Bee Cave wants affordable workforce housing for teachers, police officers
BEE CAVE, Texas (KXAN) – The city of Bee Cave is taking steps towards providing more affordable housing to certain workers.
The Bee Cave City Council recently voted unanimously to move forward with a request for proposals for a workforce housing development, which could offer affordable housing opportunities to teachers, police officers, retail managers and other types of workers within Bee Cave.
“We have been researching workforce housing and visiting different beautiful developments over the last couple of years,” Bee Cave Mayor Kara King said in a press release. “Our residents know how valuable the workforce is to this community, and we are happy to take this next step in making sure the people who come to work in Bee Cave can also afford to live here.”
Bee Cave’s median sales price of a home is high compared to other nearby Central Texas Towns – the median sales price for a home in Bee Cave in February was $936,000, while in Austin, the median sales price was just over $500,000, according to Redfin.
“One of the things that we have out in the Lake Travis region is really high home prices,” King continued. “Home prices are skyrocketing. What that means is our teachers, our first responders, EMS, firefighters, police officers, and then even our small business owners can’t afford to live in the city in which they work. And so we’ve been aiming to try to solve that problem.”
King said the city has already identified a plot of land the city owns where the development will likely go. Developers will have until the summer to file their proposals.
The city said it wants proposals for workforce housing to emphasize the need for creative approaches to affordability, accessibility and sustainability while supporting growth.
A need for affordable housing
Bee Cave Chief of Police Brian Jones said his department is fully staffed and that officers enjoy working there, but he has “very few officers that can afford to live in the immediate area.”
“I’ve had a few officers leave because they wanted to be able to become a homeowner and live closer to the area in which they work. And in Bee Cave, unfortunately, that’s hard to do,” he added.
Jones said he is appreciative of the housing project and thinks it will be advantageous.
“It’s always an added benefit to have police officers, firefighters, nurses and teachers that live in the community in which they work,” he said. “There’s more of a sense of ownership, more of a sense of community for a person [who’s] living in the community in which they work, especially for police officers.”
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