Austin Texas Community

On March 11, the community organization Austin Justice Coalition and data activism nonprofit Measure jointly released a report titled “The State of Black Lives in Austin.” 

Drawing on Austin Justice Coalition’s deep community ties and Measure’s statistical expertise, the dossier’s 64 pages condemn the city of Austin for its failure to invest in and address Black communities in Austin – whose numbers have been declining since at least 2000 – and present a series of urgent needs elucidated by Measure’s comprehensive study. 

For the first time since a similar report came out 16 years ago, the paper enables activists to wield the high card of hard numbers as they approach policymakers – and the coalition hopes the report will indeed furnish policymakers with invaluable guidance if they’ll come to the table. 

“I’m all about using data not just as a flashlight, but also as a scalpel, as a hammer, as a wrench where it needs to be, as a nail where it needs to be,” said Measure founder Meme Styles. “It’s us reclaiming the power of data that was taken from us. … That was originally taken from us. What you’re seeing is truly the manifestation of restorative data – we’re restoring the power of data back to our communities.” 

This year’s report juxtaposes itself with the findings of the 2008 African American Quality of Life Report, which surveyed similar data and cataloged 56 initiatives “underway” to improve quality of life in Austin. 

Most of the initiatives have not been sustained – and there’s scant proof on whether many got off the ground. 

Projects promised in the Mayor’s Task Force on Institutional Racism and Systemic Equities 70-page final report in 2017, the coalition found, fell similarly limp. 

“You know, I’m careful not to speak for the Black community because, you know, it’s a lot of us and I’m just one voice. But I think this whole experiment with this follow-up report of the 2008 study just kind of echoed the sentiments that a lot of Black people in the city already feel, in that the city just doesn’t take the needs and necessities of Black folks in the city seriously,” Austin Justice Coalition founder Chas Moore said.

“Year in and year out, it’s these really big promises, but then when you go to cash a check, it bounces,” he said.

The study concurred that 16 years after the original report, conditions had not improved. The report identified significant hardships faced by Black Austinites across all major categories examined.

Community safety

Though making up 7.5 percent of Austin’s population, Black individuals accounted for 15 percent of all traffic stops and 25 percent of arrests in 2018. The report noted that Black Austinites continue to experience incidents of police violence and misconduct in interactions with the Austin Police Department. 

The coalition called for investment in common diversion services such as social services and mental health resourcing as well as “additional alternative approaches to safety like conflict resolution and restorative justice practitioners, the new Harvest Trauma Recovery Center and the Office of Violence Prevention.” 

Though Black students constitute just 6 percent of the student body of the Austin Independent School District, they account for 17 percent of referrals to law enforcement and in-school arrests. The report noted that AISD’s “Removing race-specific objectives from Austin ISD’s performance scorecard complicates addressing educational disparities.” 

Health and wellness

From 2009 to 2011, African Americans had the highest mortality rate in four out of the seven leading causes of death reported in Travis County. Life expectancy in Austin tracks tightly with racial makeup and domicile location, with African Americans generally having the lowest life expectancy.

The study found that the 2008 report’s failure to establish and/or track outcomes of health initiatives outlined in the 2008 report represents a significant handicap in the effort to improve health outcomes among Black Austinites and exposes the sore need for a “multi-sector approach focused on social determinants of health.”

Business and economics

Measure’s study found that in 2019, the median Black household earned only 54 cents on every dollar earned by the median white household.

**Neighborhood sustainability **

Austin’s Black population has fluctuated and shrunk over the last decade: “Despite the city’s growth, the Black population of Austin declined but has shown some stabilization from 2016-2021, hovering around 7.5% of the total population.” Black Austinites are also disproportionately represented in both permanent supportive housing (PSH) and rapid re-housing (RRH) programs. 

The report notes that these statistics elucidate an urgent call for “equitable development strategies that prioritize the well-being of Black residents” and “targeted interventions and resources to support Black individuals and families experiencing homelessness.”

Arts and culture

According to a 2022 report, Black communities – 7.5 percent of Austin – received an average of 2 percent of cultural funding investment.  The study also found that, despite the city’s vibrant music scene, 93 percent of Black musicians experience discrimination when booking shows.

Though the coalition authored the report to be explicit in its political urgency, they chose to address their clarion call to policymakers in a highly original fashion.

“This Measure Black paper demands answers and accountability from the City of Austin,” states the executive summary. “We’ve included questions at the end of this report instead of recommendations as our community has provided ENOUGH recommendations over the years.

“This concluding chapter is unfinished – such is the ongoing nature of the journey toward racial justice in Austin, Texas,” the coalition asserted following a set of reflective questions for policymakers. “But equipped with the sobering reality this report provides, Austin now has an opportunity to write the next chapter with boldness, starting with heeding the voices that have shone truth on the unchanged state of Black lives in Austin.”

The document’s authors encourage its readers to be especially cautious not to fall prey to short-term thinking. “The lens that I put on when I’m engaging in this work every single day is an Afro-futuristic lens that embraces imagination, the essence of what if, and the potential of curiosity,” Styles said.

City employees who responded to a survey on the city’s behavior with regard to ethics gave the city lower marks for trust and accountability as compared to how city management rated the city. Employees surveyed also showed a greater fear of retaliation for reporting ethics violations than management respondents did.

These are two major conclusions of an ethics assessment done by the Ethics and Compliance Initiative at the request of the Office of the City Auditor. Members of City Council’s Audit and Finance Committee are scheduled to hear about the assessment during Wednesday’s meeting.

ECI, the group that performed the assessment, said the city has many of the components needed for an effective ethics and compliance program. “However, results suggest not all components are in place or working together,” they said.

According to the special report based on ECI’s findings, responses from city staff to questions about the ethical environment were 14 points lower than responses from executive management. As it relates to trust, the average difference was 16 points lower, the report notes.

In particular, ECI noted that responses indicated employees did not report ethical issues for these top three reasons:

• Staff did not believe corrective action would be taken.
• Staff did not think the report would remain anonymous.
• Staff reported they feared retaliation.

The auditor’s office notes that the survey done by ECI was the most comprehensive effort to listen to employee perspectives in many years. In the past, city management performed surveys on a regular basis, but management has cut back on those, the report notes. “These actions could be the source of the deficit of trust identified in ECI’s survey. It is possible that as each year passed, these deficits added up to a large debt of trust that can be hard to repay. Our office has engaged with city management to explore a path to restore Listening to the Workforce as an effective tool to gauge and address where action is needed, especially related to ethics,” the auditor’s office wrote.

ECI talked to senior city leaders and members of the city’s Ethics and Compliance team in late 2022. Of course, with the exit of City Manager Spencer Cronk in February 2023 and the hiring of interim City Manager Jesús Garza shortly after that, perceptions could have changed. However, the outside team interviewed members of the city’s Ethics and Compliance team as well as city leaders in September 2023.

“The city of Austin has experienced several changes since early 2023, notably in the city’s senior leadership team,” auditors wrote. “We feel the results noted in ECI’s report reflect perspectives built up over time and may not fully reflect perspectives shared by the current leadership team. We also see ECI recommendations as an opportunity for city management to take decisive action to improve the city’s ethical culture through its (ethics and compliance) program.”

Garza responded to the report, saying he agreed with recommendations and would implement changes for a citywide ethics and compliance program. He said he would evaluate options and make sure that appropriate resources were assigned to carry out the tasks required of such a program. A city spokesperson told the Austin Monitor that Deven Desai had been appointed as the new interim chief ethics and compliance officer and started work on Feb. 26. He reports to Garza’s chief of staff, Susana Carbajal. In the past, Desai worked for the city as an assistant city attorney, assistant human resources director, police monitor and chief labor relations officer.

A proposed framework for how the south shores of Lady Bird Lake will build out in future years received a lukewarm response from the Environmental Commission on Thursday.

While only the Planning Commission and City Council are scheduled to vote on the draft regulating plan in April and May, the fact that several commissioners expressed concerns about the draft could be considered in Council’s deliberations of the South Central Waterfront Combining District & Density Bonus Program.

Years of work have gone into developing the waterfront plan, with Council adopting the original vision document in 2016. In 2022, Council directed staff to formulate a regulating plan containing a density bonus program similar to downtown, with the goal of encouraging previously approved planned unit developments and other parcels to opt into the district program.

While the plan has stayed true to the long-held goal of turning more than 30 blocks of asphalt and nondescript buildings into a vibrant urban dreamscape, some other community-driven goals – such as an abundance of parkland and open space and affordable housing – have been broadly diminished. The plan calls for a minimum of 5 percent affordable housing in new developments or a fee-in-lieu. Further, a new state law has limited the amount of parkland the city can require of new residential developments.

After city planner April Geruso walked the commission through major aspects of the plan, commissioners voiced a range of apprehensions, including the absence of height limits in anticipation of light rail; a lack of new parkland and open space; the prospect of displacement and limited affordable housing requirements; and the likelihood of more birds colliding with tall towers.

“What I hear are words like ‘goal’ and ‘vision,’ but I don’t hear ‘we’re going to buy a piece of property and turn it into a park,’” Commissioner Richard Brimer said. “We’re attracting thousands of new residents into this small area that we’re trying to build up as, literally, a new downtown south of the river.”

Commissioner Hanna Cofer voiced similar concerns about the scarcity of parkland in an area expected to be filled with residential developments over the years. “I understand the needle that you are trying to thread with the state law,” she told staff. “I’m curious, though, if there have been other ideas to more proactively incentivize open space. It seems like relying on an opt-in from developers doesn’t really incentivize that sort of district-level open spaces.”

Both Geruso and Tyler Tripp of the Planning Department responded with a hopeful note that city staff are continuing to explore opportunities for financing parkland while staying within the confines of state law.

Regarding height, the possibility of tall buildings lining the roadways could pose greater threats to migrating birds, Commissioner Jennifer Bristol said. “When you start getting canyon effects, that is extremely bad for birds. And when we think about how the river is a giant superhighway for migratory birds coming in – they’re coming in right now – and suddenly we’re throwing up even more obstacles in their way,” she said. “I know that using bird-friendly glass and bird-friendly construction is one of the things that’s being considered, so I’m happy about that, but the canyon effect really … pushes the birds through there so quickly.”

Commissioner Mariana Krueger said she was pleased to see equitable transit-oriented development south of the river but questioned the affordability requirements in the plan. “Five percent seems like a really small amount to me, and I understand that that’s the minimum required but, as has been mentioned by others, counting on developers to opt in above that, I don’t have a ton of confidence in.”

Tripp told commissioners the 5 percent minimum is based on an economic analysis provided by a third-party consultant. “Unfortunately, right now we just do not have a great economy for development,” he said. “So right at this moment just about all that is economically viable … is about 5 percent affordable housing while having the rest of these community benefits.” Still, he added, there may be some flexibility to increase that percentage once economic conditions improve.

“I don’t spend my days looking at this kind of economic analysis or haggling with developers,” Krueger said, “but I just earnestly feel as a citizen and a low-to-middle-income person that we need government to really be leading on demanding and requiring more from developers on this front.”

Members of the Downtown Commission debated and mostly praised the draft version of the city’s Equity-Based Preservation Plan, which is open for public feedback through the end of May.

At last week’s meeting, the commission looked beyond the scope of the downtown core to express concerns and hopes related to the plan, which is intended to balance the need for more housing and prevent displacement with the goal of preserving historic structures in a fast-growing city.

The plan, which has over 100 recommendations, was crafted over two years and addresses the priorities for preservation, which bodies and departments are most involved in preservation efforts, and how to simplify and streamline the preservation process.

One of the first questions from the commission concerned how to assist property owners or new developers who wish to replace a deteriorated structure but learn during the demolition approval process that the structure is potentially historic and barred from demolition.

“They’ve had engineers go in that say, this is not even salvageable. They try to get a demolition permit to scrape the property, and then the city stops them and says, this is historic or potentially historic,” Commissioner Ralph Ishmael said. “In those instances, why has there never been funds available for the city to step in prior to these structures falling down? It just seems unfair to me that neither the family nor the community nor the city bothered to try to take care of these houses.”

Cara Bertron, historic preservation officer for the city, said the plan includes a goal for the Law Department and other city bodies to adjust the rules regarding instances of demolition by neglect, and finding funding sources to assist in the rehabilitation of historic properties for owners who can’t afford to retain ownership.

Another concern was over the incentives for historic preservation included in the recent HOME initiative to encourage density. Commissioner Liz Coufal worried that longtime homeowners in East Austin with historic homes would have high costs and face a lengthy waiting period to take advantage of the ability to add more residences onto their lots.

JuanRaymon Rubio, a member of Historic Landmark Commission who has contributed to the plan, said those considerations are being discussed for further revisions to the land code tied to the HOME initiative.

“Some felt that the preservation bonus didn’t do enough to help citizens be able to do that with the (accessory dwelling unit). If I’ve been in the east side of Austin for generations and my family has never gotten those loans because of redlining districts, then how am I as a third-generation Austinite gonna get that loan if I don’t have the credit and I don’t have the equity to do that?” he said. “A lot of organizations were asking … now can you create a mechanism for us to get loans so that we can enter into agreements and easily educate us how do we do that so that someone can build it in the back of our house?”

Chair August Harris noted the importance of the recommendation to hire an archaeologist who would be available to step in when demolition and redevelopment efforts lead to the discovery of historically important artifacts that need to be protected. Harris pointed to incidents like the destruction of Native American middens discovered during the construction of a trail along Walnut Creek as an example of what the city should avoid going forward.

“That resource is now gone forever and the ability to tell the story of the people that lived along Walnut Creek, that’s gone because the city didn’t have an archaeologist, and (Austin Transportation Department) was in a hurry to build their trail. There are sites like that all over Austin and Travis County,” Harris said.

“If we have resources for an archaeologist and we’re cognizant of that process going forward, we might not lose some of the few bits that are left.”

According to Travis County commissioners and staff, eastern Travis County has long been blighted. Lack of investment and economic opportunities along with displacement and systemic racism have left the area systemically impoverished.

In 2024, after years of dilapidation in the area, Travis County and the city of Austin have set their sights on changing – if not transforming – the lives of residents of this swath of the county.

On March 19, the Travis County Commissioners Court approved an interlocal agreement (ILA) with the city of Austin to plan, prepare and implement a “Marshall Plan” – an ambitious program which, according to the Travis County Office of Economic Development & Strategic Investments (EDSI), “identifies quality public investments and funding mechanisms to support communities in East Travis County that have faced displacement and systemic racism that has left people of color falling further behind economically; made them more likely to be in a generational cycle of poverty; and less resilient to natural disasters, weather events, and national or personal economic or health crises.”

The city of Austin’s district plan addresses these concerns, setting out “to review past and present inequities as well as disinvestments in services and infrastructure within the district, address them, and provide guidance for retaining existing residents and businesses, creating and maintaining great neighborhoods, spurring economic development, creating and retaining stable jobs that pay a living wage, improving connectivity, providing high-quality public spaces, and meeting community needs.” Commissioners, staff and community members supported – often gravely – the call for intervention.

John Lawler, a representative of Austin Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison, was emphatic about the district’s derelict condition. “If you take a bus out there, you have to sit an hour at the bus stop before the bus comes to get you,” he said.

“When there were pocket parks that should have been there in 1975 when a lot of that property was taken by eminent domain, they don’t exist,” he said. “On the other side of Johnny Morris Road, there are a lot of properties, even commercial properties, that are on septic that don’t have a water/wastewater infrastructure.”

Later, Lawler emphasized Harper-Madison’s enthusiasm for the project, remarking on a letter of support from state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt and recalling state Rep. Sheryl Cole’s appearance at Austin City Council to cheer on their ILA.

Finally, after a string of acknowledgement and praise for involved staff, the Commissioners Court passed the motion unanimously.

The plan for eastern Travis County will proceed in two phases. First, the entities will conduct “foundational collaborative work” – including demarcation of a service area (neither the county nor the city has actually defined the boundaries of the impoverished districts they reference), surveys of existing conditions and activities, and creation of community advisory committees.

“That foundational work, the phase one of the scope, is really to identify everything that exists, everything that’s been done previously, everything that is planned to be done and how is it going to be paid for,” said Christy Moffett, director of economic development and strategic investments. “And so it’s not stopping anybody from doing anything. It’s just the first things we’re doing is basically a catalog of all the investments.”

In the second phase, “co-creating a plan,” the jurisdictions will work “jointly on finalizing a geographic area, summarizing existing conditions, current plans, assets, and activities in the area, and creating a community advisory committee and collaborative engagement plan.”

“Once these tasks are complete,” states the project’s scope-of-work plan, “their discrete deliverables informed by community engagement will create a plan for the Northeast Area District to guide the vision, projects, prioritization, and investment for the next 20 years and beyond.”

Per the ILA, the two phases of the plan will stretch over approximately 18 months, though this figure may be highly flexible depending on community engagement.

EDSI first proposed the idea of drafting and implementing a plan for eastern Travis County to the Commissioners Court in June 2023, after a coalition of city and county leaders and staff met to discuss the possibility of a community-led improvement plan for the area.

The court, in unanimous support, allocated $250,000 of the Fiscal Year 2024 budget to support their work.

The city and county each directed their staff to prepare interlocal agreements, which would coordinate and ensure synergy between their efforts. The city of Austin approved its ILA on March 7.

At the Commissioners Court meeting Tuesday, city and county staffers and community members were enthralled that the project was approved in full.

“I know my boss, Council Member Harper-Madison – if she could be here this morning, she would be buzzing in her seat over this,” Lawler said.

“I sit here not only representing ATX, but also some other stakeholders such as Colony Park Neighborhood Association, the Colony Park CDC, Lakeside CDC, Austin Revitalization Authority and others,” said Ashton Cumberbatch. “And so we very much want to encourage you all to go ahead and pass this resolution. We have long been supporters of the county and the city working together to bring holistic, comprehensive, sustainable development to the northeast quadrant portion of the Eastern Crescent.

“We look forward to working with the folks at this table and others to implement that and to make it a reality. And absolutely have a dream come true in this region.”

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/local/2024/03/20/austin-police-union-appears-ready-to-comply-with-oversight-ordinance/73040410007/

https://communityimpact.com/austin/south-central-austin/transportation/2024/03/22/driverless-semitrucks-to-hit-texas-roads/

If you want to understand America’s strange relationship with housing in the 21st century, look at Austin, where no matter what happens to prices, someone’s always claiming that the sky is falling.

In the 2010s, the capital of Texas grew faster than any other major U.S. metro, pulling in movers from around the country. Initially, downtown and suburban areas struggled to build enough apartments and single-family homes to meet the influx of demand, and housing costs bloomed across the region. Since the beginning of the pandemic, even as rent inflation has gone berserk nationwide, no city has experienced anything like Austin’s growth in housing costs. In 2021, rents rose at the most furious annual rate in the city’s history. In 2022, rent growth exceeded every other large city in the country, as Austin’s median rent nearly doubled.

This might sound like the beginning of a familiar and depressing story—one that Americans have gotten used to over the past few decades, especially if they live in a coastal blue state. California and New York, anchored by “superstar” clusters in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Wall Street, have pulled in some of the nation’s most creative workers, who have pushed price levels up. But a combination of stifling construction regulations, eternal permitting processes, legal tools to block new development, and NIMBY neighbors restricted the addition of more housing units. Rent and ownership costs rose in America’s richest cities, until families started giving up and moving out. As the economics writer Noah Smith has argued, California and New York are practically driving people out of the state “by refusing to build enough housing."

But Austin—and Texas more generally—has defied the narrative that skyrocketing housing costs are a problem from hell that people just have to accept. In response to rent increases, the Texas capital experimented with the uncommon strategy of actually building enough homes for people to live in. This year, Austin is expected to add more apartment units as a share of its existing inventory than any other city in the country. Again as a share of existing inventory, Austin is adding homes more than twice as fast as the national average and nearly nine times faster than San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego. (You read that right: nine times faster.)

The results are spectacular for renters and buyers. The surge in housing supply, alongside declining inbound domestic migration, has led to falling rents and home prices across the city. Austin rents have come down 7 percent in the past year.

One could celebrate this report as a win for movers. Or, if you’re The Wall Street Journal, you could treat the news as a seriously frightening development.

“Once America’s Hottest Housing Market, Austin Is Running in Reverse,” announced the headline of the top story on the WSJ website on Monday. The article illustrated “Austin’s recent downswing” and its “glut of luxury apartment buildings” with photographs of abandoned downtown plazas, as if the fastest-growing city of the 2010s had been suddenly hollowed out by a plague and left to zombies and tumbleweeds.

Running in reverse. Downswing. Glut. This is the same Wall Street Journal that, in 2021, noted that rent inflation was demolishing American budgets and, in 2022, gawked at all-time-high rents in places like New York City. Sure, falling housing costs are an annoyance if you’re trying to sell your place in the next quarter, or if you’re a developer operating on the razor’s edge of profitability. But this outlook seems to set up a no-win situation. If rising rent prices are bad, but falling rent prices are also bad, what exactly are we supposed to root for in the U.S. housing market?

This is a surprisingly complex question for Americans today. In the U.S., our houses are meant to perform contrary roles in society: shelter for today and investment vehicle for tomorrow. This approach creates a kind of temporal disjunction around the housing market, where what appears sensible for one generation (Please, no more construction near me, it’s annoying and could hurt my property values!) is calamitous for the next (Wait, there’s nowhere near me for my children to live!).

If homeownership is best understood as an investment, like equities, we should root for prices to go up. If housing is an essential good, like food and clothing, we should cheer when prices stay flat—or even when they fall. Instead, many Americans seem to think of a home as existing in a quantum superposition between a present-day necessity and a future asset.

This magical thinking isn’t just a phenomenon of real-estate reporting. It is deeply rooted even in the highest echelons of policy making. Just look at the Democratic Party’s 2020 platform. The document reads (emphasis mine):

Homeownership has long been central to building generational wealth, and expanding access to homeownership to those who have been unfairly excluded and discriminated against is critical to closing the racial wealth gap.

But then the same platform goes on to say (emphasis mine):

Housing in America should be stable, accessible, safe, healthy, energy efficient, and, above all, affordable. No one should have to spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing, so families have ample resources left to meet their other needs and save for retirement.

See the issue? On the one hand, the Democratic Party says we are all relying on homeownership to close the racial wealth gap, which implies that we should root for today’s home values to significantly rise, so that today’s minority owners can build wealth. On the other hand, the party says we need houses to be “above all, affordable.” In that case, we should despair when home values rise too fast, because it implies that the next generation of owners will be priced out of the market.

I don’t think the authors of the Democratic Party platform are careless or clueless. I think they’re doing their best to articulate a folk wisdom: Housing should, somehow, deliver permanent affordability and constant appreciation, at the same time. And perhaps they’re trying to reconcile the awkwardness of a market where ordinary middle-class people are both sellers and buyers of an essential yet expensive good; where high inflation would help some people, while deflation would help others.

Americans’ inconsistent approach to housing doesn’t end with these contradictory desires. In 2022, three economists asked several thousand Americans a few simple questions about how supply and demand works in various markets. For example, if automakers suddenly stopped making new cars and trucks, what happens to the price of used vehicles? Or, if a farm started using an amazing new fertilizer and got a huge boost in grain yield, what will happen to the price of the grain? Contrary to the assumption that Americans don’t understand basic economics, the survey respondents did pretty well on the test. They correctly guessed that a shortage of cars would shift car prices up and that a surge in grain production would shift grain prices down. So far, so good.

Then the economists asked the participants about housing. They said: If a new law makes it easier to build dwellings near train stops, what happens to housing prices? Well, all of a sudden, the laws of supply and demand no longer applied. More than a third of participants said that “a large, exogenous increase in their region’s housing stock” would cause rents and home prices to rise. “The public understands the implications of supply and demand in markets for agricultural commodities, for labor, and even for cars, a durable consumer good that, like housing, trades in new and second-hand markets,” the authors wrote. Only when the subject is housing do many Americans despair that you can never build your way out of a shortage.

Housing is a pit of oxymoronic thinking. The Wall Street Journal tells its readers that it’s bad when rents go up but also bad when rents go down. The Democratic Party platform says homes have to be affordable and also that they ought to appreciate faster than the rate of inflation. Americans in research surveys say that if grain yields surge, grain prices go down, but that if housing construction surges, housing costs go up.

I’m listing these examples not to be despondent about the prospects for housing abundance, but rather to be realistic. Housing is, in fact, both a present need and a future investment. In a dual-side marketplace, I suppose you could argue that any change in price is bad for some party. But the externalities of housing abundance outweigh the loss to any particular party rooting to profit from scarcity. More and denser housing has been found to reduce inequality and raise personal income; to increase individual exercise rates and reduce obesity; to limit carbon emissions and preserve thousands of acres of natural splendor; and even to increase productivity and innovation.

The miracle of Austin is helpful to recognize, because it restores clarity to a simple truth: Houses are essential, but they are not magical. The normal rules of supply and demand apply. Perhaps more blue cities and states should make a point of applying those rules—and build more damn homes.

City Council voted Thursday to spend $87 million to buy 107 acres of land in Southeast Austin for affordable housing.

Tokyo Electron, which makes semiconductors and display production equipment, announced in February that it was moving from the site. The city plans to build 1,100 units – some of which will be affordable – on the property. It sits near a future light-rail line.

Council Member José Velásquez, who represents the area, said the project will allow the city to prioritize housing needs for “hard-working residents.”****

“This is the first major step in a project that has the potential to be transformational,” Velásquez said. “One of my goals is to provide more affordable housing and deeply affordable housing to District 3. The opportunity to do so in this location, built intentionally and strategically with public transit access, is beyond exciting.”

In his newsletter Monday, Mayor Kirk Watson said he envisions something similar to the Mueller neighborhood. He said the city learned some lessons from that development, however, and will make sure there is enough dedicated affordable housing to meet the demand and public transportation options.****

Watson said he also hopes the site includes workforce housing** **– affordable to those with lower incomes, such as firefighters, teachers, health care professionals and service workers.

In 2017, the city set a goal to build 60,000 affordable housing units. Another 75,000 were to be rented at market-rate.** **But the city is behind on those goals, and Watson said he hopes this development can help chip away at that number.

“The vision is for a dense, transit-oriented neighborhood that could conservatively accommodate 1,100 living units,” he said. “The potential here is great.”

The city is using $27 million from a $300 million anti-displacement fund voters approved in 2020 as part of the transit expansion known as Project Connect. The fund is intended to help prevent people who live near future public transit from being priced out of their homes.

By the end of February, the city had already allocated $120 million of the anti-displacement funds, according to city data.

Using this money allows the city’s housing department to develop additional income-restricted units close to transit and other community amenities, like parks.

The remaining $60 million for the property will be funded through bonds backed by property tax revenue, according to city officials.

Two buildings on the site – totaling roughly 190,000 square feet – will be converted as a second location for the area’s Combined Transportation and Emergency Communication Center, which coordinates emergency response.

According to a news release, the city will also gain about 66 undeveloped acres near the Austin Energy Control Center at 2500 Montopolis Drive. This land, combined with the current 18-plus acres at the southeast corner of Grove and Riverside already held by the Austin Housing Finance Corp., will provide substantial opportunities for additional affordable housing, Assistant City Manager Veronica Briseño said.

Monica Guzman with Go Austin/Vamos Austin, a coalition of East Austin residents and community leaders, questioned whether the units would actually be affordable for many Austinites in the workforce.

Velásquez said the purchase is the first step.

“One of the greatest aspects of this acquisition is that we are drivers,” he said. “And with intentionality, discipline, thoughtfulness and a focus on accessibility and inclusion, we can leverage this opportunity into creating a vibrant, affordable, transit-friendly community that sustainably serves the needs of many and works to mitigate the impacts of displacement.”

On Thursday, City Council approved a step forward for increasing the number of trees in the city as well as promoting pedestrian and bicycle access throughout Austin. The vote was unanimous on the resolution sponsored by Mayor Pro Tem Leslie Pool.

After passage of the item on the consent agenda, Pool said, “In the face of a warming planet and temperatures rising, extreme weather, as we know, is becoming more common, and the city must act to mitigate these impacts for today and for future generations.”

She concluded, “As we keep pushing to build a city that is resilient, equitable and sustainable, we acknowledge the decisions we are making today are shaping the Austin of tomorrow. I want to see a whole lot more trees in our future with a strong and healthy urban canopy, offering shade and shelter throughout this city.” Pool said the resolution would provide rules for planting trees in Austin’s rights of way for all future right-of-way projects. Right of way is defined as public-owned land including streets, sidewalks and the area behind the curb – typically everything from the street to the property lines.

Much of the work this resolution directs will fall to the Transportation and Public Works Department, which is directed to “explore creating a team dedicated to maintaining green infrastructure, including street trees, located in the right-of-way.” The resolution also seeks a funding source and the possibility of new full-time employees to staff the team.

As the resolution states, the city’s development process requirements are “burdensome, time-consuming, and introduce substantial risks to development projects, often disincentivizing the planting of street trees and other green infrastructure in the public right-of-way.” At the same time, “almost all of our city plans call for walkable pedestrian spaces, but no plan addresses how to achieve these goals” when there are competing priorities.

Staff will have to work through the maze of city regulations related to development, so the city manager “is directed to provide an opportunity for the Technical Advisory Review Panel to discuss technical challenges with the implementation of this initiative.” The resolution included a long list of city policies and plans that staff should review “to clarify requirements and determine the best approach to holistically manage the right-of-way to allow for street trees and other green infrastructure” for future projects.

The resolution directs a future city manager to come to the Council Mobility Committee on Sept. 19 to propose a timeline for bringing potential code standards and process changes to Council.

Among those sending letters of support for changes to the city’s green infrastructure rules were the local chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects, the board of Austin Outside and the board of the Austin Parks Foundation. Pool thanked supporters in the nonprofit and business communities. She particularly thanked architects Jana McCann and Kevin Howard “for daylighting this issue last fall and working with my team” to bring the resolution forward.

Co-sponsors on the resolution included Council members Paige Ellis, Ryan Alter, Natasha Harper-Madison, and José Velásquez. Council Member Chito Vela joined the list of sponsors during Thursday’s meeting.

The city is working to make incentives for creative spaces available to individual sites and properties as well as larger cultural districts that have been proposed in city planning documents in recent years.

Monday’s Arts Commission meeting included a presentation from Donald Jackson, a business process consultant in the Economic Development Department, on progress on the push to create standardized incentives that would encourage developers to create art galleries, music venues or other creative spaces in new projects. The incentives would work in some ways similarly to affordable housing bonuses that would allow greater building height and floor area ratio in exchange for providing discounted creative space for at least 10 years.

Jackson said EDD staff is working on the creation of a “paper district” with all the necessary conditions and incentives that could be applied to any site if a developer wished to incorporate a creative use into a given project. Jackson said the paper district would offer flexibility without the city deciding which districts or specific geographic areas would be best suited for the incentives.

“What it does is create a process that property owners and community groups and arts groups can basically go through to get this mapped into a specific area,” he said. “We wanted to make sure there was sort of a ground-up process that people could follow and not just try and dictate from above, like where every sort of creative district should be.”

Jackson said the incentive package is being presented to boards and commissions over the next month, with a Planning Commission hearing scheduled for April 23 and a City Council hearing expected for May 30.

Projects that enroll in the incentive plan would have to provide at least 30 percent of ground-floor building frontage to the eligible creative space, which would receive a lease at 50 percent of market rate with a yearly rate increase cap of 5 percent. Of the additional space allowed under the agreement, 25 percent would have to be dedicated to the affordable creative use.

The package would also include a fee-in-lieu option that would allow developers the applicable increased density without providing the eligible space – if they paid a predetermined fee that would pay for the creation or preservation of creative spaces elsewhere.

For the preservation or relocation of creative spaces affected by the redevelopment of an incentivized property, a comparable space would need to be created and the operator of the affected space would need to receive the option to lease the new space.

“We do these through land-use agreements or restrictive covenants similar to how density bonus programs work now for affordable housing – we’re just gonna use that,” Jackson said. “The city would use a similar mechanism and have that in place for affordable creative space.”

The incentive package would be another tool long sought by the creative community to help music venues, theaters and other cultural spaces continue to exist as land prices and operating costs across the city continue to increase. Last year, the city approved a change to the building code scaling back the regulatory process to open music venues and creative spaces across the city. That change made hundreds of parcels eligible for those uses that had been barred because of the previous land-use designation that treated those uses similar to bars and nightclubs.

Jackson said work is also underway to create separate but related overlay for the Red River Cultural District geared specifically toward preserving the cluster of music venues and entertainment businesses located between Sixth and 10th streets.

People still clinging to battered old lawn equipment may soon see opportunity for an upgrade, as City Council looks to reboot a “cash for clunkers” exchange program to incentivize eco-friendly landscaping.

The resolution, sponsored by Council Member Ryan Alter and passed March 7, directs staff to explore new approaches to the city’s electric landscaping rebate program, suggesting an equipment recycling program in which gas-powered lawnmowers, leaf blowers and weed trimmers could be traded in for their electric counterparts. Proponents say the model is a better use of funding in a market that is already leaning electric for many consumers, with similar programs in cities like Toledo, Louisville and Salt Lake City setting a precedent for success.

Alongside greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides, gas-powered lawn equipment is especially pernicious in its emission of fine particulate matter, an EPA-regulated toxin known to cause respiratory illnesses. As Travis County flirts with noncompliance with newly passed federal air quality standards, the resolution’s proponents say electrification of the landscaping sector, particularly at the commercial level, grows increasingly urgent.

As cities and states across the country make moves to ban gas-powered landscaping equipment, efforts in Texas have been hampered by the state’s own Legislature. The city of Dallas, which was poised to enact a full ban of gas-powered equipment last year, was driven back to the drawing board as Gov. Greg Abbott signed a state law preventing any city, county or school district from discriminating against products based on their fuel source.

Currently, Austin Energy’s Instant Savings program attempts to incentivize electric purchases, offering rebates of $30 for lawnmowers and $15 for weed cutters and leaf blowers during select months at Home Depot and Lowe’s locations across the city. Still, critics say the program is poorly structured to influence consumers in a market where first-time buyers are often choosing electric anyway.

“I’m in favor of landscape and equipment rebates, just not the way that they’re structured now,” said longtime environmentalist Scott Johnson at last week’s Electric Utility Commission meeting. Johnson, who has led electric mower trade-in campaigns since as early as 1996, hopes the city will recapture his success through a robust retirement and recycling program, in which more competitive rebates are awarded to those who bring in their gas-powered lawn equipment for exchange.

“The cost benefit in terms of carbon reductions and in terms of cost per dollar to incentivize the program is certainly better when you have a scrappage or retirement program,” Johnson said. “Staff is in discussion with Austin Resource Recovery to find a way to do that scrappage part, and perhaps they could take the lead on it. … They certainly have contacts to get the mowers to the correct place to have them melted down and reformed into other materials.”

Johnson hopes the program will gather momentum as Council awaits an Environmental Investment Plan currently in the works at the city’s Joint Sustainability Committee and slated for discussion in May. He says the next challenge will be tackling the commercial sector, where prohibitive equipment costs are making the electric transition more difficult.

City Council Member José Velásquez knows what it’s like to work with food for a living. According to his website, “José went to work at age 11 in a local panaderia to help his mother with bills. That same year he wrote his first petition to help a classmate out of an unsafe environment. José has not quit working or serving his community since.” Velásquez is the lead author of a resolution on today’s agenda asking interim City Manager Jesús Garza to consider changes to city rules that require food trucks to prove they are mobile and operating up to code by reporting to a city inspection location on Rutherford Lane once a year.

According to the resolution, there are more than 1,500 mobile food vendors operating within the city and “it is estimated that more than 80 percent are people of color.” The resolution points out that closing and moving a mobile food establishment for a full day to be inspected has a negative impact on the owners and employees of the food trucks.

Velásquez told the* Austin Monitor* on Wednesday that he has heard criticism about how the city processes the permitting for mobile food trucks. “It’s antiquated, and we can do a better job,” he said. “Having folks who already run on extremely slim margins having to tow their trucks to a central location in a tech hub like Austin, Texas –I think we can do better than that.”

He noted that sometimes a mobile food vendor will get their truck back and find that things are out of place, such as a stove or a propane tank that they use to cook food. He said those things can be broken while being towed to and from the city’s inspection facility, adding to the vendor’s expense.

Velásquez said his office is working diligently alongside Austin Public Health to explore updating requirements for food establishments. According to the resolution, that might mean changes for trucks that have a regular fixed location and an agreement with an adjacent business to opt for on-site permitting inspections in the same manner as brick-and-mortar food establishments.

The resolution directs the city manager to explore and confirm costs for any expanded staffing and equipment required by Austin Public Health and the Austin Fire Department.

Co-sponsors on the resolution include Council members Chito Vela, Zo Qadri, Natasha Harper-Madison and Vanessa Fuentes. Fuentes told colleagues on the City Council Message Board, “I would like to be added as a co-sponsor for Item 33, the resolution to allow mobile food establishments to opt-in to on-site permitting inspections. I want to thank Councilmember Velasquez for bringing forward this item. Having to close down for a day to go get an inspection is a huge burden and can be a huge loss of revenue for small business owners. I support the effort to streamline this process and make it more efficient so our mobile food truck owners don’t lose valuable time.”

Qadri said via email, “This is a commonsense reform that will give a boost to dozens of much-loved food trucks across our city. In District 9 alone, there are so many favorites that will greatly benefit by not having to seriously disrupt their business every time a new routine inspection is due. This resolution also gives our city the tools it needs to help better serve our food trucks moving forward, something that will be great for both our residents and visitors alike.”

Velásquez told the Monitor that Mayor Kirk Watson would also be a co-sponsor.

The city will turn to a state loan program as a major source of the funding for the more than $500 million cost of constructing caps and a stitch over Interstate 35 after it is buried and expanded over the course of the next decade.

At today’s meeting, City Council is expected to approve an application to request up to $191 million from Texas’ State Infrastructure Bank loan fund, which typically helps municipalities by providing amounts far smaller than what the city is seeking.

At Tuesday’s work session, staff from the Financial Services as well as Transportation and Public Works departments discussed the timeline for the cap-and-stitch effort, with a variety of financial commitments required by the end of this year. One of the main points of discussion during the work session was the decision to seek the SIB loan instead of the federal ​​Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loan that had been the main funding source under consideration until very recently.

Kim Olivares, deputy chief financial officer, said the TIFIA loan would require a bond election to secure the needed funding, but the SIB loan would be much easier to secure with no closing costs and an interest rate around 3.5 percent. The $191 million request would be five times larger than SIB’s largest previous loan, but Assistant City Manager Robert Goode said state officials have a positive view of the cap-and-stitch program and “they encouraged us to think beyond that box and push the envelope.”

The caps would be large plazas built over portions of the sunken freeway that can support soil, trees, people and buildings, and the stitch is an east-west roadway crossing.

The presentation included a breakdown of the city’s responsibilities for the the solid cap over the roadway from Cesar Chavez to Fourth Street, a series of three caps from Fourth to Seventh Street, the 11th and 12th streets cap, a mostly solid cap from 38th 1/2 Street to Airport Boulevard and a single enhanced pedestrian stitch at Holly Street.

The construction and engineering costs for those enhancements will total about $525 million, with the city needing to provide the state with the $19 million remaining due to complete design work by this December. A portion of the construction costs – $99 million – will be covered by a federal grant the city received last week, with the portion not covered by SIB loans likely to come from a bond election planned for 2026.

Council Member Ryan Alter said he is concerned about the city relying on the state to provide such a substantial portion of funding for the projects, especially since the amount far exceeds what has typically been approved in the past.

“We’ve got $163 million in the decision by December 2024. … If we either don’t get the (SIB loan) or get a diminished award, do we have a backup plan?” he said. “I’m just trying to think of the options available if we get to August or September – and if the only option at that point available is something that requires voter approval, are we going to run up against timelines to do that?”

Richard Mendoza, director of the Transportation and Public Works Department, said the city is still pursuing other funding options, including more federal grants.

“We’ll have to have additional conversations primarily around where we want to prioritize and move forward with the available funding that we have,” he said. “I also understand that the (Multimodal Project Discretionary Grant) and infrastructure grant programs for highway projects is going, and that calls are going to come sooner than last year and it’s gonna be facilitated fairly quickly. It’s a dynamic situation for us.”

Mayor Kirk Watson said he’d received positive feedback on the cap-and-stitch plan in a call from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in a phone call received after the award last week of the $105 million Capital Construction Grant for the Chavez/Fourth Street cap, with an indication that federal officials looked very favorably at the goals of reconnecting portions of East Austin that had been cordoned off by the expressway.

Watson also expressed thanks for state officials who have been supportive of the ambitious cap-and-stitch plan over the past year-plus.

“They have signaled to us a willingness to entertain a much bigger opportunity here that is consistent, I think, with having the kind of relationship that we want to have with the state government so that we can partner on projects like this,” Watson said.

Today, City Council will convene again for a regular meeting. We’ve taken a look at the reasonably sized agenda and picked a few things that might be of interest. As usual, the entire agenda is also online and can be read in its entirety here.

A couple of high-dollar items on today’s agenda have definitely attracted our attention. First is a bid for $191 million from the state to help finance a plan to partially cover the expanded I-35 downtown. That money would be in addition to a $105 million federal grant that is already on the books and a potential bond election that was discussed at Tuesday’s work session.

Council will also consider the purchase of the near-Southeast Tokyo Electron Campus for $87 million. The campus, which is just south of Montopolis, is already being touted as a new Mueller-style development that, as we saw during the Dougherty Arts discussion, already has Council members daydreaming.

At their last meeting, Council approved new regulations that require reclaimed water for new development. Today, they will strengthen those regulations with a fee-in-lieu that can be paid instead of participating in the water-saving rules. Here’s a handy little chart of what the proposal looks like at the moment:

A resolution from Council Member José Velásquez looks to reform a strange pilgrimage requirement that is in the code for food trucks. The law currently requires mobile food vendors to prove their mobility by closing up and driving to a central inspection facility. Citing the burden this imposes and the fact that the majority of employees of such establishments are people of color, the resolution looks to eliminate the requirement and make it easier to operate food trucks in the city.

Velásquez also has a resolution on today’s agenda that would clarify the city’s current policy for employees during emergency closures and bad weather. To wit: The resolution seeks to define “essential employees,” which is a concept that appears to be a backbone of the policy but does not appear to have a super-clear definition. 

In another measure aimed at city employees, Council Member Vanessa Fuentes has sponsored a resolution that would help them build families through benefits like “infertility treatment services such as artificial insemination and assisted reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilization and cryopreservation services.”

Council Member Alison Alter reconfirms her dedication to wildfire safety with a resolution that works to strengthen an update of (and funding for) the Community Wildfire Protection Plan.

And Council will consider a name change for Kellam Road to “Circuit of the Americas Boulevard.” The road, as you probably correctly guessed, is near Circuit of the Americas, and the name change is a request, as you probably guessed, from Circuit of the Americas, who will pay about $2,500 for it. The change appears to be pretty uncontroversial: It has the support of the Austin Fire Department, Austin Police Department, Austin Transportation and Public Works Department, Communications and Technology Department, Emergency Medical Services and Travis County, and response forms were returned from only three of the 25 property owners abutting the road, all of whom supported the renaming.

In terms of zoning, we’re keeping our eyes on the “Bolm West” Planned Development Agreement that would pave the way for the development of more than 71 acres on the Colorado River, just east of the Montopolis bridge. The development would be massive, according to the meeting documents: “2,219 multifamily units, 385 room hotel, 1,499,358 sq. ft. of office, 20,556 sq. ft of retail, 127,099 shopping plaza, 134,754 sq. ft. of a high turnover restaurant, 27,000 sq. ft. arts theater, 8,500 sq. ft. music venue, and 37,390 sq. ft. Civic Center.” Neighbors across the river are perturbed, and given the recent lawsuit opposing the redevelopment of the nearby Borden tract, we’re guessing they aren’t the only ones.

In other zoning news, we continue to stay tuned for a bunch of St. Elmo-area rezonings that have been lingering on the agenda, a medical expansion on Ben White and the historic zoning of Deep Eddy Cabaret.

A proposed 6.0102-acre planned unit development would mean big changes for the southwest corner of South Congress Avenue and Riverside Drive, including the possibility of a tower more than 500 feet tall. City Council heard details about the plans at its work session Tuesday.

Zoning Officer Joi Harden offered a development assessment, describing the PUD proposal as a mixed-use development of approximately 800 residential units, a 225-unit hotel, 200,000 square feet of office space, 90,000 square feet of retail use, 30,000 square feet of restaurant use and a 25,000-square-foot grocery store. She said the majority of the parking for the development would be achieved through a below-grade parking structure. The addresses slated for redevelopment are 500 and 510 S. Congress Ave. (the location of the four-decades-old karaoke bar Ego’s), 105 W. Riverside Drive and 407 1/2 Haywood Ave.

PUD applicants are required to participate in a development assessment before filing the actual request for zoning changes.

As Harden explained, the project is within the South Central Waterfront District, which staff is currently revising. One of those revisions will eliminate height limitations for the area, so the district can accommodate the requested height without a variance. Attorney Richard Suttle, who represents the PUD applicant, told the Austin Monitor there has been a shift in city thinking about the South Central plan because of the planned rail stations close to the property and at the nearby Statesman PUD.

He said the rail stations need the density, and the developments need the rail stations. “It’s a beautiful relationship,” he said. He opined that if the current rail plan is overturned in court, he fully expects the public to vote in favor of rail again.

Asked about the city’s requirement that the developer provide affordable housing, Suttle said, “What we’re trying to do, much like it was on the Statesman – there are multiple options, ranging from fee-in-lieu to on-site. What we’re trying to do is figure out the best way to get the most units in the area.”

Council Member Zo Qadri, who represents the downtown area and District 9, said the plan “gives us an immense opportunity,” noting that it aligns “with a lot of the vision that has been laid out for (the area).” He also asked if there were plans to provide low-cost space for local businesses. Mike Iannacone of the New York-based Related Companies told him the plan is to offer 5,000 square feet of commercial lease space for local businesses or nonprofits at an affordable rate for a period of 25 years.

As part of their demonstration of superiority, developers promised to incorporate electric charging stations within the parking garage for use by tenants and visitors to the development. Developers also are offering to improve pedestrian connectivity throughout the property by providing an elevated boardwalk and “trails along East Bouldin Creek that will create a connection between South First Avenue and South Congress Avenue as envisioned under the South Central Waterfront Vision Framework Plan (SCWFP). Therefore, the PUD proposes to remove existing impervious cover and improvements from the Critical Water Quality Zone and floodplain and incorporate several environmental/ecological enhancements throughout” the site.

In keeping with the city’s commitment to water reuse, the applicant states, “the PUD will provide 100 percent of the required water quality volume onsite with at least 50 percent of water quality volume to be treated using green water quality controls among those described in the (environmental manual), a reduction in maximum permitted impervious cover by 5 percent, rainwater harvesting, stormwater runoff from impervious surfaces that will be directed to landscaped areas equal to or greater than the required landscape area.”

As busy as the area is, it is no surprise to see this comment from an Austin Energy reviewer: “The substation that feeds the site is over capacity and currently can’t be served without a new substation.”

The replacement for the deteriorating Dougherty Arts Center will move forward in a phased approach, without the underground parking called for previously by City Council, in an attempt to dramatically reduce the cost of the new facility.

During the Tuesday work session, Council heard a presentation from Parks and Recreation Department Director Kim McNeeley detailing how the cost of constructing a new, 45,000-square-foot arts center in the Butler Shores Park area had grown to $61 million in recent years, an increase of more than $30 million from what was originally planned more than a decade ago. Much of that cost increase was from Council’s direction in 2019 to include underground parking and integrate as much infrastructure as possible with neighboring facilities including the Zach Scott Theatre.

Inflationary pressures that have increased the cost of most construction projects have also added an estimated $6 million to the Dougherty rebuild. McNeeley noted options such as public-private partnerships, philanthropy and the issuance of debt to cover the increased costs, but none of those options came close to reaching the $61 million mark. That leaves the roughly $28 million remaining from a pair of bond votes supporting creative facilities as the only funding available.

“We did try to reiterate (in 2021) that all of the direction that was being provided would absolutely increase the costs of this particular program, and that we didn’t have additional funding,” McNeeley said. “We also explored the issuance of debt, certificates of obligation, and the most that we have ever received in certificates of obligation, being as fiscally responsible as possible, was $3.3 million. … Asking for $30 million in certificates of obligation just was not feasible, nor did I believe it was fiscally responsible.”

The recommendation McNeeley presented to Council is to redesign the new Dougherty Arts Center without the underground parking and construct it in a way that would allow for expansions funded through future bond elections, the soonest of which is expected to take place in 2026.

“We could add phases and if we weren’t able to meet all of the needs of the community for the Dougherty Arts Center in a single design, we would be able to ask for funding in 2026 or bond programs beyond that. But we would have a usable space at the time when construction was completed with the original $28 million that we’ve received.”

Council Member Alison Alter asked if any of the property that will be available with the city’s expected purchase of the former Tokyo Electron Ltd. campus in East Austin could be suitable for the new Dougherty, including surface-level parking, but McNeeley said surveys with supporters of the center have shown the greatest support comes from keeping the facility in or near the core of the city.

Council Member Ryan Alter questioned McNeeley on the need to redesign the building before moving forward. She responded that the engineering on the current design had assumed the ground underneath the center would be occupied by a parking structure, which likely would have affected how some structural elements of the building were situated.

Council took no action on McNeeley’s recommendation. She said they would be updated via internal memos and future presentations on the progress of the new building.

Interim City Manager Jesús Garza advised Council to let McNeeley and the city’s staff related to major construction projects move forward with the scaled-back plan unless their input was requested in the future.

“This project was allowed to escalate beyond our means, and hence we have a facility that’s substandard and we haven’t been able to get going,” he said. “I would want to caution the Council not to begin to redesign it from the dais, and then we end up having … the same story all over and over again.”

A new tower planned for downtown sparked debate about Austin’s density bonus program at the most recent meeting of the city’s Planning Commission.

The density bonus program essentially trades increased development entitlements for a number of community benefits, including things like affordable housing, public space or green building. In this case, would-be developers of 506 West Ave. are seeking changes that would allow a 564-foot-tall building. In return, they propose paying about $1.8 million to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and about $1.8 million to the Shoal Creek Conservancy for nearby infrastructure improvements.

“Why are we even entertaining this?” Commissioner Grayson Cox asked. “All of this money should be going to our Affordable Housing Trust Fund. … It just doesn’t make sense to me. We should be prioritizing affordable housing and, if we don’t, then we’re being completely hypocritical in much of what we say on the Planning Commission.”

The way the program is set up, at least half of the bonus must be achieved by providing affordable housing – but after that, developers can choose from a menu of community benefits. In this case, some commissioners hoped to influence this choice through a recommendation to increase the money that would go toward affordable housing.

After two failed motions that would increase the amount of money headed to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, commissioners eventually voted to endorse the originally proposed 50/50 division of funds, with Cox and Commissioner Alberta Phillips against and Commissioner Nadia Barrera-Ramirez abstaining, but not without a heated discussion about how community benefits should be prioritized.

Cox forwarded a failed motion that would put all of the community benefit money toward affordable housing, saying to do otherwise would make the commission “completely and utterly hypocritical.”

“My understanding is that we’re splitting money that could go to affordable housing and sending half of that money to a nonprofit that negotiated some sort of agreement with the developer … to further enhance hike-and-bike facilities in one of the nicest, wealthiest areas in the entire city,” he said.

Commissioner Adam Haynes proposed a switch that would keep an already-established 50/50 split on money for the first floor area ratio (FAR) increase to 15:1, but would divert the money from the new increase to 20:1 FAR to affordable housing. That motion failed as well.

“If we’re having a hike-and-bike crisis, please correct me, and we can put more money towards hike-and-bike facilities,” Haynes said. “My motion is to address the housing crisis that we’re having.”

Commissioner Felicity Maxwell pushed back against Haynes’ joke, saying the deadly consequences of a car-centric city could, in fact, constitute a crisis, and she pointed out that construction of more multimodal infrastructure in a busy area was a crucial community benefit. “We certainly have a crisis in making sure people can walk and bike safely in this city,” she said.

In addition to questioning the amount going toward affordable housing, Phillips questioned why developers were paying a fee-in-lieu instead of building affordable housing on-site. She noted that from 2014 to 2019, not a single affordable on-site unit was built for downtown developments that participated in the density bonus program. 

“What that has done is make the city more segregated, economically as well as racially and ethnically,” Phillips said. “We often talk about our Austin values, but we don’t practice them when it comes to these things.”

“You’re really creating a city that becomes whiter and more wealthy in the core areas of the city,” she said. 

Attorney Richard Suttle, who was representing the developers at the meeting, disagreed with Phillips’ assertion, saying it was more efficient to pay a fee-in-lieu in high-rise construction, because it ultimately resulted in more affordable housing units.

“I’ve seen the math and it just, to me, makes more sense to be able to build more affordable units,” he said. “And my personal opinion is, especially in high-rise construction, you can do better. Even it’s within a mile or two of this, it’s better to do the fee-in-lieu. And I think the city agrees with me.”

Austin City Lofts HOA Board Member Connie Temple spoke in opposition to the proposed development in general. She cited the property’s location within the 25-year floodplain of Shoal Creek and on West Avenue as a reason to hold the increase to a 15:1 FAR instead, which would mean the loss of an estimated 89 housing units.

“To be clear, we are not opposed to development on these properties in a manner that’s appropriate for this location,” Temple said. However, she noted that the addition of 430 parking spaces was troubling. “Today, traffic routinely backs up on West Avenue between Fifth and Sixth streets. … And so very often it is difficult to dangerous trying to get in or out of the parking garage because of that stacked-up traffic.

“At a time when City Council is focused on reducing downtown parking and large, above-ground parking structures, this FAR increase request would seem to be incompatible,” she added. 

Suttle said that, despite a push for less parking in the city, it was still difficult for developers to finance projects without parking. “The goal is to get away from it … but in today’s world, to get this project built, that’s the parking that needs to be built,” he said. 

Suttle explained they had already compromised with Austin City Lofts and agreed to set the building farther back from the street and noted the lofts had gotten the same floodplain variance he would be seeking for his client. 

“There’s going to be a tall building next to them regardless of what happens here,” said Suttle, who added: “I don’t understand what’s wrong with a tall building next to a tall building.”

Between July 2022 and July 2023, roughly 2,500 more people moved out of Travis County than moved in. This figure, which comes out of population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau last week, marks a reversal in population trends over the last two decades.

“I haven’t seen negative net migration to Travis County in a long time,” said Lila Valencia, demographer for the city of Austin, most of which sits in Travis. The last year fewer people moved to the county than left was 2002.

Travis County has long been known for its ability to attract tens of thousands of transplants each year. Despite dwindling migration numbers recently, the county’s population still climbed by about 7,000 people between the end of 2022 and the first half of 2023. The increase was driven by births instead of by people moving here.

The U.S. Census Bureau does not provide reasons for why more people are leaving the county than moving in. But Valencia has several theories – starting with the obvious.

“Austin is not as affordable as it used to be,” she said. Between 2019 and 2023, the median sales price of homes rose nearly 53 percent. Rent prices also climbed, though at a slower rate.

Valencia said historical county-to-county migration data shows people are leaving Travis County for neighboring areas.

This includes Williamson County to the north and Hays County to the south. In the last half of 2022 and the first half of 2023, roughly 20,000 more people moved to Williamson County than left. Although home prices there have shot up since the pandemic, homes are still cheaper than in Travis County and Austin.

Valencia also said Austin’s changing job landscape may be impacting the county’s migration numbers. Tech companies that have defined the city’s job market since the early aughts announced layoffs over the past couple of years, although it’s unclear how many Austin-based employees have been affected.

While employers in construction and health services added jobs in the Austin metro last year, there were fewer jobs in the information sector. This could explain Travis County’s lower migration numbers as fewer people move to Austin for high-paying tech jobs, Valencia said.

Not my pic! From the flyover today

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/texas-ag-paxton-asks-judge-101019480.html

https://communityimpact.com/austin/south-central-austin/government/2024/03/19/how-to-prevent-detect-and-treat-oak-wilt-in-trees/

https://communityimpact.com/austin/south-central-austin/government/2024/03/19/after-costs-more-than-double-austin-to-reset-dougherty-arts-center-replacement-plans/

An East Austin arts nonprofit is looking to organize musicians, artists and other creatives for job opportunities and to put pressure on the city to move forward with building out plans for the African American Culture and Heritage District that were approved by City Council in 2021.

The East Austin Creative Coalition is seeking members to join its registry of artists and creative professionals, which is intended mainly as a platform for marketing and economic development of Black artists and organizations.

Harold McMillan, founder of the group, made presentations recently to the Arts Commission and Music Commission looking to promote the registry and to ask for city support to share the group’s information with cultural contractors and grant applicants who may find it relevant.

During his talk with the Arts Commission last month, McMillan also said the EACC wants the city to follow through on the placemaking, funding and organizational steps spelled out in the 2021 resolution.

“We are very specifically focused on doing what we can to organize the community and get them to communicate as shareholders in the well-being of the cultural heritage district,” he said. “Quite candidly, (we want) to try to strategize on how to push on the city of Austin and (the Economic Development Department) to actually make some movement in the district. My group has a fairly high level of frustration at this point.”

The district was first designated by Council in 2007 but languished for years with no funding or larger plan until McMillan and other organizers revived the effort during the Covid-19 pandemic, in large part because of the national focus on equity caused by the killing of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer.

Since then, other districts around the city have received signage and other placemaking enhancements while the African American district has seen little movement aside from the adjacent work to find developers for the areas known as Blocks 16 and 18.

“It feels to us in the community – the Black creatives in town, especially those of us who are focused on East Austin – that there’s foot dragging going on,” McMillan told the Austin Monitor. “There were no teeth in the 2007 resolution that was approved. The resolution that I drafted and the Council passed in September of ’21, it had teeth. … There’s a section where the city manager is instructed to do these action items, and we’re still waiting. It’s 2024, and some of us are old.”

During the Arts Commission meeting, Sylnovia Holt-Rabb, director of the Economic Development Department, said the department would seek guidance from the city legal department and other bodies on how much cooperation it could provide EACC with distributing the registry information to relevant artists already on record with the city.

Meghan Wells, manager of the Cultural Arts Division, said some of the slow movement on the African American district is due to EDD’s larger project to create a standardized framework for all current and future cultural districts throughout the city. That project is expected to be complete this summer, and Wells said the Arts Commission could receive a presentation on the progress to date at its meeting this month.

“Austin has pockets of activity that have characteristics that could be districts, and we do have some districts that are recognized by the state as cultural districts … but there’s no recognized city designation that gives them certain benefits or even signage or a gateway designation or a route by Cap Metro,” she said. “There’s no uniform promotional strategy or pathways to promote it to residents and … there’s just a lot of stop-and-go and inconsistencies and inequities. What we’re doing is providing a framework that will sort of coalesce a lot of policy designations and benefits around what those district opportunities can be.”

Austin’s 911 call takers are regularly asked to take on a high call volume, but the Austin Police Department does not have a regular process for expediting call taking when the volume reaches higher-than-normal levels, according to a special report from the Office of the City Auditor. City Council members Vanessa Fuentes and Alison Alter requested a special review and report on the 911 call center last year in response to concerns about long wait times for people in emergency situations.

Fuentes said she understands that when someone calls 911, seconds matter. The report noted that 911 received a higher-than-normal number of calls only about 4 percent of the time, but that APD does not currently have a definition for “high demand” days or times. And 4 percent still equals 30 days out of two years.

Fuentes told the Austin Monitor on Monday that she believes the city needs to define a threshold for those high-demand days.

She also noted that Austin 911 call takers have the second-highest number of calls of the cities studied – including Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth, Denver and Portland, Oregon. Only Denver 911 call takers had a higher volume of calls. Denver and Dallas call takers use an abridged script when volume is high, but Austin does not.

The report notes that other cities, including Portland, are using artificial intelligence during high-demand call events – in response, Fuentes said, “I would definitely want to explore what that would look like.” In addition, although the city has increased the number of call takers by raising salaries and promoting the job, vacancies still remain.

“At the time of the special request, APD had 104 call takers and 75 dispatchers budgeted. However, APD has numerous vacancies. APD’s past standards called for a minimum of 14 employees on duty for call taking. The standards were lowered to a minimum of six employees on duty to reduce overtime and staff burnout. … When six call takers are assigned to a shift, Austin has the highest number of calls per call taker, 408 calls per call taker, second only to Denver’s 445 calls per call taker,” according to the report. Additionally, the report notes that APD adds additional staff, including teletype operators and nonemergency call takers, to the base so they have sufficient numbers to allow staff to take breaks.

The Austin Monitor asked APD for the current number of call takers on Monday and an APD spokesperson reported, “A class of three just started, so that puts us down to 20 call center vacancies out of 104.” This is considerably better than what was reported last October.

The national standard for answering 911 calls says that 90 percent of calls should be answered in 15 seconds or less. According to the auditors’ report, the percentage of calls that Austin’s call center answered within 15 seconds or less dropped from a high of 93 percent in November 2021 to an average of 77 percent in 2022 and 2023.

According to the report, 50 percent of calls were answered within 15 seconds on January 1, 2023. However, almost a quarter of callers waited two minutes or longer. On February 1, 2023, 76 percent of calls were answered within 15 seconds. However, on April 20, 2023, when there was an unexpectedly high call volume, almost 25 percent of callers waited for two minutes or more. There was no explanation for the increased volume on that day, but calls spiked again on June 17, 2023. Although more than half of the calls were answered within 15 seconds, almost one-quarter of callers waited for two minutes or longer.

Auditors noted, “Longer wait times mean callers wait longer to reach a call taker, which adds time to the initial part of the dispatch process. Callers on hold may hang up completely or hang up and redial 911 to try to get ahead in the queue. As call volumes increased, so did the percentage of calls where people hung up before their call was answered.”

According to The Denver Gazette, “Looking at call volume, Denver tries to answer 90% of all 911 calls within 10 seconds and 95 percent within 20 seconds. Denver 911’s service levels dropped out of this range while struggling with staffing losses throughout the summer of 2021.”

The Monitor asked Fuentes, who serves on the Council Audit and Finance Committee, whether she thought the report would be discussed at an upcoming meeting of the committee. She said it was an important topic, but she didn’t know whether it would appear on a future agenda.