Low-income housing project planned for downtown Austin

City’s first in decades

Matt Dietrichson, Feb 02, 12.

An Austin nonprofit plans to build the first downtown development in decades to house low-income residents, according to The Austin Statesman:

Foundation Communities is proposing a $15 million, four-story project called Capitol Terrace at 11th and Trinity streets that will include 135 efficiency apartments. The units will be rented for $400 to $650 a month, utilities included, to single adults who earn less than $27,000 — roughly half of Austin’s median income .

“There are a lot of folks who work downtown, at hotels and restaurants or even the Capitol, that make less than $13 an hour and would like the option of living close by and not needing a car,” said Walter Moreau , executive director of Foundation Communities.

The nonprofit has in the past two decades built or renovated 13 Austin properties into low-rent apartments for low-income families and single adults.

Ten of the Capitol Terrace apartments will be reserved for musicians and artists, Moreau said. About two dozen will be set aside for people with especially low incomes who have been receiving housing and social service help from groups like Caritas of Austin and Austin Resource Center for the Homeless , the city’s shelter.

Foundation Communities has hired Dick Clark Architects to design the project and hopes to break ground in early 2013 and open in early 2014 . Foundation Communities is under contract to buy the 0.6 -acre tract, which is a parking lot, and it would not have to seek a zoning change to build there, Moreau said.

A downtown plan adopted by the City Council in December noted the dearth of affordable housing downtown and called for creating more of it.

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