Phase 3 Opens as First Creek at Austin Redefines Affordable Housing in Knoxville

It’s June, and it’s the kind of hot that makes you wonder if the ice cream truck coming towards you is real or some kind of desert mirage. A young girl bursts out of her front door to flag it down. Bomb pop procured, she pauses and points to the camera dangling from my neck.

“What are you taking pictures of?”

“Your beautiful neighborhood, for a news story,” I say. I can see the wheels turning. 

“Why were all those people walking around earlier?”

She’s referring to a tour celebrating First Creek at Austin’s receipt of two prestigious Urban Land Institute awards—big recognition in the world of development, celebrating places that get design, land use and community right.

“Because the planners worked really hard to make your neighborhood nice, and it won some awards, so people wanted to come take a look,” I tell her.

The girl isn’t exactly buying it, but decides to let it slide. She sizes me up once more, then takes off for the playground. To her, First Creek at Austin isn’t an award-winning, headline-earning, game-changing reinvention of public housing. It’s just … home.

This morning at 10:30 a.m., Knoxville’s Community Development Corporation (KCDC) will cut the ribbon on Phase 3 of First Creek at Austin, the final residential piece of the city’s first mixed-income, affordable housing community. 

The transformation has been unfolding in stages for years. Back in peak COVID, when playgrounds were closed, I’d bring my toddler down to the still-barren construction site. Perched on the hood of my car, we spent hours watching the diggers push dirt around. IOK has shared regular updates, most recently when Phase 2 opened last September and the groundbreaking of Phase 3 a month before that. 

Now, the community is on the homestretch to completion. While previous articles have gotten into the nitty-gritty of funding and schematics, for our final report, I want to zoom back out and look at what this project has meant for Knoxville—how a site once written off became a model for what affordable housing can be.

Phase 3 adds 161 new housing units, including 50 supportive homes for low-income seniors aged 62 and up. Altogether, the redevelopment has more than tripled the housing footprint on the old Austin Homes site, from 129 units then to 446 now. Some units are reserved for households with very little income; others are attainable at a workforce or market rate. Details in the addendum below. 

First Creek at Austin is, in every sense, well done, from the thoughtful architecture and modern interiors to amenities like fitness centers and community spaces. It sits just a stone’s throw from Covenant Health Park and within walking distance of schools and downtown. Plans still on the horizon include an early childhood and health center, resident gardens, a park and greenway access.

Earlier this year, on a raw March morning, I walked the site with KCDC Executive Director/CEO Ben Bentley and Chief Strategy Officer Marisa Moazen. Seeing the community through the people who’ve been grinding on it for years was different than watching excavators with a toddler.

Bentley framed the project in terms of stability and dignity. He bristles at any suggestion that low-income families deserve less. “Home is the baseline you build a quality of life around,” he said. “People who are doing well and people who are working to get there both deserve a place they can feel proud of. It might not be ownership in the technical sense, but a sense of belonging. That’s what we’re about, and what we should be doing.”

Austin Homes was originally built as a low-income, subsidized housing project in 1941. Bentley recalled what Austin Homes looked like when he first toured it in 2016: half-demolished roads, limited lighting, dilapidated housing. “Nothing about it suggested a kid growing up there was headed for something better,” he said. “That was the impetus—to make sure this became a place where families could thrive, where kids would see possibilities for themselves.”

The site carries a layered history. Isolated by urban renewal, it echoed a familiar story in East Knoxville of displacement and institutional mistrust.

“The process we put in place had to be one where residents were our primary stakeholders,” Bentley said. “We had to listen to them, walk hand in hand with them, and through that we built a lot of trust.”

KCDC Chief Development Officer Jim Hatfield is in charge of the site’s redevelopment.

For this story I also spoke with Daryl Johnson, Johnson Architecture’s president, principal architect and director of design. Community engagement, he agreed, was crucial. With Gensler Chicago’s Andre Brumfield helping set the roadmap, the team ran 11 community meetings that led to three guiding goals: connectivity, identity and community.

The planning process stretched through 2019 and into early 2020. KCDC and its partners worked in concentric circles: starting with resident-only meetings, then expanding to neighborhood sessions, and finally opening the conversation to the broader community. Austin Homes may have carried a rough reputation, but it was still home to people who cared deeply about it—and they showed up.

“The most important thing was to make sure the neighborhood was heard about what they wanted,” Johnson said. “When you reimagine a place people have been so connected to for so long, there’s a lot of passion—what’s it going to be, how does this affect me, how is this an improvement?” Fortunately, he said, Austin Homes had strong resident advocates who showed up and spoke up.

One theme came through again and again: residents felt close to downtown but cut off, both physically and metaphorically. Summit Hill Drive, elevated above the property, seemed engineered to let drivers bypass the community without ever seeing it. “We heard over and over: bring the property back up to street level,” Bentley said. “It was both practical and symbolic—making sure people knew this neighborhood was part of the city, not hidden from it.”

Johnson described how that thinking shaped the design: larger buildings front Summit Hill, while smaller walk-ups and townhouse-style buildings step down the grade to keep sightlines open. Materials, selected within federal funding rules, were composed intentionally so homes at different price points are indistinguishable in their finishes. 

Throughout it all, cultivating community was always at the forefront. “The big thing Austin Homes had lost was a neighborhood feel,” Johnson told me. “We wanted streets and porches and trees—reasons to be outside, talking to your neighbors.”

That symbolism was matched by policy design: true mixed income—subsidized, workforce and market-rate units side by side. The goal, Bentley explained, was not only economic diversity but mobility. “Socioeconomically diverse communities are safer communities. They’re better for schools. The research says kids who grow up in mixed-income neighborhoods are more likely to thrive than kids who grow up in concentrated poverty.” 

In most HUD programs, once you make more income, you’re phased out. At First Creek at Austin, upward mobility doesn’t come with a moving truck. Bentley said, “Here, if your circumstances improve, you can stay in the same community, in the same school zone, with the same neighbors. You can do better without having to start over somewhere else.”

Residents’ input shaped more than architecture. When asked what was already working in their community, they pointed to the Lighthouse, a long-standing partnership between Central Bearden Church and Austin Homes’ resident association that provided tutoring, afterschool care and women’s programs. So KCDC dedicated space in the first new building for the Lighthouse to continue. “There’s no revenue in that decision,” Bentley said. “But it mattered to residents, and following through built trust.”

The outcomes are starting to show. By KPD’s measure, crime in the area has dropped 57.5% since redevelopment began. And the demand for housing speaks for itself: Phases 1 and 2 leased almost instantly, with Phase 3 leasing having opened last month. (Note: Residents displaced for construction were at the front of the line to return.)

Anecdotally, each time I’ve stopped by over the past few months to check up on progress, the signs of life are inspiring: kids racing around the playground, a teenager dribbling a basketball down the sidewalk, neighbors waving from their porches, dogs tugging their owners along new paths. A girl with a bomb pop wondering what the big deal is. Signs of a neighborhood not just rebuilt, but lived in.

 

Addendum: Individuals making up to 80% AMI (Area Median Income) can apply for a lease at First Creek at Austin. For a family of four in Knoxville, that is $79,520 annually. Phase 3 offers 50 units of supportive housing for people who are 62 and older with incomes up to 50% AMI (currently $34,750 per year for a one-person household). For more information or to apply, visit https://www.firstcreekliving.com/.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Austin Homes was Knoxville’s first African American public housing project. As noted by former KCDC executive director Art Cate in the comments below, College Homes (TN3-2) was the first African American segregated public housing development.