with the strong rates of household growth experienced by the City. Absorption has lagged deliveries, with a vacancy rate that has oscillated between 7% and 11% since 2016, as units come to market and are leased up by households. A typical target vacancy rate for multifamily housing in a healthy market is 5%. Approximately 39% of the housing stock in the Eastside is comprised of multifamily rental units, but recent development trends have been predominately single family with only 320 multifamily residential (MFR) units in five developments added to the inventory since 2010. The average year built for MFR in the study area is 1976, although many buildings have recently been renovated. Compared to multifamily developments throughout the City, those in the Eastside are typically lower density and achieve lower average rents than those in and around Downtown. The City’s current zoning code allows MFR development in several residential and mixed-use zones. The majority of these are located along major interstates, state highways, and corridors. While the current zoning code was implemented in 2012, only a few projects have been built since then. There are several areas where multifamily is a permittable use that have not seen any MFR projects. The reason for the lack of recent MFR development in these areas could be constrained by other zoning requirements, parcel ownership and assembly issues, or the lack of market demand for these uses under recent conditions. As shown in Table 4, the Eastside has sufficient precedents for multifamily housing, as multifamily rental units comprise approximately 39% of the entire housing stock. The most common multifamily typology in the study area are garden apartments, but more recent construction in and around Downtown has focused on denser stacked apartment complexes. The highest concentration of MFR buildings is located along East Lancaster Avenue, but the majority of these developments are small scale (less than 100 units). Other major clusters include the intersection of IH-820 and IH-30, and the eastern edge of the study area. Key Takeaways Population (1.02% annually), household (0.88%), and housing unit (0.38%) growth in the study area were all slower than the City average (2.15%, 2.1%, and 1.85% respectively). East of IH-820 had the highest growth of the subareas within the study area. Projected population growth for the study area (0.93% annually) is roughly on par with that of the City at large (0.98%), both of which are forecasted to grow slower than the County as a whole (1.5%). Overall housing unit density for the study area is approximately 1.86 DU/AC, with east of IH-820 having the highest residential density at approximately 1.99 DU/AC. The study area has a lower median household income and contains a larger proportion of renter households than the City or MSA. This holds true for the entire study area, though east of IH-820 is more like City averages than the rest of the Eastside. Multifamily zones and developments tend to be clustered around major roadways, including East Lancaster Avenue and interstates. The Historic Southside also has a moderate number of multifamily developments, relative to the study area.
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FORT WORTH EASTSIDE TRANSPORTATION PLAN
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