Watson questions affordable housing in Airport Overlay

Mayor Kirk Watson has expressed serious concerns about a proposed affordable housing project within the flight path of Austin’s airport and has suggested changes that will prevent such development in the future.

In a post on the City Council Message Board, Watson wrote, “Placing an affordable housing project in an area that would have a detrimental environmental impact for future residents is not a precedent we want to start.”

Watson said Council members José Velásquez and Vanessa Fuentes learned from city staff that the multifamily project had applied for a 4 percent affordable housing tax credit.

In order for the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs to grant such a credit, the city must provide a resolution of no objection. This is a routine resolution approved by Council on a regular basis. However, in this case staff from the Aviation Department and the Housing Department have recommended that Council not consider the resolution.

A memo from the airport’s chief executive officer, Ghizlane Badawi, and Mandy DeMayo, interim director of the Housing Department, explains the background of the proposed project at 1501 Airport Commerce Drive in the Montopolis neighborhood. The developer, Richman Southwest Development LLC, first proposed in 2019 to rezone the property from commercial to multifamily residential. But the Department of Aviation determined that multifamily was a prohibited land use within the airport overlay. The attempt to rezone the property was unsuccessful.

As the memo explains, in March 2022 the project came back under the affordability bonus program known as Affordability Unlocked.

“AU waives or modifies some development restrictions in exchange for providing affordable housing,” states the memo. “In return for setting aside at least half of a development’s total units as affordable, developments can receive increased height and density limits, parking and compatibility waivers, and reductions in minimum lot sizes. … A development that qualifies under AU is a permitted residential use and most base zoning districts, including commercial base zoning districts.”

Therefore, the developer was not required to change the zoning and now proposes a 328-unit affordable housing development in District 3. The Aviation Department expressed its concerns and required the developer to install noise level reduction measures and limit the height of the project. In addition, the developer is required to attach a form called the Notice of the City of Austin Overlay Acknowledgment to each lease and purchase agreement. Each tenant or purchaser must sign the acknowledgment.

However, according to the memo, airport staff will continue to have a multitude of concerns.“With the airport undergoing extensive expansion, future noise contours are projected to extend,” it notes. “If this development moves forward, the addition of new residents is likely to exacerbate the challenges of expanding the airport. This includes exposing more residents to the flight path, which will increase adverse environmental impacts including noise.”

City officials can expect more complaints from future residents living adjacent to flight paths. In his message board post, Watson wrote, “In fact, we shouldn’t repeat bad history. We all know that property near land uses like an airport tends to be cheaper because, frankly, it’s harder to sell land that is in a flight path with the sound and air emissions nearby. That can lead to a concentration of people with less resources living in undesirable conditions. We actually saw this with the old Mueller airport.

“So, when we opened AUS, we purposefully created an overlay to avoid it happening in the future. We were attempting to prevent relegating lower income people to living in flight paths and we were attempting to not create situations that might restrict our multi-billion-dollar investment in the airport,” he wrote. “I see this as an unintentional back door to recreating a policy that is an environmental injustice. We should not put such a policy into practice, and we should fix the policy. Councilmember Fuentes and I will be coming to the council with an IFC in the future to address this issue.”

The issue is not on this week’s agenda.

Photo made available through a Creative Commons license.

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Posted In: Housing, District 3