{"id":273435,"date":"2026-04-30T20:29:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T20:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/273435\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T20:29:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T20:29:12","slug":"affordable-housing-community-opens-to-help-address-chronic-homelessness-the-austin-chronicle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/273435\/","title":{"rendered":"Affordable Housing Community Opens to Help Address Chronic Homelessness \u2022 The Austin Chronicle"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the city continues to evaluate ways to assist the homeless population<\/a>, a new affordable housing community, The Roz<\/a>, opened in Southeast Austin on April 16.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 100-unit development offers permanent supportive housing (PSH), along with on-site social services, for individuals who have been unhoused for a year or longer. However, most of the residents currently at The Roz have been unhoused for over five years and have one or more disabilities, according to Sally Gaskins, president at SGI Ventures, a real estate developer and consultant specializing in affordable housing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

SGI Ventures, alongside the Austin Housing Finance Corporation, developed and owns the community. Each unit comes with project-based vouchers, allowing residents to live in the property as long as they wish, regardless of their ability to pay. The Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas has contributed $2 million, about $16 million came from the 9% Low Income Housing Tax Credits<\/a> program, and the AHFC contributed $5.5 million to fund the development, according to Austin Housing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gaskins said the goal is for residents transitioning out of chronic homelessness to stabilize, become self-sufficient, and ultimately be able to support themselves. She said that the on-site social services include assisting residents in accessing benefits, replacing documents like Social Security cards and veteran ID cards, and providing transportation and grocery assistance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ideal situation would be for them to be able to, as we say, \u2018graduate\u2019 to other housing,\u201d Gaskins said. \u201cPerhaps the next step would be a traditional, affordable development for [a] family or even senior [housing].\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will be serving 100 individuals at this property, but there\u2019s still thousands more who need service funding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abby Tatkow, project manager for The Roz<\/p>\n

Gaskins said The Roz does not do any marketing, and residents are referred by the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition<\/a>, an organization that coordinates with the Austin-Travis County Homelessness Response System.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best advice I think I could give for folks that are interested in [affordable] housing in any permanent supportive housing development, is to be sure that they\u2019ve had a coordinated assessment \u2026 with ECHO,\u201d Gaskins said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Abby Tatkow, project manager for the housing community, said a \u201csubstantial\u201d portion of Proposition Q<\/a> \u2013 a November 2025 ballot measure \u2013 was intended to fund projects like The Roz. But Prop Q \u2013 which would have raised approximately $100 million in property taxes for city services, including ones addressing homelessness \u2013 failed at the polls.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will be serving 100 individuals at this property, but there\u2019s still thousands more who need service funding to be able to reenter housing and to get back on their feet,\u201d Tatkow said. \u201cWe\u2019d love to see our city commit to funding those kinds of services long term so that we can really end homelessness in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Courtney Banker, housing development manager for the city, said more affordable communities like The Roz are beginning to pop up in Austin, including Cairn Point Cameron<\/a>, an affordable housing development for seniors set to open this spring, and Seabrook Square<\/a>, an affordable housing community near Mueller that is set to come online by the end of May.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking into the future, we\u2019re facing a much different landscape as far as [the] ability to support the services that are required to make these communities successful,\u201d Banker said. \u201cWe really want to see as their properties come online, gain some lessons learned about how they operate, and figure out our services funding before we embark on a new PSH community.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article appears in May 1 \u2022\u00a02026<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A note to readers:\u00a0Bold and uncensored,\u00a0The Austin Chronicle\u00a0has been Austin\u2019s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community\u2019s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the city continues to evaluate ways to assist the homeless population, a new affordable housing community, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,6738,696,2062],"class_list":["post-273435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-echo","tag-homelessness","tag-prop-q"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}