In a leap towards addressing Austin's housing affordability crisis, a prominent local architecture firm is putting the city’s new HOME Initiative to the test. Dick Clark + Associates, an esteemed full-service company known for their knack for sculpting cityscapes, has announced plans to build three homes on a modest two-tenths of an acre tract in East Austin, a move sanctioned under the novel housing guidelines.
The initiative, blessed by the Austin City Council last year, flips the script on traditional zoning by allowing up to three homes on what's historically been designated for a single-family dwelling. The project, on a 7,000-square-foot spot at 717 Prospect Ave., aims to nestle two 1,350-square-foot abodes alongside a slightly roomier 1,600-square-foot residence, according to Austin Business Journal.
The innovative HOME Initiative seeks to cut through the bureaucratic red tape, allowing projects to glide through the city's general residential review process—a path less fraught with the administrative and financial burdens the site plan review process is known for. As affordability looms large over the city, this streamlined approach aims to birth more housing and, ideally, dial down the average home cost in Austin, as reported by KXAN.
Each unit gets a claim on its driveway, thanks to the property's corner lot advantage, and while a communal yard knits the residences together, private green space remains intact—a layout made possible by the initiative’s looser setback restrictions. "Developing a site composed of units that are inherently more affordable because of their smaller size and the shared lot will help homebuyers access what is currently an unaffordable neighborhood for many," Dick Clark Partner Kim Power explained in a statement obtained by the Austin Business Journal.
Rents for these futuristic homes will hit the market at competitive rates; however, shared land costs and the magic of bulk-buying higher-end materials promise to deliver a sting out of the high living costs that usually punctuate Austin's more sought-after districts. This is the kind of practical innovation that could lay the foundation for a more inclusive urban landscape in Texas' capital.
