Residents of a municipal housing complex on Franklinstrasse, in Vienna’s 21st district, say their neighborhood is unrecognizable from what they remember, and have complained to the media about a migrant family with six children they accuse of terrorizing residents, threatening violence, and behaving as though they “own everything.”
“I’ve lived here for 55 years – but it’s never been like this,” 62-year-old Brigitte R. told Heute. “People used to greet each other, but now there’s fear.”
According to Brigitte, the family’s children repeatedly damage her car. “The kids climb on my wheel arch and hit it with iron bars. If it breaks, I have to pay,” she said. When she told them to stop, the children’s mother “screamed that I had attacked her children and threatened: ‘I’ll kill you, I’ll really kill you!’”
She added that residents are regularly insulted if they speak out, revealing she had been called a “shitty Austrian” and told to “move out if she didn’t like it.”
Brigitte filed a police report but says, “The police, [Vienna housing association] Wiener Wohnen, and [social housing support service] Wohnpartner — everyone knows, but nobody does anything.”
Other tenants say the situation has spiraled out of control. “They behave as if they own everything,” Pejman M., a 50-year-old musician, told the Austrian newspaper. “If you politely ask them to be quieter, you’re immediately insulted or threatened.”
Even the children, he said, speak to adults with contempt: “Look, the old man is back!” According to Pejman, “You can hardly breathe here without an argument breaking out.”
🇦🇹 An Afghan caregiver raped an 82-year-old woman with dementia in her own apartment in Vienna, according to Austrian prosecutors.
The victim's son was forced to helplessly watch the rape in real-time on his smartphone after he installed a surveillance camera in his mother's… pic.twitter.com/P41zm1iEHD
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) October 7, 2025Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) housing spokesperson Michael Niegl accused the authorities of “failing across the board here. When neighbors are threatened and insulted, we can no longer stand by and watch. The house rules apply to everyone. Anyone who constantly disrupts, threatens, or attacks must expect consequences – up to and including eviction. People need protection, not a hotline.”
Social housing services told the newspaper they were aware of “several complaints,” but admitted that “resolution was not possible” because complainants were afraid to come forward and make themselves public in order to mediate.
A Wiener Wohnen spokesperson said court-ordered evictions were only possible “if there is evidence of intolerable behavior and it is witnessed by multiple tenants.”
The Franklinstrasse tensions are part of a much larger story about Vienna’s decline under the strain of uncontrolled migration; the Austrian capital is increasingly defined by gang violence, cultural fragmentation, and collapsing public order.
“The only solution left to restore order is the deployment of the military,” warned FPÖ Vienna chairman Dominik Nepp in September 2024, calling for soldiers on the streets after a wave of violent clashes between Syrian and Chechen youth gangs and a daily average of 460 reported crimes — more than half involving suspects with migrant backgrounds.
“Just as the armed forces can protect embassies, they must also be able to protect ordinary people,” he said.
The city’s schools reflect the same pressures. Around 70 percent of children in Vienna do not speak German in daily life, and 39 percent are not Austrian citizens. One headmistress told Kronen Zeitung that 80 to 85 percent of her students have a migrant background, most of them from Syrian families who “don’t speak any German at all.”
Teachers report escalating violence, including mock executions in classrooms, parents demanding they wear burqas, and students attacking staff.
“The school is getting worse and worse,” said one principal.
Veteran educator Christian Klar has warned of “rapid Islamization” and rising anti-Semitism in schools, saying, “Islam is changing our society in ways we do not want.”
The breakdown of order is also visible on Vienna’s streets. A 43-year-old man was stabbed in the back in June 2025 after asking a group of Syrian and Iraqi teenagers to turn down their music on the subway. A month earlier, a man was beaten to death by a Pakistani attacker, who told police he acted out of “bloodlust.”
In November 2024, a 12-year-old girl was kidnapped, beaten, and set on fire by three other girls who forced her to swear on Allah not to report them. And in July 2025, a 15-year-old boy convicted of planning a jihadist massacre at Vienna’s Westbahnhof station was sentenced to just 24 months — and will likely walk free after three.
Even seniors are at risk, with an article published this week by Remix News highlighting an especially heinous incident.
An Afghan caregiver raped an 82-year-old woman with dementia in her own apartment in Vienna, according to Austrian prosecutors.
The victim’s son was forced to helplessly watch the rape in real-time on his smartphone after he installed a surveillance camera in his mother’s apartment due to suspicions he had. The perpetrator, 26-year-old Sarafaz Z., confessed to the crime after his arrest on the same day of the incident.
The family says the mother is constantly talking about suicide and has lost her will to live. Her lawyer, Manfred Arbacher-Stöger, told the Krone newspaper, “My client’s psyche was completely destroyed by the atrocity committed against her. She has therefore suffered lasting psychological damage.”
The son informed the organization that sent the Afghan caregiver to the woman’s house. They turned around and said the Afghan can now sue the family.
“I was told quite harshly that my mother’s continued care would only be possible if I deactivated the cameras on her premises. And I was told that her tormentor actually had the right to sue me because I filmed him without permission,” he said.
