At 17, Sukhdeep Singh, an Austrian refugee from India's Punjab region, lived in a home for unaccompanied migrant minors. Now in his mid-30s and a project manager at Siemens, Singh is buying and renovating the property to keep it away from developers.

The Christian NGO that previously ran the house said the decision to sell had come from "insufficient referrals" of migrants from the regional authorities in Lower Austria.

The three-story Laura Gatner house, a shelter for around 50 unaccompanied youths, homed Singh for six years.

There, he learnt how to speak the language, made friends and played football, cultivating a deeper emotional connection to the space – the reason he bought the building. 

"I don't know who was going to buy it," Singh told AFP. "But if somebody is buying [it] who does not have any connection or relation to Otto Tausig or this house, they immediately remove the name and remove the history of this house.

"So this was the emotional point for me," he said.

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Otto Tausig helped create Laura Gatner house to respond to his own experience of being forced into exile by the Nazis. He named the place after his grandmother, who died in a concentration camp.

The Jewish actor and writer dedicated his life to charity. Tausig later became a mentor to Singh, even sponsoring him when he went on to get a degree from the Technical University.

Singh told AFP that even after all these years, he was still in contact with his roommates, who have visited him at the building site for the new house.

On the new house, Singh said: "I will create something beautiful. This is not just one heim [refugee home] for the foreigners. There will also be good beautiful apartments."

Although he will have to let out some of the 16 apartments in order to repay the mortgage, Singh will reserve four apartments for asylum-seeker families, who will not be expected to pay a set rent.

The first to move in will be a young mother and her daughter, followed by three more families once construction finishes in March – 18 years to the month after Singh first moved in.