Redevelopment Eases Affordable Housing Supply Woes

The Villas at Colt Run, an $18M affordable housing community, opened last week. You can’t doubt the redevelopment was necessary to meet demand; it’s already fully leased. The complex is built as a public/private collaboration between developer LDG, the City of Houston, the state, and bankers Citi and First Sterling. City of Houston Housing & Community Development director Neal Rackleff (pictured at last week’s ribbon-cutting) tells us it’s a vast improvement over the blight that stood a year ago—a half-completed apartment complex had been abandoned and sat in ruins there for years. LDG (an award-winning affordable developer that completed a similar project in Austin last year) demolished the structure a year ago and built the 138-unit Villas at Colt Run in its place.

Here’s LDG principal Chris Dischinger. Villas at Colt Run is in the historic Settegast neighborhood, an area that was declared a food desert by National Geographic because few residents have cars and there aren’t fresh produce sellers nearby. That made the multifamily property’s proximity to two city bus lines critical to its success, Neal says. The complex will house families who qualify in one-, two- and three-bedroom units that rent for less than a grand a month. They’ll enjoy the property’s pool, playground, fitness center, high-efficiency appliances, tankless gas water heaters and data wiring.

Here’s Villas at Colt Run, before and after. To boost further revitalization in Settegast, the city has included the neighborhood in its Hope program, which gives first-time homeowners subsidies to purchase houses in blighted areas. Affordable housing, particularly inside the Beltway, is hard to come by these days; rents have been rising faster than oil prices have been dropping. But other projects are underway in Houston, including New Hope Housing’s community at Reed Road, which will also serve families.