District-by-district analysis shows unequal progress on affordable housing construction

The nonprofit HousingWorks Austin on June 29 released its eighth “District by District and Community at a Glance Analysis,” an annual report that shows how many units of subsidized affordable housing have been built in each City Council district, as well as other stats about housing affordability. 

The report tells a two-sided story. On one hand, investments in affordable housing have brought substantial progress. On the other hand, stark disparities remain in where affordable units are being built, and the city remains in a housing crisis that continues to push residents out of the city. 

First, the good news: The stock of subsidized affordable housing in the city has grown 155 percent over the past eight years to 50,888 units (there was a 9.1 percent year-over-year increase in units built from 2021 to 2022). 

The chart below from the analysis shows the change in affordable housing stock in each district since 2015. 

Most of the affordable units, however, are located in districts in Austin’s Eastern Crescent, while hardly any units are located west of MoPac Expressway – a discrepancy that “has largely been unaddressed since 2015,” the report states.

Council districts 6, 8 and 10 – all in West Austin – have seen the least amount of affordable housing built, at just more than 3,000 units. The three top districts – 1, 2 and 3 in East Austin – have seen nearly 10 times that many built.

The report notes that due to redistricting in 2022, some units changed districts, but not enough to meaningfully affect the general trends in the data. 

Across the city, housing prices and rents remained stubbornly high in 2022. The average home price was $590,000, and the average rent was $1,707. Data from May 2023 from the Austin Board of Realtors shows a $550,000 average home price in the city.

More than a third of all households and nearly half of renter households bear a housing cost burden, which is defined as households spending 30 percent or more of their income on housing. Nearly 1 in 4 renter households are extremely cost burdened, paying 50 percent or more of their income on housing.

HousingWorks releases another annual report, the “Strategic Housing Blueprint Scorecard,” typically each September. The scorecard describes progress toward the city’s affordable housing production goals as set by Council in 2017, when it passed the Strategic Housing Blueprint. 

Since then, the city has fallen further and further behind on those goals. Last year, only one Council district met its annual quota for affordable housing production. The year before, no Council district met its goals.

Amid lagging progress on housing goals and persistently high housing costs, the nonprofit reiterated its call for more investment in subsidized housing, like the funding voters approved for housing in 2018, 2020 and 2022. 

“If we, as a community, continue to prioritize creating more affordable housing options for all Austinites across all parts of the city, we can ensure that we meet our community goals that everyone has access to safe, affordable, and attainable housing in Austin,” Nora Linares-Moeller, executive director of HousingWorks Austin, wrote in the report.

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