HousingWorks History
HousingWorks' roots stretch back more than ten years. Prior to 2004, many housing advocates — or "housers" — had worked to varying degrees of success on pushing the issue of affordable housing forward. However, in Spring 2004 a core group of housing advocates began coalescing around the issue of inclusionary zoning. This core group began working with other advocacy organizations — principally Liveable City — to broaden the different stakeholder groups invested in the notion that affordability is a critical community priority. They hosted the 1st annual housing summit in November 2004 focused on galvanizing stakeholders who have a direct interest in affordable housing.
The 2004 summit helped this informal housing coalition to expand as it began organizing around the issue of affordability at the newly proposed transit-oriented development (TOD) areas. Through these efforts, HousingWorks, or at least its precursor, had its first policy victory in persuading City Council to adopt a 25% affordability goal for all the TOD areas. This led the group to host another housing summit in May 2005 — to continue building momentum for making affordability a higher community priority.
At this pivotal event, two important things were decided:
- to push the City of Austin to include affordable housing bonds in its next general obligation bond referendum;
- to create HousingWorks.
The $55 million affordable housing bonds — with critical support from HousingWorks — ultimately passed with 67% public support. And, HousingWorks was officially formed a month later in June 2005.