Affordable Housing In Austin
Travis County, Texas

127 Low Income Apartment Communities In Austin

Housing Authorities that serve Austin

Other Housing Authorities located in Austin

Guide To Affordable Housing in Austin, Texas

There are 127 low income housing apartment communities offering 14,902 affordable apartments for rent in Austin, Texas. Austin features 4,366 low income apartments with rental assistance where households typically pay no more than 30% of their income towards rent. Additionally, there are 10,360 other low income apartments that don't provide direct rental assistance but remain affordable to low income households in Austin.

Sourced from federal housing data and AffordableHousingOnline.com research.

Austin, TX Affordable Housing Snapshot

Population and Household Demographics

Austin is a City in Travis County, Texas with a population of 887,061. There are 351,195 households in the city with an average household size of 2.47 persons. 55.19% of households in Austin are renters.

Income and Rent Overburden in Austin

The median gross income for households in Austin is $57,689 a year, or $4,807 a month. The median rent for the city is $1,047 a month.

Households who pay more than thirty percent of their gross income are considered to be Rent Overburdened. In Austin, a household making less than $3,490 a month would be considered overburdened when renting an apartment at or above the median rent. 47.78% of households who rent are overburdened in Austin.¹

Area Median Income In Austin

Affordable housing program eligibility is always determined by one's income. Each household's income is compared to the incomes of all other households in the area. This is accomplished through a statistic established by the government called the Area Median Income, most often referred to as AMI. The AMI is calculated and published each year by HUD.

HUD often uses an area larger than a city to determine the AMI because HUD anticipates those searching for housing will look beyond individual cities during their housing search. For Austin, the AMI is calculated from all households within Travis County.

In Austin, HUD calculates the Area Median Income for a family of four as $95,900

Most affordable housing programs determine eligibility based on the percent of AMI a given household's income is. Among the programs that determine eligibility based on the AMI are Section 8, HOME, LIHTC, Section 515, 202 and 811.

Rental Assistance in Austin

Rental assistance is a type of housing subsidy that pays for a portion of a renter’s monthly housing costs, including rent and tenant paid utilities. This housing assistance can come in the form of Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers, project-based Section 8 contracts, public housing, USDA Rental Assistance (in Section 515 properties) as well as HUD Section 202 and 811 properties for elderly and disabled households.

Income Qualifications for Austin HUD Rental Assistance in Austin

Low Income Housing Tax Credits in Austin

The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program aims to create affordable rental housing for low and very low income families.

From 1987 to 2007, 74 low income apartment communities containing 7,481 rental apartments have been constructed and made affordable to low income persons in Austin by the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program.

If your income is less than 60% of the Area Median Income (AMI), you should not expect to pay more than the rent value for a unit in the table below. However, Affordable apartment communities that receive funding through the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program may have rental units that are not subject to income and rent limits.

Rent limits for the LIHTC Program are determined so that a household making the maximum income for the expected household size of the unit would only pay 30% of their income for rent.

Income Qualifications for Low Income Housing Tax Credit Apartments in Austin

For example, the expected household size for a two bedroom apartment is 3 people. Using the table above, the maximum income for a 3 person household at 60% of the AMI in Austin is $51,120 a year, or $4,260 a month. To determine the maximum rent in the table below we multiply the monthly maximum income, $4,260 by 30% to get a maximum rent of $1,278 a month.

Rent for units in the LIHTC Program include a utility allowance which is determined by the average monthly cost of utilities paid directly by residents. This allowance has not been subtracted from the rents in the table below. These utility allowances are set on a property by property basis.

Fair Market Rents in Austin

Fair Market Rents, often abbreviated as FMR, can be used to better understand the average housing costs of an area. Notably, Fair Market Rents are used to establish the payment standards for the Housing Choice Voucher Program, maximum rents in HOME financed rental projects and initial rents for Section 8 project based assistance.

2020 Fair Market Rents