Where There’s a Roof There’s a Way

Thursday’s City Council meeting may not last into the wee hours like last week’s, but the 98 Items feature plenty of Austin’s current official preoccupation: How to incentivize various forms of housing sufficient to respond to the high demand – and maybe even bend the affordability curve. One answer? Granny Flats.

A Portland "tiny house" (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

The official cognomen is “Secondary Dwelling Units,” also called “accessory dwelling units,” with an ordinance that appears for its third reading (Item 80, via the Planning and Neighborhoods Committee). The notion of making it easier to add small apartments or backyard cottages has been buffeted about for a year and a half, but appears this week to be on its way to final (third-reading) approval. Some central city neighborhood associations objected on two grounds: (1) parking demands on crowded streets; (2) the apparent threat of the ADU’s becoming short-term rental units. The ordinance as drafted is softer on the former (on the assumption that requiring on-site parking undermines the housing incentive) and harder on the latter (basically banning the use of ADU’s as year-round STR’s).

The land-use advocates at AURA are calling on Council to approve the ordinance, in the belief that as many as 500 new ADU’s annually could address housing and affordability needs across the city, both by providing new tenant housing and generating rental income for homeowners. They’re holding a City Hall press conference this morning (Tuesday) at 8:30 a.m., with allies from Austin Board of Realtors, Austin Music People, Evolve Austin Partners, Friends of Austin Neighborhoods, the U.S. Green Building Council of Central Texas, and others.

Elsewhere on the agenda:

• Two Items (34 and 35) from the Department of Neighborhood Housing and Community Development would facilitate an affordable multi-family apartment development in District 2 (Southeast) by approving an application to the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs and the issuance of $20 million in revenue bonds. (It’s nominally on the consent agenda – with an attached public hearing at Item 96 – but District 6 Council Member Don Zimmerman has made a reflex of objecting to these projects and their bonds on fiscal and policy grounds, so routine consent is unlikely.) There’s also a public hearing (Item 90) on an application for a similar project in the northeastern ETJ, and another (Item 97) in District 4.

• Three public hearings (Items 93, 94, and 95) are scheduled to consider (but not yet create) new Homestead Preservation Districts that would use tax increment financing from the districts themselves to reinvest in affordable housing within those districts. HPD’s were initiated under the previous Council, and one on the Eastside was created, but city management has never fully implemented the financing mechanisms. Presumably this is another effort to jump-start those projects (southeast, far east, and northside).

• Also on the housing front (more or less) is Item 92, a public hearing considering an ordinance to revise the “density bonus program” for “planned unit developments” – in theory to make it more difficult for developers wanting PUD entitlements to pay "fees-in-lieu," instead of on-site affordable housing units. (In light of the Travis Central Appraisal District’s ruling on previously affordable units at Mueller – that market rates apply for appraisal purposes – Council will presumably be wondering if on-site affordability remains enforceable.)

• Austin Resource Recovery (formerly Solid Waste) has for some time been trying to get its arms around construction and demolition materials, to create a recycling/reuse system. Items 79 (the code amendments) and 98 (the public hearing) address that project, which should presumably get rolling before the next economic downturn removes all those cranes currently nodding above the Downtown skyline.

That’s a taste of what’s happening this Thursday; for more on City Council, follow the Daily News online and this week’s print edition.