Hays County looks to address affordable housing issues

HAYS COUNTY — Texas only has 25 affordable and available rental homes for every 100 extremely low-income renter households, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. There are 904,814 extremely low-income renter households in the state.

With the Texas Affiliation of Affordable Housing Providers (TAAHP) reporting that nearly half of Texans spend more than 30% of their household income on housing costs, the need for affordable housing is crucial.

On June 6, the Hays County Commissioners Court approved a resolution admitting Hays County as a member of the Texas Housing Foundation (THF), a Texas Regional Public Housing Authority, which is authorized to provide affordable housing to lower-income residents. The foundation is currently comprised of Burnet, Blanco, Llano, Bastrop and Williamson counties.

“We are completely internally funded by our activities and the work that we do as an affordable housing provider, primarily bringing private capital into the public arena for the purpose of meeting affordable housing needs,” said Mark Mayfield, president/CEO of THF.

“The need for affordable housing is just through the roof,” he continued. “It has become the number one issue across this entire state. We work across the entire state. We have done over 60 developments from as far north as Canadian, as far south as Rockport, as far west as Midland to as far east as Longview and everywhere in between.”

The court’s decision comes after the Dripping Springs City Council adopted a resolution declaring a need for a regional housing authority within the city limits and authorized an agreement with THF on April 4.

“I’ll use the example of my children’s school, I know of six teachers who are living in the same house because they cannot afford any place to live in our community,” said commissioner Walt Smith. “If we can get more affordable housing for those residents who are most in need in our county, and do so at no cost to our county, then I think we should pursue that.”

A component of what THF does is working to implement a community resource center in the communities it serves, which is something near and dear to Mayfield’s heart. His goal is to provide a resource center for every county that participates in the foundation.

“It’s a one-stop-shop to somewhat house local nonprofits and groups. We completely provide them with a place to do their business at no cost to them whatsoever. All we have is a memorandum of understanding that if they will do their work in this community resource center, we will provide the place for them to do it,” he said.

Smith said that he’s visited one of the resource centers in Blanco County and that it felt like the foundation “created a home” for some nonprofits that may have been doing work in the community for a while and may not have had the financial ability for storage, administrative staff, a copy machine, etc.

“It really impressed me. At the end of the day, the other thing that really impressed me is that, doing the due diligence and checking with the county, they were all really adamant that they never spent a cent,” Smith said. “The return for not spending a cent was more than they could have ever asked for.”

Commissioner Michelle Cohen suggested that the east side of the county needs to be considered for a location of a community resource center.

“On the east side of the county, we don’t have any kind of resource center and so it would be great to be able to have something on that side of the county for a lot of the folks who could use that,” Cohen said. “I can think of a couple of nonprofits right now who just work out of their homes and would love a place to be able to set up shop and go to as a resource, or bringing their clients in [for a meeting]. They don’t have the financial resources to build anything themselves. I could definitely see that helping a lot of our community in those areas.”

Commissioner Debbie Ingalsbe agreed and added that they will have some difficulty deciding on a location for the resource center as there are needs in all parts of the county.

Mayfield concluded that the projects that THF does are multi-family units.

“That’s the only way we really can address [affordable housing] feasibly. We have tried single-family programs and that will break the bank. It’s very difficult,” he said.

For more information about THF, visit www.txhf.org.