Austin Business Journal shares, "In its latest effort to help address Austin's affordability crisis, Habitat for Humanity plans to build more than two dozen homes in East Austin’s Whisper Valley community and make them available at below-market prices, with hundreds more planned throughout the metro over the next several years.
The nonprofit is doing so in Whisper Valley through its 2025 Carter Work Project, an annual event that started in 1984 when President Jimmy Carter volunteered with Habitat to build and renovate homes. In Austin, the project will see 25 homes built in a single week this year, with prices starting around $150,000.
“When we think about the Carter project, it’s really about not just a local story, but a national and international story of bringing attention to the need for affordable housing,” said Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat for Humanity International. “Austin is obviously an incredibly vibrant, exciting city. But it’s also, in a way, the poster child of a market that used to be affordable and no longer is.”
While home prices are no longer at pandemic-era highs, the median sales price in the metro came in at $409,765 in January.
Whisper Valley attracted Habitat’s attention because it’s a large-scale, energy-efficient, mixed-use development, said Reckford. Whisper Valley is a zero-energy capable neighborhood in which every home comes equipped with rooftop solar panels and underground geothermal heat pumps that are more efficient at heating and cooling than above-ground units.
The energy-efficient aspect of Whisper Valley’s homes means that net electric and gas bills will be about 70% less than in traditional homes, said Michele Anderson, Austin Habitat for Humanity's CEO.
“Your true housing cost is not just your rent or mortgage, but also your utility bill and, increasingly, your insurance bill,” Reckford said. “So we try to think holistically about how we can drive all costs down. That lower utility bill is an important piece of affordability for the family.”
The 25 homes, set to be built in October, will range from $155,000 to $245,000, Anderson said, which is well below market rates. And while those are what Anderson described as starter home prices, families typically remain in Habitat homes for an average of 14 years.
Sponsors of the 2025 Carter Work Project include Travis County, the Adam R. Scripps Foundation, Frost Bank, Dow Inc., ECPR Texas and IBM, according to Austin Habitat.
Project partners are essential in building affordable housing, Reckford said. Costs of land, financing, building materials and labor have all climbed, while income has only risen “a little bit,” he said, creating a wide gap between the cost of creating housing and what the average family can afford.
“The public piece is hugely important,” Reckford said. “Cities can provide land. That’s a huge driver. They can also make it faster and easier to build, and zoning is an enormous piece of the cost to get your projects approved and permitted. But somewhere you’ve got to close the math gap, and that’s either got to be in land or financing, and that’s where corporate partnerships have been critical.”
Anderson said Habitat has plans to build 500 homes in Whisper Valley over the next five to seven years. It also has had talks with at least two other undisclosed master-planned community developers to build Habitat homes within their projects, Anderson said.
“We’ve got, across the country, Habitat building master-planned communities that are mixed-income, but that’s not ideal,” Reckford said. “Ideal is that every master-planned community, every new development, would include an affordable component, whether that’s Habitat or other affordable players that can be a part of that.”
Habitat for Humanity utilizes homeowners and volunteers to help build its homes. The Carter Work Project is credited with building, renovating and repairing 4,447 Habitat homes in 14 countries since it began."
Source: Austin Business Journal
Written by: Cody Baird
Published: March 11, 2025
Posted by Grossman & Jones Group on
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