Austin Now Taking Applications for its ‘Right to Return’ to Gentrifying Neighborhoods

“The City of Austin says it will give people from gentrifying neighborhoods priority in the application process for more than two dozen homes it's selling to low-income families,” reports Audrey McGlinchy for KUT.

“This is the first time the city plans to use what it calls a ‘preference policy,’ which was approved by council members in 2018,” according to McGlincy. Planetizen shared news of the new policy in September 2021, when the city identified a development site for the program. The deployment of the law, originally intended for late 2019, was delayed by the pandemic.

“To benefit from the program, people first need to be making less than Austin's family median income; for a single-person household that amounts to $69,250 a year,” according to McGlinchy. “Additionally, people need to prove they've been affected by gentrification or that they have generational ties to the city. That can mean they live or have lived — as far back as 2000 — in a neighborhood in the process of gentrifying; that's the process in which wealthy people move to a historically middle- or low-income neighborhood and housing costs rise.”

A study published in 2018 by researchers from the University of Texas is informing the city’s assessment of gentrification around the city.

More details on the new right to return law and the properties available in this first wave of applications can be found in the source article below.