AUSTIN, Texas — A bill that aims to boost low-income housing developments became law this week.
House Bill 1058 is one of 30 new bills that went into effect on Monday. It offers low-income housing tax credits for certain housing developments.
According to the Texas Affiliation of Affordable Housing Providers, every metro area in the country has a shortage of affordable and available rental homes for extremely low-income renters.
Here's what the affordable housing crisis looks like by the numbers in our state.
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, there are 904,814 extremely low-income renter households in Texas, with 230,166 affordable and available rental homes.
In the Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown metro area, the coalition's data showed 83,965 extremely low-income renter households with 13,601 affordable and available rental homes. The data is from 2021.
The group ranked Austin as the third-worst metro area in the country for affordable housing.
One of the bill's authors, State Rep. Craig Goldman, previously said this legislation is aimed at bridging the gap for so many.
"This low-income tax housing bill benefits nurses, police officers, firefighters, teachers – all the people on fixed incomes in our district," Goldman said in 2023.
The state tax incentive program is similar to the federal low-income housing tax credit program. In the Lone Star State, investors can get franchise tax and insurance premium tax credits for building housing developments that qualify.
State Rep. James Talarico is one of the bill's co-authors. His team told KVUE on Tuesday that they hope developers will take advantage of the incentive and start projects soon.
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