29-01-2025
City of Austin set to update long-term housing goals with federal grant
AUSTIN (KXAN) — The City of Austin could take another swing at its long-term comprehensive housing goals. The Housing Department applied for and received a nearly $7 million federal grant to help do it.
Austin City Council is expected to vote on the acceptance of that grant Thursday.
The money will go toward several housing initiatives, including preservation of affordable housing near the planned light rail line, prioritizing building near high-opportunity areas and updating the Strategic Housing Blueprint. The city of Austin and Austin Housing Finance Corporation also pitched in roughly $21 million to do that work, according to council documents.
In 2017, Austin City Council set forward lofty housing goals and created a guiding document, called the Strategic Housing Blueprint.
'It measures every single district in terms of how much housing has each district produced in relation to how much the scorecard says it should. It also breaks down by income level,' Austin City Council Member Ryan Alter has previously said. 'And unfortunately we're not doing very well on pretty much any of these metrics.'
Every year HousingWorks Austin collects data to show how close the city is to meeting those goals, called the Strategic Housing Blueprint Scorecard. The 2022 Strategic Housing Blueprint Scorecard — which is the most recent — marks the halfway point in the city's comprehensive plan.
Awais Azhar, the executive director at HousingWorks Austin, says he thinks the blueprint needs a revamp with a focus on housing in high-opportunity areas — for example near schools and work — housing near transit, reaching people at the lowest median family income levels and working to integrate the needs of the Homeless Strategy Office (HSO).
'All of our affordable housing programs have been focused on 50% median family income or lower for rental or 80% median family income or lower for ownership. So that's roughly for a two person household that's [at] $80,000,' Azhar said. 'Even if you're at $100,000 or $90,000 or if you're at $110,000, it's increasingly hard for people to purchase homes in our central city so that's another conversation we need to have.'
The city's Housing Department has previously said the revamp is necessary because of how much the city has changed since the blueprint was adopted in 2017.
'Some ways the city has changed include, the rising cost of living, responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, adding a coordinated homeless strategy, and land development code legal challenges,' a spokesperson wrote.
KXAN asked the city's Housing Department whether this grant would be impacted by a recent announcement that federal grants may be halted and reevaluated. We didn't hear back by the deadline.
We also asked the city of Austin about whether there are federal grant approvals on this week's council agenda that will need to be postponed. City Manager T.C. Broadnax said generally of the potential for a pause in federal grants that the city is 'aware of the memo from the federal Office of Management and Budget and are currently assessing its impact. We are compiling a total amount of grant funding for all City of Austin programs that could be affected.'
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