Austin Housing Conservancy

Fighting Austin’s affordability crisis with social impact investing

The Austin Housing Conservancy Fund (“the AHC” or “the Fund”) is an open-ended social impact private equity fund designed to purchase and preserve affordable multifamily rental housing for moderate- to middle-income Austinites. Raised, funded and deployed in Austin, the Fund delivers risk-adjusted financial returns for investors while preserving rental housing for Austin’s teachers, first responders and other middle-income professionals who don’t have access to the same assistance programs as low-income residents. Affordable Central Texas, a 501(c)(3), is the sponsor and investment manager of the Fund.

The Story

The Austin Housing Conservancy is one of those rare brands that operates at the convergence of business acumen and value, market need and tangible community impact. As most people know by now, Austin has a housing affordability crisis. Median home prices are skyrocketing, and growth in rental prices far exceeds wage growth, creating an untenable housing market that is impacting thousands of Austinites. In 2019, the annual income needed to afford a two-bedroom apartment in Austin exceeded $62,000.

The most common narrative around housing crises is often told respective to low-income families and individuals. Very little attention is ever paid to the middle-income workforce; nurses, teachers, first responders, home contractors who often don’t have the same access to government programs as low-income workers. The result is an affordability gap that grows wider every year and threatens to displace thousands of Austin’s vital middle-income workers.

Enter the Austin Housing Conservancy, an open-ended social impact private equity fund designed to purchase and preserve affordable multifamily rental housing for moderate- to middle-income Austinites. The Fund is sponsored and managed by Affordable Central Texas, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, and led by David Steinwedell—a 35-year veteran in real estate, asset management and investing, and a 12-year Austinite. Steinwedell’s market experience and community involvement created a unique opportunity for the Fund to step into the affordability gap by purchasing existing market-affordable multifamily properties. The Fund relies on investments from high-net-worth individuals, family offices, private foundations, bank CRA programs and others in the Austin community who recognize and can contribute to solving the city’s housing crisis.

As the Fund ramped up investments in apartment complexes around the city, the management team recognized they needed to clarify their story and purpose and refine their marketing strategy and content to attract local investors and build brand equity among the Austin community.

To support those initiatives, Red Fan worked with the AHC to:

Refocus the brand story to establish market urgency and highlight the middle-income workers who directly benefit from the Fund’s investments through lower rental prices.

Overhaul its website to reflect new messaging, articulate its investment strategy and ROI, and position the brand as a leading player in the growing field of social impact investing.

Create new marketing assets that included a leave-behind brochure for investors, a new pitch deck and executive bios that highlighted the management team’s commitment to the Austin community, its proven investment acumen and real estate expertise.

Execute a media relations strategy that highlighted the Fund’s projected growth and recent investments and position it as an attractive alternative investment class for local foundations, institutional investors, financial institutions and high-net-worth individuals.

The Austin Housing Conservancy saw significant market traction in just a couple of months. Early in 2019, the Fund announced its plans to acquire four properties in the coming year, enabling it to preserve affordable housing for about 2,500 moderate- to middle-income Austin professionals. That announcement was quickly followed by the news that St. David’s Foundation, one of the largest health foundations in the U.S. and a key player in the Austin nonprofit community, would fund Affordable Central Texas with a $450,000 operating grant.

ROI:

Red Fan successfully reframed the conversation around Austin’s affordability crisis with a new tagline, “Invest in Austin’s people, preserve Austin’s housing,” and developed a storytelling framework that reinforced the critical roles middle-income residents play in the Austin community. If these crucial workers continue to be priced out of the city, a student might lose her favorite teacher, the local fire station its crew chief, or the closest ER its triage nurse, and the Austin community would be all the worse for it.

A unified marketing strategy tailored for local investors, local and national media and the Austin community at large.

More than three dozen media placements from three announcements early in 2019, including KVUE (ABC broadcast affiliate), the Austin Business Journal, the Austin Monitor, CultureMap, Curbed D.C., Community Impact and others.

Introductions to nearly a dozen Austin business leaders to augment Affordable Central Texas’s strong community ties and strategic partnerships.

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Red Fan was a strategic partner for the Austin Housing Conservancy Fund during a critical foundational growth period. They provided a significant upgrade to our strategic communications across web, print and social media channels. The team was agile in meeting our challenging brand positioning, marketing and content needs. We have received numerous compliments on the clarity and quality of the final work from the wide range of stakeholders we interact with on the Fund.