Application process for ‘HOME’ part two opens Friday

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Scott Turner, the owner of Riverside Homes, is one of the more than 100 people who has been approved to utilize HOME part one — one of the recent land development code changes made by the city of Austin aimed at housing affordability.

With it, he’s going to build a 260-square-foot detached home or tiny home in Austin. Before the land development code change went into place earlier this year, that build would have been prohibited in the city.

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“I really don’t know what to expect other than I should be able to sell that tiny home at a price that I haven’t been able to sell anything at for many many many years,” Turner said.

The application process for the second iteration of the HOME initiative, HOME part two, rolled out Friday. Applications will be rolled out in two phases as the city works through protections for fire safety and displacement. The entire city will be able to apply in November.

HOME phase one

HOME, an acronym for Home Options for Middle-income Empowerment, is a series of changes to Austin’s land development code — and other incentives for creating or preserving housing.

HOME phase one was approved in late 2023 and the application process for it opened up in February of 2024.

Phase one includes the following:

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• Three units: Bumping the number of units “by right” allowed on a single-family lot to three

• Tiny Homes: Patching loopholes in Austin’s land development code to more easily allow for tiny homes to be considered a unit on a lot zoned as single-family

• Preserving existing homes: Part of the HOME initiative creates a bonus program that encourages the preservation of houses already on lots

• House Size Limits: Setting “size constraints” to force smaller units

So far, 162 people have filed applications under HOME part one, city data shows. More than 100 of those applications have been approved. If all were to be approved, the city says more than 300 new housing units would come online as a result.

“I hope that continues. So we’ve got kind of a gentle accretion of additional infill if you will and adding more homes at lower cost so that we can address the really desperate need that we have in our community for homes for folks,” Mayor Pro Tem Leslie Pool previously told KXAN.

Home phase two

After the first phase of HOME was approved by Austin City Council, the second phase was considered this year.

The second phase of HOME focuses on minimum lot size — meaning, how much land is required to put a single unit on it. The idea is that smaller lots will allow for the creation of more housing.

Previously, in the city, most single-family lots were zoned, so you need a minimum of 5,750 square feet to build a single unit. Austin City Council voted to drop that down to 1,800 square feet.

It’s worth noting that phase one and phase two of HOME don’t necessarily build on each other here. Only one single unit can be built on each 1,800-square-foot plot of land. To build condominiums or other similar structures approved in phase one, the lot size requirements remain the same.

HOME part two application opens Friday

The application process for HOME part two opened Friday for some. Turner told us he’s hopeful it will be just another tool to allow builders like him to offer more housing options to Austin buyers.

“The process for getting my permit for my third unit under HOME one was relatively straightforward. It took about a month, maybe a month and a half,” he said.

But Turner wonders if the rollout for HOME part two applications will be less popular. He says subdividing a lot with the city is expensive — to the tune of $100,000 — and can be a years-long process.

“I think that really it’s going to put a lot of pressure on the city to really simplify and clean up its development approval process so that people really can use HOME 2 the way it was intended to be,” he said.

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