Austin officials voted Thursday to formally kick off an update to the city's Strategic Housing Blueprint, launching work on a new 10-year plan meant to fix persistent gaps in deeply affordable housing and the preservation of existing low-cost units. The vote sets in motion a process that will reshape how the city tracks, funds and builds affordable homes through 2037.
The current blueprint was adopted in 2017 as a framework for housing affordability goals and policies running through 2027, according to Community Impact. That original plan set a high-level goal of adding 135,000 new housing units, including 60,000 for lower-income earners, Austin Housing principal planner Rachel Tepper said. Tepper noted significant changes in conditions and cited major transit investments and anti-displacement spending.
The new version will track and report housing goals for 2028 through 2037, and will fold in a needs analysis covering housing supply and demand, population and employment trends, and the effects of infrastructure and development on the market. It's also expected to include updated displacement-prevention strategies and new frameworks for public-private housing partnerships, per the same report.
Council Member Pushes for Regional, Population-Specific Focus
Council member Ryan Alter directed the blueprint to take on a regional scope rather than a narrowly city-bound one, and to include housing strategies tailored to specific populations — homeless residents, youth, students and domestic violence victims among them. Alter also pushed the plan to focus more heavily on long-term housing support and city land use decisions.
Alter raised a pointed concern during the discussion: zoning changes approved for certain developments, he said, have resulted in a net loss of affordable housing overall, including projects that used density bonus programs meant to encourage affordability. He urged Austin Housing to count naturally occurring affordable housing, or NOAH, units and to document both preservation efforts and losses — especially demolitions tied to city incentive programs.
Missed Targets for the Poorest Austinites
The scale of the challenge shows up starkly in the numbers. In the blueprint's first six years, Austin produced just 543 of a proposed 12,000 units for households earning 30% or less of the median family income, according to the Austin Free Press. Meanwhile, the city blew past its target for households earning 61% to 80% of MFI, completing 15,819 units against a goal of 9,000 — a gap that underscores how incentive-driven construction has skewed toward higher income bands.
From 2018 through 2024, Austin created 71,314 total housing units citywide, per the 2024 Strategic Housing Blueprint Scorecard cited by the same outlet. Yet a 2022 scorecard found only one City Council district was on pace to meet its 10-year housing goal after five years, as reported by the Austin Monitor. The blueprint also called for a quarter of all new affordable housing to land in high-opportunity areas, but as of the latest reporting in 2024, just 11% had, Community Impact reported separately.
Debate Over How Deep Affordability Should Go
Austin's housing incentives and density bonuses often target units affordable at 60% to 80% of local median family income, but planners are now weighing options reaching deeper — to 50% MFI and below. Mayor Pro Tem Chito Vela said in October he isn't interested in subsidizing housing at 60% or 80% MFI, favoring instead an in-lieu fee that would fund units at 30% MFI over a handful of units that merely trim rent by $100 to $150. Vela pointed to Austin's original vertical mixed-use program, which required just 10% of new units to be priced at 80% MFI, as an example of a bar he considers too low.
Counting the City's Older, Unsubsidized Housing Stock
A major new piece of the 2028 blueprint will focus on displacement and on naturally occurring affordable housing — housing available at market rates without public subsidy. That emphasis traces back to a proposal from Marc Duchen to expand the city's understanding of NOAH properties, which was approved in 2025.
Austin housing staff have since identified more than 550 NOAH properties containing 68,311 units, or about 28% of the city's total rental housing stock, according to Community Impact's reporting. The blueprint update is expected to report on NOAH units lost to demolitions and redevelopments tied to city housing-incentive programs, and officials said future bond funding to preserve these properties could be considered as soon as 2028.
Austin wouldn't be alone in pursuing that kind of fund. The Austin Monitor notes that similar preservation funds have taken shape in Dallas, San Francisco, Detroit, Cleveland, Charlotte and Washington, D.C. Dallas launched its fund in 2022 with a $6 million investment that later grew past $40 million, working toward a $100 million goal, according to the Austin Free Press.
Mapping Tool and Funding Behind the Update
Alongside the blueprint rewrite, Austin Housing is updating its Opportunity Map, a tool used to guide where affordable housing dollars and projects go. The University of Texas was selected as the research partner for that effort after a consultant proposal window that ran from August 11 to October 2, 2025, according to Speak Up Austin.
The city plans to spend $6.7 million in federal Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing, or PRO Housing, grant funding over six years, with $750,000 of that earmarked specifically for the Strategic Housing Blueprint and Opportunity Mapping Index update, per the same source. City leaders have directed the broader update process, with public engagement expected to ramp up in 2027 ahead of a planned adoption of the new blueprint by summer 2028, the Austin Free Press reported.
