For many working musicians in Austin, the hardest part of sustaining a career isn’t finding an audience; it’s staying housed.
Rising rents and stagnant earnings have made housing instability a persistent stressor that affects local artists’ health and their ability to rehearse or perform consistently. A 2022 census of Austin’s music ecosystem underscored that affordability is a primary reason musicians consider leaving the city.
Against that backdrop, a small East Austin nonprofit is attempting a targeted intervention. Austin Art Village is a planned group of 400-500-square-foot homes designed specifically for musicians and artists. The project, led by Blackland Community Development Corp., pairs long-term affordable housing with support networks rooted in the local music community.
Backers say the project isn’t meant to solve Austin’s housing crisis, but could point toward options for musician-centered housing and offer a scalable model for other organizations with larger budgets.
“Our goal is to create permanent housing that allows people to put down roots. We’re not building transitional units. These are homes where residents can stay as long as they remain income-eligible and need the housing.”Andy Bucknall, executive director of Blackland Community Development Corp.
Thor Harris, a longtime Austin musician and member of the Blackland Community Development Corp. board, has been a leading advocate for the project, which will include 10 homes on land at Chicon and 22nd streets.
“It's much harder for a young artist to move here, work a part-time job, and then rehearse with bands at night, and be out playing shows by the evening,” Harris said. “What we've all been wondering for the last at least 10 years is – are young people still gonna come here to start their interesting music careers? We certainly hope so, because if not, that wonderful aspect that brought many of us to Austin will wither, as it did in cities like Manhattan and San Francisco.”
The project is still in its early stages — with one demo home already built — but much of the foundational work is complete. According to Andy Bucknall, executive director of the Blackland Community Development Corp., the nonprofit has finished key predevelopment steps, including appraisals, surveys and lot clearing.
A request for proposals from potential construction partners was released to the public in January, with submissions due by Feb. 6.
The development would add nine more homes on land owned by Blackland CDC, a community land trust that has provided affordable housing in the historically Black neighborhood for more than four decades. The homes would be reserved for income-eligible households earning at or below 50% of the area’s median family income — $93,000 for a single person, or $133,000 for a family of four in 2025 — with rents capped at 30% of household income.
The total estimated cost of the project is approximately $2 million. Blackland CDC has secured $200,000 in funding from St. David’s Foundation. The organization is now pursuing a mix of public and private funding to close the remaining gap.
Bucknall said Blackland CDC plans to apply for funding from the city’s Rental Housing Development Assistance and Home Options for Mobility and Equity programs. If approved, that money could become available later this year, enabling the project to proceed with permitting, site preparation and construction.
Stakeholders in Austin’s music community point out that affordable housing alone does not always meet the needs of working musicians. Many musicians still struggle with restrictive lease terms, noise complaints and limited space to rehearse or create, all of which can make otherwise affordable units incompatible with their livelihoods.
Bucknall said Blackland CDC worked with architects to ensure insulation and wall thickness help contain sound. Homes will also be clustered so they face a common area to prevent noise from traveling into surrounding residential areas, he said.
Derrick Lesnau, chief executive officer of the SIMS Foundation, said housing instability is one of the most common stressors among musicians the organization serves. While mental health challenges affect roughly 1 in 5 Americans, Lesnau noted that the incidence among music industry professionals is significantly higher, a disparity he said is closely tied to financial uncertainty and housing insecurity.
“If you’re constantly worried about where you’re going to live or whether you’ll be able to stay in the city where you work and perform, it becomes very difficult to thrive in other areas of your life,” Lesnau said. “Stable housing removes one of the biggest stressors musicians are carrying.”
Organizers say Austin Art Village is designed to address those challenges by pairing housing with an environment better suited to creative work, as well as access to services and referral networks already embedded in the music community. Blackland CDC has worked closely with the SIMS Foundation and Housing Opportunities for Musicians and Entertainers (HOME) as advisory partners to shape the project.
Hanna Cofer, who leads HOME, said even small-scale projects can play an outsized role in shaping future policy.
“When housing is precarious, everything else becomes brittle — from health to the ability to show up and perform consistently,” she said. “The value here isn’t just the units themselves, but demonstrating a model that funders and policymakers can see, understand and potentially replicate.”
Supporters of the project emphasize that Austin Art Village is not intended as a cure-all, but as a pilot that could show how artist-focused housing might work in larger affordable developments and strengthen partnerships between cultural organizations and developers and builders.
Bucknall said the Austin Art Village reflects Blackland CDC’s broader mission as a community land trust, with an emphasis on long-term affordability and stability.
“Our goal is to create permanent housing that allows people to put down roots,” he said. “We’re not building transitional units. These are homes where residents can stay as long as they remain income-eligible and need the housing.”
Blackland CDC will retain ownership of both the land and the homes, preserving affordability in perpetuity and insulating the development from market pressures that have displaced residents throughout East Austin. The organization currently owns and manages 26 properties in the Blackland neighborhood, totaling 51 affordable housing units, and provides in-house property management and maintenance, along with optional housing case management for residents who need additional support.
That infrastructure, Bucknall said, lets Blackland CDC pursue projects that match housing to community-specific needs like musician schedules, work patterns and creative demands.
For Harris, the project is about protecting the cultural balance that Austin’s music ecosystem was built on over the past 50-plus years.
“We still have this culture where people go out to see live music, where musicians talk to each other, help each other, and build scenes together. That only works if people can actually afford to live here,” he said.
“Giving a handful of musicians a stable place to live might feel like a drop in the bucket. But if it helps keep Austin a place where young artists still want to come, where they can experiment and build something together, then it’s a drop worth making.”
