New Braunfels is in a full-on housing squeeze, and the New Braunfels Housing Authority thinks it has a three-project game plan to ease the pressure. The agency has mapped out a trio of developments that together could bring hundreds of new rental units to the city, and this month officials walked City Council through a mix of rehab work and brand-new construction meant to preserve public housing and expand both workforce and low income options.
What NBHA told council
At a special City Council workshop on April 6, NBHA presented a plan to reposition Villa Serena, the authority’s public housing site at 109 Rosa Parks Drive, and preserve 35 existing units while adding roughly 360 new units next to the New Braunfels Food Bank, according to a three-project rundown of the plan. The authority said it is weighing use of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program, which converts public housing assistance into long-term, project based Section 8 contracts to attract private capital, a program administered by HUD. NBHA told council all three projects are in predevelopment and are expected to move into construction in 2026 or 2027, per the presentation.
Lyndon Ranch on Loop 337
The second proposal, Lyndon Ranch Apartments, would rise on about 13 acres at 1801 Loop 337 as a three story, 303 unit complex developed by Paravel Capital, according to the City of New Braunfels. City documents approving a statement of nonobjection for the project say roughly half of the units would be reserved for households at or below 80% of area median income, with a 5% one bedroom set aside for teachers and an annual $25,000 payment to New Braunfels ISD.
The developer’s concept sketch leans hard into a Class A amenity package: pool, fitness center, pickleball courts and private workspaces, all intended to mix workforce units with market rate rentals in one complex rather than walling off affordable units on their own.
Park at Dogwood moves through the credit pipeline
Park at Dogwood, planned near the McQueeney Road and County Line area, secured an award of competitive 9% Low Income Housing Tax Credits in 2024 but later asked state officials to amend the application, according to Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs records. TDHCA files show the original award targeted 85 low income units, and that later material amendment requests proposed a modest reduction in unit count and a reworked ownership structure that would add the New Braunfels Housing Authority as a general partner in order to secure a property tax exemption.
The state documents highlight credit pricing and construction cost pressures, including flood map mitigation, as reasons for the tweaks and for the requests needed to keep the project financially workable.
Funding, timelines and legal notes
NBHA is looking at a mix of tools to get the deals over the finish line, including HUD’s RAD program for repositioning public housing and competitive Low Income Housing Tax Credits for new construction, all layered with private debt and equity. The Lyndon Ranch staff report and resolution spell out a long term public private structure built around a 75 year lease with a housing finance partner and restrictive covenants to enforce affordability, according to the city filing.
That sort of hybrid arrangement, with public oversight on top of private development and financing, is exactly the kind of structure state and federal reviewers scrutinize when they underwrite LIHTC and RAD transactions.
Local context and reaction
The NBHA website lists Villa Serena as a public housing property and shows its waitlist as closed, a small but blunt indicator of how tight the local affordable housing market has become. NBHA Executive Director Henry Alvarez told a report on the three NBHA projects that “the answer to the affordable housing crisis is very simple…If you don’t have a place to live, what do you need? You need a place to live,” a plain spoken mantra that frames the authority’s push to preserve and expand subsidized options.
What happens next: NBHA remains firmly in the predevelopment stage and still has to run a gauntlet of formal financing steps and applications at the state and federal level, with additional public hearings and regulatory reviews expected as designs are finalized and as tax credit and RAD paperwork moves forward. The City of New Braunfels agenda confirms the housing authority delivered its annual update at the April 6 council workshop, where councilmembers saw early site plans and signaled support for continued coordination between city staff and NBHA.
