'HOME' rollout starts slow, homebuilders point to city's previous legal challenges

According to the City of Austin's Development Services Department, "five proposed projects are in the formal review process under the HOME Amendments."

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- The City of Austin has a turbulent relationship with its Land Development Code -- a set of rules that govern what can be built in our city, how and where.

City leaders have for years pointed to fixing that Land Development Code (LDC) as one of the major keys to allowing more affordable housing to be built. But changes leaders have made to the code have regularly succumbed to lawsuits.

"It's really frustrating. And because we've had so many lawsuits, there's a lot of builders I know that have decided to build outside the city limits, because they're like, 'we we don't have the same challenges or the same worries,'" said Felicia Foster, principal at Barron Custom Design.

City leaders are hoping their latest round of changes, through the HOME initiative, won't be derailed by legal challenges, and they've plugged legal holes to ensure that's the case.

Still, homebuilders interested in utilizing HOME to build more units on a lot tell KXAN they're worried history may repeat itself.

"It's very risky to jump right into the new code," Scott Turner, owner of Riverside Homes, said. "There is the chance that it might be held up in a lawsuit for a year or two. And so I think that's had a chilling effect on the level of interest."

According to the City of Austin's Development Services Department, "five proposed projects are in the formal review process under the HOME Amendments." That process opened up on Feb. 5.

Turner said it takes a while to put together plans and submit them to the City, but he believes some of that hesitation comes from not wanting to get a project tied up in a lawsuit.

Mayor Pro Tem Leslie Pool, who brought HOME forward, said the group behind the lawsuits don't reflect Austin's "community values."

"We will persist and are working to restore the programs this group opposes on upcoming Council agendas," she said.

The group she's referring to have successfully undone Austin's Land Development Code rewrite, called CodeNEXT, and were most recently in court over several changes to the LDC aimed at affordability.

The group, represented by attorney Doug Becker, argued Austinites were not properly notified and ultimately won. The City has since made changes in its notification process, sending out notices city-wide and hosting state law-approved joint public hearings.

"We continue to monitor and study the City's actions," Becker said of the HOME initiative.

What is home?

HOME, an acronym for Home Options for Middle-income Empowerment, is a series of recently approved changes to Austin’s LDC — which came with incentives for creating or preserving housing.

The following are the proposed changes in phase one, which has been approved by Austin City Council:

• 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

In phase two, additional changes could be brought forward such as lot size.