Austin UNO affordable housing: the 10 + 10 set-aside in West Campus
Nobody is made to do this
Read §25-2-765 on its own and it looks like a mandate on West Campus. §25-2-751 says otherwise: the division applies to property in the UNO district if the property owner files a site plan and an election for the property to be governed by it.
So the set-aside is the price of a bargain. A West Campus owner who does not elect into Division 9 does not owe it — and does not get what Division 9 gives, which is the rest of the division: its use regulations, lot area, height, setbacks and stepbacks. The affordability is one side of a trade the owner chooses to make.
Ten at sixty, ten at fifty, for forty years
The requirement has two halves at different income bands. 10 percent of the dwelling units or bedrooms at or below 60 percent of area median income, and a further 10 percent at or below 50 percent.
Two details do a lot of work. It is measured in "dwelling units or bedrooms", which matters in a market built around leasing by the bed. And the clock is not less than 40 years from the certificate of occupancy — not from the election, not from first lease-up.
| First 10% | Second 10% | |
|---|---|---|
| Income band | At or below 60% MFI | At or below 50% MFI |
| Term | 40 years minimum from CO | 40 years minimum from CO |
| Can it be bought out? | No | Yes — fee into the trust fund |
| Rent ceiling | Low HOME Rent Limit, one bedroom | 40% MFI HOME Rent Limit, efficiency |
Rent ceilings are the TDHCA limits, set annually — §25-2-765(D).
Only the second ten can be bought out
This is the asymmetry that decides how a project is structured. Subsection (B) allows a payment into the University Neighborhood District Housing Trust Fund instead of complying with Paragraph (A)(2) — the 50 percent band. It says nothing about (A)(1).
The deeper-affordability half is the one you may write a cheque for; the 60 percent half has to be built. That is the opposite of the intuition that the harder obligation would be the buyable one.
What the fund buys, and the fee waiver
Money paid in is not general revenue. Subsection (C) lets the director allocate it for housing development inside the UNO district that provides at least 30 percent of its units or bedrooms at or below 50 percent MFI, again for at least 40 years.
So the buyout concentrates: two projects paying instead of building can fund one project at triple the depth. And a project drawing on those funds receives a 100 percent fee waiver under the S.M.A.R.T. Housing Policy, which is a second subsidy stacked on the first.
The hotel option, and its two ratios
Subsection (E) has its own route out. A hotel/motel use with an associated condominium, multifamily, group residential or retirement housing use may pay $2.00 per square foot of the combined residential and hotel net square footage instead of complying with Subsection (A) at all — the whole set-aside, not just half of it.
It is fenced by two ratios that must both hold: residential units no more than 40 percent of the hotel unit count, and residential net square footage no more than 45 percent of the hotel net square footage. The route is for a hotel with flats attached, not a residential building with a lobby.
Common questions
Send us an address and we will tell you what we find
We do this research ourselves on every project we take on — zoning, floodplain, watershed, trees, whether it is a legal lot. Send us an address and we will run it and tell you what we find. It works the same whether you own a vacant lot, a house you are thinking of adding a unit to, or a house you are thinking of replacing. No charge and no strings, and if it is a bad lot we will say so.
Send us an addressWe are homebuilders, not the City of Austin. This page explains how we read the code in practice — it is not legal advice and it is not an official determination. Always confirm with Austin Development Services before you rely on it for a project. The authoritative text is the Austin Land Development Code; permitting questions go to Austin Development Services Department.