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Austin, TX

Austin Permits the Rebuild of Crossroads Apartments as 110 Affordable Homes

Austin, Texas issued the building permits on Oct. 16 to replace the 1973 Crossroads Apartments on McCann Drive with a four-story, 110-unit affordable building backed by $11.7 million in city housing money.

By Morningline Research · October 19, 2026

Austin, Texas issued the building permits on October 16 for a new four-story affordable apartment building at 8801 McCann Drive in north Austin. It replaces Crossroads Apartments, a 92-unit complex from 1973, with 110 homes.

The city has already put money behind it. Last fall the Austin Housing Finance Corporation approved $11.7 million for the rebuild, and the permits are the go-ahead to start building.

A five-story apartment building in Austin, Texas
A newer apartment building elsewhere in Austin; the Crossroads building has not been built yet. Photo: Sk5893, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).

A 1973 complex makes way

Timeline of the Crossroads Apartments rebuild on McCann Drive
Graphic: Morningline Research, from city building permit records and the reporting linked in this story.

The demolition permit came first. On April 16 the city issued a demolition permit for the old complex, described in the permit as a "total demo" of 81,574 square feet of brick and frame buildings, "circa 1973," on a slab.

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Six months later came the new building. The October permits split it into two connected fire areas. The first holds 90 apartments plus a leasing office and a learning center. The second holds 20 more. Both permits describe the work as a "redevelopment of existing site" and carry the city's S.M.A.R.T. Housing tag. Three more permits issued the same day cover dumpster enclosures.

A state accessibility filing gives the learning center's piece of the schedule. The 4,856-square-foot leasing office and learning center was registered with a start date of March 1, 2026, and a finish date of November 30, 2027, according to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. That filing lists the owner as Crossroads Mutual Housing Corporation.

Who the homes are for

The city laid out the income mix when it approved the money. Of the 110 units, 22 are for households at or below 30% of the area's median family income, 83 at or below 50% and five at or below 60%, the City of Austin Housing Department said on September 29, 2025.

The rent limits are long-lived. Fourteen units at 30% of median income that had city money before stay affordable for 99 years, and the other 96 for 40 years. The site sits within half a mile of high-frequency transit, according to the city.

The $11.7 million came from two pots: $7.5 million from Austin's 2022 housing bonds and $4.2 million from North Burnet Gateway funds. The borrower named on the city's board agenda is FC Crossroads Housing, LP, for "a multifamily rental development to be known as Crossroads Apartments."

A plan that changed size

The project looked bigger on paper a year and a half ago. In February 2025, when the City Council backed six developments applying for federal 9% housing tax credits, Crossroads was listed as 130 supportive housing units, KXAN reported. By the time the city approved its loan that September, the plan was 110. The permits match the later number: 90 units in one fire area and 20 in the other.

The value on the permits is harder to read. Each of the five October permits, the dumpster enclosures included, lists a reported value of $245 million. It's the same figure repeated on every piece of the project, and it's far beyond what any public source puts on the project. The state filing estimates the learning center at $1.25 million. We couldn't find a total development cost in a source we could read in full, so we don't treat the $245 million as the cost of the building. Permit values are estimates filed with the city, not contract amounts.

One of eight

Crossroads was one of eight developments the city's housing finance board funded at that September 2025 meeting. Together they got more than $46.1 million for 728 affordable rental units across five council districts, according to the Housing Department. Housing Director Deletta Dean said the money helps residents "stay rooted and reduce displacement pressures."

Nationally, builders are starting more rental apartments than a year ago. They started 109,000 built-for-rent apartments in the second quarter of 2026, up 5% from a year earlier, out of 117,000 multifamily starts overall, according to Census data analyzed by the National Association of Home Builders.

With the old buildings cleared for demolition and the new building permitted, the next milestone in the public record is the learning center's finish date in November 2027.

How we count

The permits come from the City of Austin's building permit records for 8801 McCann Drive, issued April 16 and October 16, 2026. Values are the valuations reported on the permits, not contract amounts. Unit counts, income levels and funding come from the city, state and news sources linked here.

See all of Austin's latest permit numbers, updated weekly.

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Sources

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More numbers: Austin, TX building permit activity, updated weekly.