A fund created to preserve affordable apartments in Austin has raised enough money to begin buying properties.
Affordable Central Texas is the nonprofit behind the Austin Housing Conservancy fund. President and CEO David Steinwedell says the goal is to buy 1,000 housing units over the next year.
âWeâre not going to say how much [money] we have,” he says. “Our goal this year is to raise $30-$50 million. We’re not there yet. We still have a lot of work to do.â
The housing created through the fund will be income-restricted, meaning residents have to make below a certain salary. In Austin, the median family income is about $81,000 a year for a family of four. Steinwedell says the group wants to house people who make anywhere from 60 to 120 percent of the areaâs median family income.
Steinwedell says the fund was created in conjunction with a similar effort to buy and preserve affordable housing proposed Austin Mayor Steve Adler. While the mayorâs plan has a broader focus, the Conservancy is zeroing in on what it calls âworkforce housing.â The group wants to house residents who make too much to qualify for other affordable housing programs â people like nurses, teachers, musicians and first-responders.
âThere are programs that are out there that meet the needs of low- and very low-income [people],â he says. âThereâs nothing there to meet the needs of people that are earning somewhat more, but are still feeling the stresses of affordability. So when we were looking at this with the mayor and his staff, we decided to focus on workforce.â
A private nonprofit also has the leeway to do things the city canât. For example, Texas law doesnât allow for rent control, so the city canât limit how much landlords increase rent. Because the Conservancy will continue to raise money, Steinwedell says, it will be able to limit the rate of rent increases and align them with Austinâs wage growth.
It remains to be seen how the nonprofit will keep rents stable when faced with other forces that can drive up costs, like Austinâs notoriously slow permitting process, says Geoffrey Tahuahua, vice president of policy and government affairs at the Real Estate Council of Austin.
âOne of the things we deal with a lot is just the sheer delays and the cost associated with the delays that ultimately then have a cost on the consumer,â Tahuahua says. âThereâs going to be a tangible cost to those delays, and theyâll have to be absorbed somewhere, and so I think thatâll definitely be a challenge for them.â
David Danenfelzer, a senior director with the Texas State Affordable Housing Corp., says construction delays are an inescapable reality in many cities, though they may be worse in Austin. The independent nonprofit, which was created by the state Legislature, has been working for decades to house moderate- and low-income Texans at the statewide level.
Still, Danenfelzer says, the Austin Housing Conservancy is investing at a crucial time. He says nonprofits may be able to weather changing market forces because theyâre focused on keeping things affordable in the long-term, not earning fast profits.
âEfforts to preserve what is affordable now … is a good idea because it captures value now and builds on the affordability down the line,â he says.