Image: Housing Scout / LinkedIn
A resolution passed earlier today by Austin City Council directs our beloved city staff to research how to gas up UNO. What’s UNO? Well, UNO is for you and me, and UNO’s building density. UNO keeps rents lower here than any district far or near! UNO stands for “University Neighborhood Overlay,” of course, but that’s not as fun to sing or say.
Image: City of Austin
The overlay is an optional density bonus program covering roughly 230 acres of the West Campus district, a neighborhood mostly populated with students located directly west of the UT Austin campus. Developers participating in the program can build much taller and denser buildings in exchange for including income-restricted units in their projects, and over two decades of development UNO has fully subsidized nearly 1,000 affordable bedrooms — students typically rent in these buildings by the bed, remember — with hundreds more currently in the pipeline. Although this is still only a drop in the bucket compared with the thousands of UT students receiving financial aid, keep in mind that UNO’s density bonuses make these affordable units possible without tax credits or other outside subsidy, which is often required to support other local income-restricted housing plans. This makes UNO one of Austin’s most sustainable affordable housing programs, and the lessons learned over the last 20 years should guide similar density bonus programs across the city.
Image: Gensler
What’s fascinating about UNO is that despite the program enabling a massive increase in visible density across West Campus, current research suggests that this growth has actually helped keep rents in the neighborhood more stable than other parts of Austin — in fact, when adjusted for inflation the average rent inside the UNO bonus area is now $204 less than rents in 2004 when the program was first passed. This is ultimately a result of UNO incentivizing more construction and breaking the area’s existing landlord monopoly with new residential supply, and if you live in one of the many multifamily communities built in Central Austin before apartments were widely banned through downzoning in the 1980s, this sentence from city staff’s study of the UNO area will probably sound painfully familiar:
Because the supply of housing in West Campus before 2004 was so low yet the demand for housing in close proximity to campus so high, landlords could charge tenants high rates, even for old and deteriorating housing.
The resolution passed by council today directs city staff to investigate a whole laundry list of enhancements to the UNO regime, with the most newsworthy tweak involving potentially banning a loophole in the program currently incentivizing the construction of windowless bedrooms. The resolution also asks staff to increase UNO’s height limits in some areas, encourage frequent inspection of participating buildings for code violations, and update design guidelines to encourage more active streetscapes and retail in the district. But we’re extra enthused by the third goal of the resolution: “Expansion of the UNO affordable housing bonus program to additional areas in the UT Campus area, including areas that are adjacent to the current bonus area.” Where could UNO possibly expand? It’s an exciting prospect considering the city’s own study notes that the program could effectively run out of space:
As the program continues there may be a time where development significantly slows, and density is “maxed” out. Because program eligibility is tied to a geographic area, as the land becomes more and more developed the number of available and viable lots for residential development will decrease. A City analysis revealed that there is limited redevelopment potential for land in UNO. In other words, there may be a limit to UNO’s market rate and income-restricted unit production.
Although we won’t know for sure where UNO’s bounds could grow until city staff return with their own conclusions, we have a few suggestions of our own. Of course, we’d love to see UNO expand to encompass the whole North University neighborhood — call it “NUNO” — but there are likely enough single-family homeowners in that region to resist such a sweeping change, so we’ll need to focus on regions adjacent to the current UNO district that are largely occupied by aging student-oriented apartments, just like the old West Campus. Several blocks west of Rio Grande Street south of West 29th Street could enter the fold, along with the region west of San Gabriel Street south of West 24th Street. There are also some apartment-heavy blocks along Red River Street north of Dean Keeton Street that could become a sort of UNO satellite, adjacent to campus but not connected to the existing UNO area.
But continuing UNO’s success is going to take more creative thinking than just adding a few blocks to the program area here and there, so here’s an idea with some teeth — what’s actually stopping UNO’s boundaries from extending south of MLK Jr. Boulevard? We’re not saying the Judges Hill neighborhood needs to be demolished, but let’s take a look at the 12-block region south of MLK Jr. Boulevard, north of West 15th Street, located between West Avenue and San Antonio Street:
Image: Google Maps
Yes, it’s technically part of downtown, but much of this area is excluded from the full benefits of the downtown area’s existing Density Bonus Program due to its proximity to single-family neighborhoods. Its character is largely commercial, with a few aging apartment complexes largely occupied by students already. Despite the arbitrary boundary of MLK Jr. Boulevard, this collection of blocks looks a lot like the rest of West Campus prior to the UNO program, and we see no serious objection to allowing student housing development in this area beyond some misguided belief that students should be segregated to specific neighborhoods. Extending UNO to this region would reflect the current reality that students already live here, and the active streetscapes and ground-floor retail incentivized by the program would enhance this 12-block area for everyone. Call it “UNO Midtown.” We’re just thinking out loud here!
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