Austin is poised to take another look at its blueprint for solving the housing crisis. The city’s Housing Department is going after a $10 million federal lifeline in hopes of updating its Strategic Housing Blueprint, a plan that clearly hasn’t kept pace with the growth spurt of Central Texas. "An update to the blueprint is going to take a couple years so the housing department is already looking right now at how we can make sure that five years down the road we have an update ready to go," Ryan Alter, Austin City Council Member, told KXAN.
While the city is applying for the HUD's 2023 Pathways to Removing Obstacles (PRO) Housing Grant to fund the overhaul, concerns abound over whether the lofty goals set by the city council in 2017 are still reachable or even relevant. Set alongside the Imagine Austin Comprehensive Plan, the housing blueprint models haven’t produced the expected results, as Austin has morphed under the pressures of an evolving economy and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. "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," Alter stated, blaming the lack of progress on faltering metrics.
Students, an integral part of the city’s demographic, find the housing situation particularly thorny. University of Texas senior Isabel Webb Carey, experiencing the crunch first-hand, started UT Housing Transparency on Instagram to offer peer-to-peer help with finding affordable living spaces. Imagine being saddled with student debts and "having to worry about another layer, expensive rent, is stressful," Carey shared with KVUE. Students looking for close campus housing face rents ranging from $1,200 to $2,000 a month—a price that for most is a recipe for financial distress.
The city’s plight for the better part of a decade reflects a shifting landscape—one that saw a remarkable spike in house prices and a crisis that left many questioning the city’s vision for housing. "The kind of goals that we had, and the kinds of projections that we had of where we wanted our population to be and how we were looking at our economy in 10 years starting in 2017, really don't hold anymore, because 2020 really just changed the entire landscape. So in some ways, it’s become almost critical to look at those goals," said Awais Azhar, deputy director at HousingWorks Austin, as quoted by KXAN. Desiring improvement, the city has a federal funding application deadline set for October 30.
With the $85 million available nationwide through HUD, Austin hopes to secure a slice to nip the growing crisis in the bud. Should the federal grant be procured, prospects like "smart housing" could emerge for low-income students, becoming a beacon of hope for many who are struggling to find housing near educational institutions. The objective is clear - to assist in increasing student commuters and to make their lives easier, recognizing "student success is highly correlated with how close they live to their school," as Carey emphasized. The city, earnest in its course correction, invites community feedback until October 25, striving to ensure an update that resonates with the contemporary needs of its residents.
