Austin wants to house 3,000 in 3 years, but it’s behind on previous 2017 housing goal
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AUSTIN (KXAN) – This year the city of Austin announced a robust plan to house 3,000 people in three years. That would mean creating more than 750 new housing units of permanent support housing.
However, KXAN noted that the city is already behind on a housing plan announced in 2017.
“I don’t know any of our employees who live in a downtown condo, even though my two restaurants are downtown,” said CK Chin, a local business owner.
Housing made it even more difficult for him to find employees when he reopened.
“The need for more workers, but not enough housing for these people,” he said.
In 2017, the city launched its strategic housing plan to help, with the goal of creating 60,000 affordable homes for diverse income groups by 2028.
This advocacy chart from HousingWorks Austin illustrates the types of Austin city neighbors falling into different income brackets. (Source: HousingWorks Austin)
But their latest scorecard for 2019 shows they are way behind.
The city must develop more than 13,000 units a year to catch up. This is affordable housing for all income groups – up to below the poverty line.
Erica Leak, development officer for the Austin City Housing and Planning Department, said the goals were “incredibly ambitious”.
“They weren’t necessarily set based on the resources we knew were available, but the council was very clear that they wanted to set the goals based on real needs rather than the resources available.” , she said.
The city has now added another goal – to create hundreds of housing units for the homeless community in three years. Leak said it complements the current draft and increases the number of permanent housing units to be built in the city.
Tahera Rahman from KXAN asked Leak how they intend to keep these promises.
“The intention was never for the city to be able to create all the entities we know we need … and that would require all possible partners,” she said.
Partners such as private property developers who, according to Conor Kenny, are increasingly interested in building affordable housing.
Kenny works for Civilitude Group, a full-service development company that has built 500 mixed-income residential units at affordable housing over the past several years. You currently have two proposals with the city. Kenny said it takes at least three years to assemble a building.
“We really need to make these arrangements, like now, this summer,” said Kenny, Civilitude Group and Public Affairs Director, Capital A Housing.
He said it was difficult, but doable, to achieve this new goal.
“I think the problem with our plans in the past is that they haven’t received adequate funding,” said Kenny. “And what I see differently now is that the people downstairs in the town hall are realizing that an enormous amount of funds must be made available.”
Leak said that since the blueprint is a 10-year plan, the city still has time to find new ways to meet those goals as well. However, the biggest challenge in building affordable housing is financing.
At the moment, she said, the units will be funded primarily through the 2018 Affordable Housing bond, but that will only last for five years, so another funding source needs to be identified.
Kenny said the city also needs to update its land development code from the 1980s, calling this a major barrier to affordable housing developers.
“There are certainly a number of things that we have not yet achieved that absolutely must be done in order to be successful,” he said.
Even Chin is considering contributing to the solution.
“What if we got some real estate ourselves and subsidized it to become apartments for our employees or something?” He said.
The city said the next strategic housing plan scorecard will come out this fall or winter.
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