Austin school district ramps up creating affordable housing for teachers, staff

Their jobs as teachers couldn’t be more different — Steven Caplan teaches social studies to high schoolers at the Gardner-Betts Juvenile Justice Center, while Lauren Vienne teaches kindergarten at Casis Elementary — but they both love helping students find their path.

Yet when the redevelopment of their old duplex forced the couple to look for a new place to live, they wondered: Can we still afford to be teachers?

“We were like, all right, Austin’s expensive. Who’s going to quit so we can make more money?” Caplan told me.

Thankfully, neither one had to change careers. In a happy ending fit for a holiday movie, the couple is still working for Austin schools because the school district helped them buy a house — part of the Austin district’s growing push to help its essential workers afford to live in an increasingly unaffordable city.

Over the summer, Caplan, Vienne and their two kids moved into an Austin Habitat for Humanity home they bought in Park at 51 East, on land in East Austin previously owned by the school district. The couple has been planting perennials and shrubs, but they're also putting down roots in the deeper sense, knowing this place is finally home.

“We’re set,” Caplan said. “We don’t have to worry about moving. Being in one place and being stable and secure — that means everything to you as a parent.”

When the school district sold two large tracts to housing developer Taylor Morrison a couple of years ago, it required a quarter of the new homes to be affordably priced and offered first to teachers and other school workers.

Taylor Morrison brought in Habitat for Humanity, which built seven homes for teachers in Park at 51 East, near U.S. 183 and East 51st Street. An additional 23 affordable homes are coming at the Loyola development at U.S. 183 and Loyola Lane.

Habitat homes are not free: Caplan and Vienne have a mortgage, but for a home priced closer to $310,000 — significantly less than the $540,000 median sales price for Austin homes last month. The couple also put in more than 200 hours of sweat equity.

Perhaps you’re thinking: Building 30 Habitat homes for teachers is nice, but the Austin school district has nearly 11,000 employees, including 5,500 teachers. Isn’t this effort a drop in the bucket?

Consider it more of a first step.

Roughly 500 apartments planned

On Thursday, the school board voted unanimously to partner with developer NRP Group to build hundreds of affordably priced rental units at the Anita Ferrales Coy campus in East Austin, alongside a new facility for the Alternative Learning Center already located on the 18-acre site.

The district hopes to build 500 rental units at the Coy campus that would be affordable for AISD staff, though the exact number and mix of unit sizes (one-bedroom, two-bedroom or three-bedroom units) will be determined through a design process with community input, district spokesperson JJ Maldonado said.

Along the way, AISD has done something that’s unusual for a school district: It has created a public facility corporation to partner with developers on creating affordable housing, something cities and counties typically do.

Under a partnership with a public facility corporation, a development can have its property taxes waived if at least half of the units are affordable for people making less than 80% of the median income ($74,800 for a two-person household, $93,450 for a family of four).

“It helps make the margins work, if you will,” Jeremy Striffler, the director of real estate for the Austin school district, told me. “That way, rents can be more consistently held affordable over time.”

In addition to half of the units on the Coy campus being affordable for people making less than 80% of the median family income, the school district wants most of the remaining units to be affordable for people making less than 120% of the median family income ($117,400 for a two-person household, $146,750 for a family of four).

The school district will retain ownership of the Coy campus, even once the affordable housing is built. But having a public facility corporation means the district could also partner with developers to create affordable housing on privately owned land anywhere in the city — opening up all kinds of possibilities in a city that desperately needs them.

The impact of affordability

It might be unusual for a school district to develop an affordable housing arm, but AISD recognizes it is necessary. The city’s affordability crisis has led to declining student enrollment, as working families move to the suburbs, and it has also made it difficult for the district to recruit and retain employees.

“This is a huge need for the district to be able to have our employees be able to afford to live in the communities they serve,” Striffler said. “Being fully staffed. having the right people from the teachers to the front office (staff) to the bus driver to the cafeteria (workers) — that has a huge impact on our students.”

And on the teachers, too. A few doors down from Caplan, Winn Montessori Elementary teacher Jorge González and his wife, Ana Teresa Vidail, a pediatric dental assistant, are also new homeowners in Park at 51 East, thanks to the school district and Habitat for Humanity. They’re still pinching themselves.

“Everybody knows it is very hard, very hard to get an affordable house, and even with my salary, I said, 'When am I going to buy a house here in Austin?'” González told me. Some of his co-workers have sizable commutes. One lives in San Marcos.

Even if you get a 3% or 4% pay raise, González noted, rents in Austin can rise 10% or more a year. The couple is grateful now to have a home with a fixed monthly payment.

“If we didn’t get the house, we would have had to continue paying rent and to do various other things, other jobs … to generate income to pay rent,” Vidail said in Spanish to my colleague, reporter Emiliano Tahui Gómez.

González still earns extra money on the weekend as a banquet server at a couple of downtown hotels. But with the couple’s housing costs stable, there’s less pressure to chase more gig work.

“You would like to have time for rest, get your energy for the next week, especially when you work with children,” González said.

The couple gave us a full tour of the house: the roomy bedrooms, the tidy laundry room, the spacious storage area in the attic, the kitchen with the light cabinets and dark floors Vidail picked out.

González radiated pride in owning such a home, having the space to welcome guests. Vidail, attentive to homeownership responsibilities large and small, made sure to turn off the lights as we left each room.

Grumet is the Statesman’s Metro columnist. Her column, ATX in Context, contains her opinions. Share yours via email at bgrumet@statesman.com or via Twitter at @bgrumet. Find her previous work at statesman.com/news/columns.

Finding affordable housing

Austin Habitat for Humanity and the Austin school district offer resources to help teachers and others looking for affordable housing:

• Loyola homes available: Habitat for Humanity is accepting applications for 16 affordably priced homes still available in the Loyola development at U.S. 183 and Loyola Lane. Applicants must make less than 80% of the Austin-area median family income, or less than $93,450 for a family of four. To apply, visit austinhabitat.org/programs/apply/.

• Apartment deals for teachers: The Austin Apartment Association has a list of apartment complexes that offer discounted rent or other perks to school district employees, Visit austinaptassoc.com/aisd-property-directory.

• Additional housing resources are listed on the Austin school district's website at austinisd.org/hc/staff-resources/housing.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Next big player in affordable housing? Austin school district