The City’s Strategic Housing Blueprint, adopted by Council in 2017, is a 10-year plan to help align resources and facilitate community partnerships around a single, strategic vision to create 60,000 affordable housing units for those making less than 80% of the median family income and ensure that there is affordable housing throughout the city. 

Learn more about the Blueprint, including what’s included and how it addresses issues like displacement from the menu below.

Overview

Reporting & Progress

View Blueprint

Resources

 

Blueprint Overview

To understand how and why the Blueprint was developed, Housing staff, formerly Neighborhood Housing & Community Development, created a Blueprint Overview (PDF). The Overview outlines the major factors affecting housing affordability in Austin. Translated versions of the Overview are available:

How is the Blueprint addressing displacement?

In collaboration with the City’s Innovation Office, Housing and Planning, formerly Neighborhood Housing & Community Development, created a Displacement Mitigation Strategy (PDF) that included recommendations from the City of Austin’s Anti-Displacement Task Force (PDF), a gentrification study (PDF) conducted by researchers at the University of Texas, as well as the People’s Plan (PDF), which recommends strategies to minimize displacement.

These recommendations aim to address gentrification and create strategies for preserving and expanding the supply of affordable housing, supporting small businesses, and preserving the city’s cultural assets.

Using the above resources as a guide, the Innovation Office developed 15 recommendations, based on impact and resources required, covering a wide range of community-based displacement concerns – including strategies to help households at immediate risk of displacement and longer-term strategies addressing the citywide affordable housing stock.

The Displacement Mitigation Strategy (PDF) has been incorporated into the objectives and actions in the Blueprint Implementation Plan (PDF).

How is the Blueprint addressing housing affordability?

The Austin City Council has directed the City Manager to create an Interdepartmental Action Team to coordinate implementation steps for each of the Key Actions, and to document progress and obtain ongoing community feedback. The specific steps and resources necessary to achieve the goals of the Housing Blueprint in Resolution No. 20170413-024 (Web), and strategies for affordable housing preservation to avoid significant loss of existing affordable housing in Resolution No. 20170413-025 (Web).

The City of Austin contracted with Asakura Robinson (Web) and a local sub-consultant Austin Community Design & Development Center (ACDDC) (Web) to develop an implementation plan.

In November 2018, NHCD released a draft Blueprint Implementation Plan which takes the Blueprint to the next phase of establishing specific actions, short-term priorities, and geographically-specific goals for implementing all 63 Strategic Housing Blueprint recommendations. The Implementation Plan has two components:

Blueprint Implementation Plan (PDF): Stakeholder engagement and use of the Atlas and Corridor Analysis to create detailed, schedule-driven action items based on each Blueprint strategy.

Atlas of Existing and Historical Conditions (Web): Citywide mapping and analysis to help operationalize key metrics in the Blueprint.  It also defines key goals at a corridor level for the 2016 Mobility Bond corridors using the University of Texas Corridor Preservation Tool.

The final Implementation Plan will include recommendations from several recent reports on gentrification, institutional racism, fair housing, and homelessness, including:

University of Texas Gentrification Study (Web) (56 recommendations) People's Plan (Web) (19 recommendations) Anti-Displacement Taskforce Report (Web) (107 recommendations) Mayor's Task Force on Institutional Racism and Systemic Inequities (PDF) (40 housing-related recommendations)  Fair Housing Action Plan (PDF) (2015) (32 recommendations) Central Texas Fair Housing Assessment (Web) (2019) Austin’s Plan to End Homelessness (Web) (10+ housing-related recommendations).

How is the Blueprint addressing homelessness?

As part of the Homeless Assistance System, the City of Austin collaborates with agencies, community organizations, and individuals working to make homelessness rare, brief, and nonrecurring. To learn more about Austin's Homelessness Strategy, visit the Homelessness Strategy hub (Web).  

The Austin Homeless Dashboard (Web) is an informational resource on the issue of homelessness in Austin. The data visualizations featured are created by the City of Austin. The data is gathered by Austin and Travis County’s Continuum of Care, led by the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO).

View Blueprint

The City’s Strategic Housing Blueprint helps align resources and facilitate community partnerships around a single, strategic vision to ensure that there is affordable housing throughout the city. The plan identifies funding sources, potential regulations, and other creative approaches the City of Austin should utilize to achieve housing goals--including the creation of 60,000 affordable units over the coming decade for households earning approximately $60,000 or less per year--in line with Imagine Austin (Web). 

The Blueprint identified five community values to guide the process, including:

Strategic Housing Blueprint Briefing Book

At the direction of the Austin City Council, an Interdepartmental Action Team has drafted a Strategic Housing Blueprint Briefing Book to identify the specific steps and resources necessary to achieve the specific goals of the Housing Blueprint in Resolution No. 20170413-024 (Web), and strategies for affordable housing preservation to avoid significant loss of existing affordable housing in Resolution No. 20170413-025 (Web).

Copies of the draft Strategic Housing Blueprint Briefing Book and supporting materials are available for download, below:

Reporting & Progress

The Housing Department staff, in partnership with HousingWorks Austin, created a Scorecard to analyze and track the community’s progress toward reaching the affordable housing goals established in the Blueprint.

The Scorecards measure goals outlined in the Strategic Housing Blueprint, including ensuring the creation, preservation, and equitable spread of affordable housing units across our City, while aiming to create affordability accessible to a wide range of incomes. This ambitious 10-year plan aimed to align resources and facilitate community partnerships around a single, strategic vision to create 60,000 affordable housing units for those making less than 80% of the median family income and fill the need for affordable housing throughout the city. Tese goals were strictly grounded in the established number of needed income-restricted units as demonstrated through the Housing Market Studies completed in the mid 2010’s. The Housing Department (formerly NHCD) calculated that $6 to $11 billion in additional resources would be needed to meet the total 60,000 unit goal when the plan was first established. 

The annual scorecard (published 6-12 months after the close of the reporting period) can help Austin track its efforts to sustainably achieve affordability goals, expand housing opportunities, and ensure Austin remains a livable city for all.

Austin Strategic Housing Blueprint Scorecards

2022 Scorecard

The 2022 Blueprint Scorecard and updated Progress to Date Scorecard see Austin reach the halfway point of the ten-year period outlined in goals from the Strategic Housing Blueprint adopted in 2017. The Strategic Housing Blueprint proposed a wide array of new policy tools to allow for a multi-faceted and collaborative approach for producing and preserving affordable housing over the next ten years. At the same time, the Blueprint acknowledged the need for innovative strategies to address challenges associated with limited resources, expanding regional coordination and partnerships, and legislative constraints. Read more about the 2022 Blueprint Scorecard data in the December 20, 2023 memo update.

2021 Scorecard

Key Takeaway: Austin continues to make progress toward meeting the 10-year goals laid out in the Strategic Housing Blueprint, particularly in constructing income-restricted units in High Opportunity Areas and preserving existing subsidized units, while production of new affordable housing units lags slightly. In 2021, the city exceeded its goal of building new housing units within a half-mile of Imagine Austin Centers and Corridors for the fourth year in a row. Over the past four years, the city has been most successful in meeting this goal, with 91% of all new housing units from 2018 to 2021 located within these areas. 

2020 Scorecard

Key Takeaway: The third iteration of the Blueprint Scorecard includes a Progress-to-Date Scorecard, which gives a cumulative overview of progress toward Blueprint goals over the past three years (2018 to 2020). The City of Austin had mixed results in 2020 in meeting its Blueprint goals. While improvement was made in 2020 from the previous two years on other key goals such as constructing income-restricted units in High Opportunity Areas and preserving existing subsidized units, greater progress is necessary to reach the desired benchmarks for all goals by 2028.

2019 Scorecard

Key Takeaway: The second iteration of the Blueprint Scorecard builds on the slow progress highlighted in the 2018 Blueprint Scorecard and shows that the City of Austin continues to meet some goals outlined in the Strategic Housing Blueprint, but still lags behind targets for many other metrics.

2018 Scorecard

Key Takeaway: The first iteration of the Blueprint Scorecard shows that although the City of Austin is making progress in supporting the values highlighted in the Austin Strategic Housing Blueprint, additional efforts are required to address affordability challenges and to ensure housing for all.

Progress-to-Date

Blueprint Resources

Glossary of Blueprint Related Terms

Accessory Dwelling Unit is a small dwelling on the same grounds as and ancillary to a single-family home. Affordable Housing is housing in which the household pays no more than 30% of its income for gross housing costs, including utilities.

Affordability Period is the length of time that a housing unit is required to maintain its below-market rent or sales price.

Austin Housing Finance Corporation (AHFC) is a public, non-profit corporation and instrumentality of the City of Austin under the provisions of the Texas Housing Finance Corporation Act, Chapter 394, and Local Government Code. The Austin City Council serves as the AHFC’s Board of Directors. AHFC’s primary functions are to issue single-family and multi-family bonds for the financing of reasonably priced housing and assist the City in the delivery of reasonably priced housing programs using federal funds.

CodeNEXT is the City’s first comprehensive rewrite of its Land Development Code In over 20 years. The new code will determine how land can be developed or zoned throughout the city.

Cooperative (co-op) Housing is housing where residents own shares and occupy a specific unit.

Deep Affordability is the level of affordability needed to serve extremely low income households.

Density Bonus is a regulation that allows more (height, density, etc.) than is permitted by base zoning in exchange for certain public benefits.

Extremely Low Income describes households whose income is at or below 30% of the area median family income.

Fair Housing Act is a 1968 federal act intended to protect the buyer or renter of a dwelling from seller or landlord discrimination. Its primary prohibition makes it unlawful to refuse to sell, rent to, or negotiate with any person because of that person’s Inclusion In a protected class (such as race, color, religion, etc.).

High Frequency Transit are routes providing service every 15 minutes (or better) throughout most of the day on weekdays and Saturdays.

High Opportunity Areas typically include access to jobs, transportation, education, and a healthy environment. These factors can affect a person’s social mobility, health, and access to employment.

Homestead Preservation Districts (HPDs) are areas in which taxes are reinvested to create or preserve affordable housing.

Homestead Preservation District Tax Reinvestment Zones are financing tools that can be used in HPDs to fund the creation or preservation of affordable housing by setting aside a portion of the HPD’s increased assessed tax value over a certain baseline.

Housing First is an approach to housing that focuses on quickly housing people who are experiencing homelessness first, and then providing support services as needed. A core element is lower tenant screening criteria regarding behaviors like sobriety, criminal history, or credit history.

Imagine Austin Comprehensive Plan is the city’s 30-year plan for growth and development. The plan was developed based on extensive community input and includes goals for issues beyond land use, including the economy, health, affordability, transportation, and the environment.

Imagine Austin Activity Centers and Corridors are areas identified in the Imagine Austin Comprehensive Plan as appropriate for increased concentrations of jobs, residents, and services.

lnclusionary Zoning is a regulation that mandates the provision of housing units at below-market prices.

Income-Restricted Affordable Housing refers to housing for which renters or buyers must meet specific income guidelines to be able to live in the unit. This guideline is generally defined in terms of a percent of median family income (MFI).

Low Income describes households whose income is at or below 80% of the area median family income.

Market rate is the price one must pay to purchase or rent a home on the open real estate market.

Median Family Income (MFI) is the amount of money earned by a family in a metropolitan statistical area that divides the income distribution of all families in that area into two equal parts - half having incomes above that amount and half below.

Micro-Unit is a small, self-contained living space designed to accommodate basic human needs.

Missing Middle is the range of dwelling types between detached homes and mid-rise apartments.

Moderate Income describes households whose income is between 81% and 120% of the area median family income.

Neighborhood Housing and Community Development (NHCD) is a City of Austin department focusing on the production of affordable housing and community development.

Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) is housing that pairs supportive services with a housing unit and is especially effective for people who have been experiencing chronic homelessness and have multiple barriers to housing (like mental illness, addiction, disabilities, etc).

Planned Unit Development (PUD) is a zoning district that describes large or complex developments being planned as a single continuous project, or projects that require greater design flexibility than typical zoning allows.

S.M.A.R.T. Housing stands for safe, Mixed Income, Accessible, Reasonably Priced, Transit-Oriented housing. This City of Austin policy is designed to stimulate the production of housing for low- and moderateincome residents by providing fee waivers and expedited permit review to developers in exchange for building housing that meets the program criteria. Subsidized Housing is housing assisted with public funding for low-to moderate-income persons and families.

Tax Increment Financing (TIF) is a financing tool that can be used to encourage development within a certain area. A property tax baseline is set for the area and the increment of taxes that are collected each year above that baseline is used to fund development in the area.

Workforce Housing is housing affordable to households earning 60% to 100% of the area median family income.

 

Related Links
Imagine Austin
Affordable Housing Inventory
Austin Strategic Direction 2023