The city’s Neighborhood Housing and Community Development department is deciding how to best implement Austin’s Strategic Housing Blueprint in light of several recently released reports on displacement. Adopted by City Council in April 2017 as the city’s 10-year housing policy, the Blueprint calls for 135,000 new housing units, with 60,000 available at 80% or below Austin’s median family income (currently $86,000 for a family of four). While NHCD says the document is already guiding its actions, the draft plan to reach the Blueprint’s goals has yet to be finalized and adopted.
As per Council’s directive, that plan is supposed to include “clear, specific steps” and “actionable strategies” to achieve the outcomes outlined in both the Blueprint and the Imagine Austin comprehensive plan. Five guiding “community values” have been identified: prevent people from being priced out; create equitable and diverse communities; invest in housing for “those most in need”; create new, affordable housing options for all residents throughout the city; and help reduce household costs.
NHCD is currently reviewing several new sets of recommendations to address displacement, including UT’s “Uprooted” gentrification study, the People’s Plan, and feedback from the Mayor’s Task Force on Institutional Racism and Systemic Inequities, which were all released after Council adopted the Blueprint. When combined with the Blueprint itself, these various studies call for more than 200 actions, with more still to come from the separate Anti-Displacement Task Force.
NHCD’s Acting Assistant Director Erica Leak explains these are all being considered as “we move forward with the department’s strategy” to implement the Blueprint. She adds that NHCD is taking the time to “really look” at each document, “digest them and educate the public about what’s in them so that everyone knows what we’re hearing.”
Currently, the biggest question is whether to actually amend the Blueprint to include the new recommendations, with Leak noting that some City Council members are eager to take action now. Leak’s colleague and city planner Jonathan Tomko, updating the Planning Commission with a presentation on Tuesday, claimed the city is not keeping up with the pace of new housing called for by the Blueprint. (According to numbers reported by the Austin Chamber of Commerce in August, the Austin metro area is on track to build almost double the number of new units called for by 2025, with 26,700 units permitted in 2017 and 16,809 more in the first six months of 2018.)
The draft plan, Tomko told commissioners, uses corridor analysis to align housing goals for the major thoroughfares targeted by 2016’s $720 million mobility bond corridors, as well as mapping housing opportunity areas and displacement and environmental risks. The plan will include affordable housing goals for each Council district. Within the next few weeks, Leak expects the updated draft to be available for public feedback, with Council set to adopt the final plan some time in early 2019.
This article appears in October 12 • 2018.