Austin civic use classifications: care, schools, hospitals and utilities
Care services: the split is 12 for children and 6 for adults
Both child care and adult care come in a limited and a general version, both are defined as care for less than 24 hours per day, and both turn on a head count — but the counts are different, and nothing in the names tells you that.
| Use | Threshold | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Child care services (limited) | 12 or fewer | Under 18, or eligible for child care under federal or state law |
| Child care services (general) | more than 12 | Same |
| Adult care services (limited) | 6 or fewer | 18 or older |
| Adult care services (general) | more than 6 | Same |
From §25-2-6. Child care includes nursery schools, preschools and day care centers, and expressly excludes public and private primary and secondary educational facilities.
Three uses that all begin at more than 15 residents
These look alike on paper and are told apart only by what is provided:
- Congregate living — 24 hour supervision and assisted living for more than 15 residents not needing regular medical attention.
- Residential treatment — 24 hour supervision, counseling or treatment for more than 15 residents not needing regular medical attention.
- Transitional housing — supervision or detention of more than 15 residents making the transition from institutional to community living.
The first two carry the identical medical carve-out. Once residents do require regular medical attention, the use is convalescent services — bed care and in-patient services — which is a different classification again.
Hospitals, schools and counselling
Hospital services splits on in-patient versus out-patient: general is in-patient (and includes ancillary out-patient and emergency facilities), limited is out-patient. Note that limited hospital services still includes emergency treatment — the distinction is admission, not urgency.
Educational facilities are split four ways — public and private, primary and secondary — each defined as offering instruction in "the branches of learning and study required to be taught in the public schools of the state". A business or trade school is a commercial use, not a civic one.
Two counselling classifications are easy to confuse. Guidance services is daytime counselling for people needing rehabilitation assistance — mental illness, alcoholism, detention, drug addiction or similar. Counseling services is daytime counselling specifically for neglected or abused children aged 15 or younger, or their managing conservators, on referral.
Local versus major utilities
The utility split is about scale of structure, not ownership. Local utility services are services necessary to support development in the area involving only minor structures including lines and poles. Major utility facilities are generating plants, electrical switching facilities or primary substations, refuse collection or disposal, and water or wastewater treatment plants.
A telecommunication tower is its own classification — a structure built exclusively to support antennae. That word does work: a structure serving another purpose that also carries an antenna is not this use.
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.