best practices. Austria is a country with a decades-long tradition of promoting affordable housing. The city of Vienna stands out as a city with a successful model of access to affordable housing, where a significant proportion of housing construction is carried out through housing associations with limited profits, and a large percentage of the population is cared for through affordable rent in apartments owned by the city. Numerous tools for the development of sustainable and affordable housing, as well as the sharing of the same legal roots and the historical connection between Austria and Croatia, which inevitably influenced the shaping of structures and concepts and the interpretation of institutes, make Austria a suitable reference for creating recommendations aimed at structuring public housing policy and forming special goals in the area of housing. An in-depth analysis of the housing policy of the city of Vienna revealed great potential for copying its model of affordable housing to Croatian cities, with an emphasis on the importance of including private investments in the realization of affordable housing units and putting the social function of housing at center of housing and urban policies.