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Austin has fallen far short of producing affordable housing for the poorest Austinites most vulnerable to homelessness and displacement, even as it’s been lauded for producing units at middle-class income levels, a recent report shows.
The city has spent years on housing strategies to keep the city accessible to lower-income residents. By several measurements, efforts like rewriting land-use rules, subsidizing apartment construction and pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into affordable housing programs are more effective compared to a decade ago. But the city’s newly released Strategic Housing Blueprint scorecard also highlights a persistent gap that is beginning to reshape Austin’s housing priorities.
“The cost of housing has gone up, our toolkit has shrunk, and the support that we got from external public sectors has also gone down,” said HousingWorks Austin Executive Director Awais Azhar, who noted that a variety of local-level housing strategies have been invalidated in recent years by the state Legislature or court decisions. “So it’s a little bit of a challenge that we have to deal with.”A recent memo from the Housing Department tracks the city’s progress on housing production goals laid out in its 2017 Strategic Housing Blueprint.
According to the scorecard:
- The city has exceeded its six-year target for producing units affordable to households earning 61% to 80% of the median family income (MFI), with 15,819 units surpassing the target of 9,000 units. Those median family incomes are for households earning $81,984 yearly to $108,864.
- 8,250 affordable units were preserved since 2018, putting Austin close to its 10-year goal of preserving 10,000 units.
- Austin did not meet its six-year goal of producing 12,000 units for households earning 30% MFI or below. Only 543 such units were produced. This median family income is for households earning $40,320 annually.
The category of deep affordability, generally identified as accessible to residents earning 30% MFI or less, includes many Austinites living on fixed incomes, disability payments, low-wage service jobs or housing vouchers, along with many people at risk of homelessness.
“We are struggling so mightily on the housing needs of those who are really struggling to get by,” City Council Member Ryan Alter said in an interview with Austin Free Press. “You look at the 30% below, and you’ve got 17% of the population at that income level and only 1% of the housing stock. And the people really struggling to get by who need permanent supportive housing, we’re not meeting that short-term goal either.”
Advocates focused on homelessness and displacement argue Austin has relied too heavily on market-driven housing strategies, which favor the construction of lower-subsidy apartments aimed at residents with somewhat higher incomes.
“The market is always going to prioritize people with more money,” said Cate Graziani, executive director of VOCAL-TX, which is pushing the city for housing and programs to help people most at risk of becoming homeless. “So if the city is relying heavily on the market to solve the affordability crisis, then naturally we’re going to see more units for people at 60 or 80% MFI than we are for people who are extremely low-income or exiting homelessness.”
That’s become more noticeable as Austin’s housing market has shifted dramatically since the blueprint was adopted.
During the pandemic-era boom, rents and home prices soared while thousands of lower-income residents were pushed farther from the city core. More recently, Austin has experienced one of the nation’s sharpest apartment construction booms, cooling market-rate rents. But many affordability advocates argue that residents facing the most severe housing cost pressure have seen little benefit.
City housing presentations now openly acknowledge that even some “affordable” units aimed at moderate-income residents can approach roughly $1,800 per month and that residents earning below roughly 50% to 60% MFI are the segment least likely to be served through traditional market-rate development alone. Those median family incomes are for households earning $67,200 to $80,640 annually.
In response, city officials and city council members are increasingly signaling a shift in strategy, with greater emphasis on preserving existing affordable housing, steering subsidies toward deeper affordability levels and rethinking how future housing incentives are structured.
“Seeing those results really solidified for us as a department where we wanted to invest those dollars,” Housing Department director Deletta Dean said of the scorecard findings. “That’s been the projects that provide the most deeply affordable units as we look at funding projects going forward.”
That shift is also changing how the city talks about affordability geographically. Officials said sections of West Austin are less hospitable for affordable housing because of high land costs, neighborhood resistance, environmental protections, and watershed constraints that limit large-scale development opportunities.
Azhar, of HousingWorks, said the city has “broken that 35 barrier” in recent years, with more affordable projects between Interstate 35 and MoPac and in districts farther north and west.
Austin’s housing strategy is also more focused on preservation, with a dedicated anti-displacement division in the Housing Department.
Credit: Catellus
The city is also quietly rethinking how it decides where future affordable housing investments should go.
Rachel Tepper, a planner principal with the Housing Department, said the city is rebuilding its “high-opportunity” mapping system with researchers from the University of Texas.
Under older versions of the city’s opportunity maps, even the Mueller development was not considered a high-opportunity area, illustrating how dramatically Austin’s housing landscape has changed over the past decade.
Rather than simply steering affordable housing toward wealthier ZIP codes, Tepper said the updated maps identify areas that combine transit access, jobs, schools and other economic opportunities with realistic development potential and lower displacement risk.
“It’s not just where are the affluent people in Austin, but where are the areas that offer the best bang for your buck that are both reasonably affordable to build in but also offer a lot of high opportunity,” Tepper said.
Even with new data to optimize the city’s remaining housing bond dollars — and what may be requested in a potential 2028 housing bond proposal — the financial realities are tight.
Pandemic-era inflation, rising construction costs, labor shortages, state restrictions, and shrinking federal housing support are among the unexpected forces that now shape Austin’s affordability landscape.
Chad Swiatecki is a 30-year journalist who relocated to Austin from his home state of Michigan in 2008. He most enjoys covering the intersection of arts, business and local/state politics. He has written for Rolling Stone, Spin, New York Daily News, Texas Monthly, Austin Monitor, Austin Business Journal, Austin American-Statesman and many other regional and national outlets.
