Why lower-income renters in Austin are struggling to find affordable housing

John Yang:

The latest inflation numbers show that nationwide rents have cooled from historic highs, but it's not reaching every rental market or every renter. Austin, Texas is one of the places where rents are showing a downward trend, but lower income families their say their rents are often staying the same or even going up. Blair Waltman-Alexin of Austin PBS tells us who's getting a deal on the Texas capitol and who's not.

Blair Waltman-Alexin:

Marilu Jaimes had achieved that rare dream in Austin, finding an apartment that was close to everything she needed.

Marilu Jaimes, Austin Resident:

It was close to the library, close to the grocery, store close to my daughter's school. Also from work. It was the best I was close to everything. Now I feel like I'm going to use a lot of gas.

Blair Waltman-Alexin:

She's worried about burning gas, because soon she will be moving about 45 minutes outside of town. She's leaving because her rents gone up and she can't afford to stay.

Marilu Jaimes:

I used to pay $1,040. And suddenly that was raised to $1,530. It doesn't seem fair to me that after so many years, they simply raise the rent so much that we have no other option but to leave this place.

Blair Waltman-Alexin:

But report show that rents are going down in Austin. A study by rent.com showed rents dipping more than 12 percent year over year.

Jake Wegmann, The University of Texas at Austin: Yeah, so it's not all about.

Blair Waltman-Alexin:

Jake Wegmann is an associate professor in the Community Regional Planning Program at the University of Texas.

Jake Wegmann:

We were flooded with headlines about how all of America was moving to Austin and developers responded to that.

Blair Waltman-Alexin:

So Austin's population increased, especially during the pandemic, about 6 percent between 2020 and 2022. And demand for housing increased as well. This drew a lot of developers to build apartments. And maybe as it turned out, too many apartments.

One report showed that as of last fall, almost 20,000 more multifamily units were delivered than released. And it's got some landlords offering deals to bring in tenants.

Jake Wegmann:

Maybe two years ago, like feel like they were jostling for an apartment and now the landlord is saying, hey, you know, like, if you sign this, this 12 month lease, then I'll give you a month or more of free rent.

Jazmin Rivera, BASTA:

So I would say the biggest thing has been rent increases. And we're seeing that throughout Austin and a lot of low income housing properties, specifically.

Blair Waltman-Alexin:

Jazmin Rivera is an outreach specialist with BASTA, a group that works with low income renters like Jaimes. He says they see residents struggling with a very tight housing market.

Jazmin Rivera:

We do have a lot of folks that are saying there's no housing I could find that's within my range that I can afford right now. And so they're definitely moving to the outskirts of Austin, which is really, really hard.

Blair Waltman-Alexin:

That's the challenge Jaimes' found herself in.

Marilu Jaimes:

Well, I thought about moving and that's what I'm going to do because I have no other option. It's too much money. I can't pay it because I can't pay so much rent alone.

Blair Waltman-Alexin:

So if there are all of these new apartments, why can't lower income families find a place to stay?

Awais Azhar, HousingWorks Austin:

Most of our newer housing remains unaffordable if it's market rate. Of course if we created you —

Blair Waltman-Alexin:

This is Azhar is with HousingWorks Austin and he says part of the problem with a lot of these new buildings. They're aimed at high income earners. Nationwide 89 percent of new apartments built in the last couple of years are considered high end.

They're also the ones getting deals on rent. One report showed that in Texas cities, luxury apartments, a bigger price drops, the middle tier rentals.

Woman:

What we're seeing in terms of construction of housing is we're seeing of course, the more higher end apartments being built. At the same time, this gap between housing costs and the gap between income has been growing for over a decade in Austin and other parts of the nation.

Blair Waltman-Alexin:

This earning gap didn't just increase the going rate for housing and Austin. It also skewed a number that has a big impact on low income housing, the median family income or MFI, sometimes referred to as the AMI, or average median income.

Noelia Mann, Interim Director of the eviction mitigation team at BASTA explains.

Noella Mann, BASTA:

So if you're having an influx of high income earners, right, that's going to tip the scale. But for the most part, newer affordable housing programs are actually tied to the AMI. The AMI goes up, but like working class families income is not increasing in the same way. So the affordability, I would say it's actually going the opposite way like it's getting less affordable for regular working class people in Austin.

Blair Waltman-Alexin:

So when the MFI increases, the amount landlords can charge for affordable housing also increases. But experts say wages for lower income workers aren't keeping up. And rents are still above pre pandemic levels, even when the price drops. As hard says high housing costs can eat into other parts of a family's budget.

Awais Azhar:

Once folks and 30 percent of their income on housing and utility related costs. That means they're cutting funding from somewhere else, whether their childcare or healthcare, or other basic provisions of life. Even though I know we're hearing a lot about how rents have, you know, comparatively gone down to their peak during the pandemic. We're still seeing that they're high enough for a lot of households to be struggling.

Blair Waltman-Alexin:

Jake Wegmann says there is a silver lining here for affordable housing advocates.

Jake Wegmann:

This is a great time for the public sector and for nonprofits to scoop up land and to scoop up projects at a lower rate. Maybe they are now able to acquire more projects during a downturn like this and then they had been planning on.

Blair Waltman-Alexin:

The city is still pursuing its housing goals. Voters approved 300 million in 2020 for anti-displacement efforts as part of the New Project Connect transit plan. But those plans will take time to come together for Jaimes and others who can't afford their rent now, when she puts in her notice, she says she has about 60 days.

Marilu Jaimes:

We found a place to live together so there's no other option.

Blair Waltman-Alexin:

For PBS News Weekend. I'm Blair Waltman-Alexin in Austin.