Rosewood Courts has reopened in East Austin, bringing back to life a property that first opened its doors in 1939 as the nation's first public housing development built specifically for African American families under the Housing Act of 1937. The redeveloped site now includes 184 modern affordable rental homes alongside eight carefully restored original bungalows, capping years of planning, construction and community input.
According to KXAN Austin, the rental homes are reserved for households earning 60% or less of the area median income, continuing the site's longtime role as affordable housing in the heart of East Austin. The redevelopment also created 12 nearby affordable homeownership opportunities, giving the project a reach beyond the original footprint of the historic property.
Austin Mayor Kirk Watson said the reopened community reflects the city's effort to balance preservation with growth. “Rosewood Courts represents something special about Austin. It reflects our ability to honor the people and places that shaped our city while making room for future generations,” Watson said, per the same KXAN report.
Restoring the Original Bungalows
The eight restored bungalows now include updated kitchens, appliances, heating and air conditioning, bringing the historic structures up to modern living standards while preserving their original character, the station's report notes. Interpretive exhibits placed throughout the community share stories of the courts, its residents and the surrounding neighborhood, giving new tenants and visitors a window into the site's long history.
That history stretches back to the New Deal era. As Reporting Texas has detailed, Rosewood Courts was built in 1939 as part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal and became the first public housing project for African Americans in the United States.
A Decade-Long Path to Reopening
Austin Housing Authority President and CEO Mike Gerber framed the reopening as the product of sustained effort. “The transformation represents more than a decade of determination, collaboration and commitment to the community,” Gerber said, according to KXAN's report.
The scale of that effort traces back to a 2018 compromise. Austin Monitor reported that the Austin City Council unanimously approved a plan that year to preserve eight of the property's buildings while redeveloping the rest, after noting that Rosewood's 124 units at the time were in desperate need of upgrades.
Construction on the new homes broke ground in December 2022. At that time, Austin Monitor reported, contractors for the authority planned to build 184 new homes, most spread across three four-story buildings, while 20 homes would be restored inside eight of the original buildings. The same 2022 reporting noted that rents in Austin had risen at unprecedented rates over the preceding two years, underscoring the stakes of adding deeply affordable units to the city's housing stock.
From Groundbreaking to Grand Opening
By January 2025, officials were marking the development's progress at a community event, with Community Impact describing a project that would bring 184 new apartment homes and 12 ownership units to the site. That report also noted construction was expected to wrap up later that year, ahead of new residents and returning tenants moving in.
Now, with the reopening confirmed, Rosewood Courts stands as a rare case of a historic Austin property being preserved and expanded for affordable housing rather than lost to redevelopment pressures. The restored bungalows and new rental homes sit together on the same East Austin ground where the original 1939 complex first opened its doors to Black families nearly nine decades ago.
