Accelerating Affordable Housing

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6 min read

Impact Hub keeps Austin weird   

Austin, TX, the one enclave of the “Mine’s-Bigger-Than-Yours” Lone Star State proudly possessive of its description as “diversely weird” is taking decisive steps to maintain that distinct status against challenges brought on by its own success. Well-known for its music, food, intellectual, academic and unusually tolerant political scenes and offbeat vibe, as well as its celebrated annual SXSW Festival and Conference, Austin has become one of the most desirable places to live in the entire South-Southwest region.

As Mayor Steve Adler posed the problem, “The stakes could not be clearer: If we do nothing, Austin will become like San Francisco, a wonderful, if incredibly expensive city, with a median home price over $1 million, where only the wealthy and the subsidized can afford to live. We lose (and are already losing) our middle class to suburban sprawl, making traffic even worse and losing the spirit and soul of our city.”

Impact Hub Austin is an organization that offers co-working, shared workspace, private offices, dedicated desks, programs and accelerators that connect the Austin community to a global movement to support game-changing ideas for social impact and to achieve common goals. The specific issue, as framed by Impact Hub, is that Austin housing cost increases are outpacing household income at a rate of nearly 750 percent. From 2010 through 2016, a median family home in the city has increased in price by 45.25 percent, while median family income has increased by only 5.42 percent.

Impact Hub Austin calls its approach Affordable Housing Accelerator (AHA), a three-month local program that unites civic, tech and real estate industry sectors “to fast-track a cohort of teams that will innovate solutions to this pressing social issue.” The focus will be on advocacy, innovation and creative financing solutions “to keep Austin diversely weird and affordably engineered.”

As Impact Hub managing director Ashley Phillips puts it, “With the current rewrite of the land development code, the brand-new City of Austin strategic housing blueprint and the recent mayoral report and recommendations on addressing Austin’s systemic racism and inequality, this is an unprecedented moment to leverage focus, knowledge and public will to make a significant impact on the affordability crisis.” Phillips commented that she wanted to create a space where people felt comfortable taking risks.

Collaborating for weirdness
The first three-month cohort included Affordable Central Texas, All Abode, Alley Flat Initiative Anti-Displacement Program, Developods, Farm & City, ICON 3D, Sprout Tiny Homes, The Auditors and Triple Bottom Line Fund. They were chosen from more than 50 applicants, confirming the project’s visibility and area-wide interest. In one way or another, each participating organization had been tackling some aspect of affordable housing on its own, and Impact Hub’s idea was to bring them together with the resources, time and meeting space to set up a mechanism to collaborate on solutions for what all see as an ongoing challenge. The groups met each Tuesday throughout fall 2017, hearing from various subject experts, hosting workshops, presenting their ideas and receiving feedback from peers. Neighborhoods considered prime candidates for affordable housing were visited and studied. Impact Hub lent the working group dedicated space, so its members could meet and work there whenever they wished. Forty mentors from varying disciplines guided the group.

They began with three real-world areas of focus: financial modeling, efficiency tools and policy and advocacy so that there would be no “pie-in-the-sky” ideas that weren’t economically viable or unable to secure financing, achievable within a reasonable and foreseeable timeframe, and for which strong cases could be made to the public, community leaders and municipal authorities.

Among the initial solutions being studied are a “tiny home initiative,” means to reduce construction costs, such as 3D “printing” of foundations, an anti-displacement fund to address gentrification, and “home pods” that are adaptable, transportable and environmentally friendly. Developods has secured ground for a demonstration project.

Affordable Central Texas will be developing a fund to support housing for teachers, healthcare workers, musicians and others considered essential to the city’s identity and wellbeing who are in danger of being priced out of urban housing. The key feature of the fund is tying rents directly to wage growth. Triple Bottom Line is aiming to develop nontraditional financing options.

Colorado-based Sprout Tiny Homes is working with local developer Kasita to build homes ranging from 600 to 1,000 square feet on leased land and eligible for long-term financing. Though not a solution for everyone, Phillips says the project will prompt a public conversation about simpler and more sustainable living.

All Abode will be collaborating with partners to design and preview a web-enabled engagement tool for Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) buyers and sellers. Farm & City seeks to empower community leaders with the ability to understand the full picture of affordability, equity and sustainability.

The cohort is also looking at ways to make Austin’s land development codes more compatible with affordable housing development. Their ambitious aim is to create more than 2,000 new units.

Sharing results
The group presented their collective solutions at a Community Showcase Day on January 24 to an audience of community stakeholders, investors, entrepreneurs and leaders from the government, nonprofit and business sectors. Google and Chase were the presenting sponsors, with a number of other companies lending support.

Evaluating this first effort, Phillips comments, “I think we got so much out of the first cohort! From a numbers perspective, conservative estimates project that 350+ affordable units were preserved and/or will be produced in 2018. And this has the potential to mushroom once these teams gather more traction. From a more qualitative perspective, because of the unique and deliberate structure of the program cross sector bringing tech, community and government together, we saw groups that might hold different values able to find common ground around potential solutions.”

The multidisciplinary approach already has set a standard and new paradigm for approaching housing issues and all of the elements of everyday life they affect. Phillips says Impact Hub wants the accelerator program to continue and expand focus to tackle other critical issues, such as economic development for the entire Austin community.

“Moving forward, I want to see more opportunities for cross sector collaboration around solutions. Whether it be housing, workforce development or something equally complex, we need to create more space for expansive partnerships that are monetarily viable and sustainable, inclusive of diverse stakeholders and are connected to policy that supports these systems changes in perpetuity.

“This is not a one-and-done initiative. It needs to be a continued, sustained effort in order to meet the ever-changing needs of our great city…and even beyond!”

Story Contact:
Ashley Phillips
[email protected]