Big Data and Affordable Housing in Austin, TX
Why should I care about affordable housing?
Part of what makes Austin unique is that you can find all sorts of people here. Rapid growth has added plenty of personality to the city. But it also means people who have been living in Austin for a long time are in danger of being pushed out. Affordable housing is at the heart of this problem.
Affordable housing means different things for different people. The city of Austin is becoming more professional. Artists and creatives are being driven out. Furthermore, low income groups are often correlated with minority groups. This means minority groups are being disproportionally affected by the rapid growth of the city. For those of us who care about keeping Austin weird and diverse, we need to think about ways to enable all sorts of people to live in this city.
What is the city doing about it?
The City of Austin has a plan called the Austin Strategic Housing Blueprint. One of the main goals of this plan is to increase affordable housing. They have lots of goals and are now starting down the path of implementation. The hope is that the city will add 60,000 affordable units within the next 10 years.
So what are the challenges?
Three things the City of Austin will have to do to meet the goals of their blueprint:
- Decide where to invest and how to incentivize developers to build affordable housing
- Connect citizens with a platform that allows them to search and find affordable housing that meets their needs
- Verify that builders and owners continue to rent out units at affordable rates in accordance with subsidies and agreements made with the government
What is the solution?
Technology is not going to solve all of these problems. But groups like Open Austin and Data for Democracy have motivated talent in the community to prototype various solutions.
Austin Affordable Housing is a project created by these communities that aims to provide resources so that the government can:
- Decide where to invest and how to incentivize developers to build affordable housing
- Connect citizens with a platform that allows them to search and find affordable housing that meets their needs
You can check out the project here (password: AUSTIN): http://www.austinaffordablehousing.com/.
What are some insights?
1) There is a large amount of variability between developers when it comes to how many affordable units they provide and how they go about using city funds. According to City of Austin data, there is a huge difference between city cost per unit. It seems that if the city wants to maximize affordable housing they should be investing in developers like “Fort Branch Landing LP” rather than “Foundation Communities”. Of course more work needs to be done on understanding how long these projects have been in progress and how good the quality of the units are across developers.
2) There are also different ways in which districts serve their communities when it comes to affordable housing. Some districts, like 6 and 10, don’t show any affordable housing projects at all. District 9’s data, shown below, shows that although they provide affordable housing, it is largely skewed towards those making around 40k or 50k a year. And there is likewise a large distribution in how much opportunity those properties afford (e.g. transportation, grocery, etc.).
MFI is Medium Family Income which is about 80k for the city of Austin.
Work still to be done…
This project is still in its infancy. There are two things that this project wants to focus on in the future:
- Build a model that recommends the developers and projects the City of Austin should invest in so that we can maximize the quantity and quality of affordable housing for the communities that need it the most
- Build a real time database of affordable housing inventory so that citizens in need can easily find projects that meet their needs
If you’re interested in getting involved, or know someone else who does, pass it along or contact rmathur101@gmail.com.
