Month: November 2015

As Austin’s housing market tightens, our low-income renters continue to be the most impacted. Austin has lost thousands of market-rate affordable housing and continues to see affordability disappear. Many Austinites have abruptly lost their homes and are subsequently pushed out of the city altogether. AURA recognizes the need to help displaced families find homes in Austin, which is why it endorses a Tenant Relocation Assistance ordinance.

The city’s lack of abundant housing has created a “seller’s market.” Property owners who lease cheaper, older units are not incentivized to maintain safe and healthy places to live or provide tenants with services beyond what is legally required (if that). In a seller’s market, landlords are able to milk properties and provide minimal upkeep. Eventually, they may kick tenants out and shut down their revenue-generating property to make way for Class-A units rented or sold at high market rates.

This disproportionately affects low-income and marginalized families. Tenants lose their homes, are caused undue stress, and have few to no options in Austin for affordable housing. Moving is stressful for anyone, but even harder for families with children in school and limited flexible income, the elderly, and persons with disabilities. This is happening at a rapid rate, especially in our gentrifying neighborhoods. City Council must act quickly to put in place guidelines to ensure that residents are given ample time and resources to find new homes.

AURA believes unsafe housing, tenant displacement, and the overall lack of affordable housing throughout Austin are just symptoms of greater issues at hand. If Austin does not promote measures for abundant housing in all neighborhoods, our affordable housing stock will continue to fall apart and be replaced with homes too expensive for middle and low-income classes. While a tenant relocation assistance program would not address the greater housing market issues, it is a much needed intermediate measure to ensure that Austin’s most vulnerable communities are treated humanely and provided assistance so they can stay in our city and at our schools.

For Immediate Release

AURA commends City Council for allowing more backyard cottages in Austin

November 19, 2015

Austin, Texas

AURA, an urbanist grassroots non-profit that works toward an Austin for Everyone, commends City Council for taking action to allow more Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) – known colloquially as granny flats, garage apartments, or backyard cottages – to be built in Austin.

These changes were originally sponsored by former Austin Councilmembers Chris Riley and Mike Martinez, in June 2014. We thank Mr. Riley, Mr. Martinez along with Mayor Steve Adler and current Councilmembers Gregorio Casar, Sheri Gallo, Delia Garza, Sabino “Pio” Renteria, Ellen Troxclair and Don Zimmerman for their leadership on this issue.

AURA supports these changes, because our platform prioritizes abundant housing of all types, from smaller apartment buildings and garage apartments in established neighborhoods to downtown skyscrapers to single-family housing. We want an Austin where everybody is welcome and everybody’s interests matter: young and old, rich and poor, renter and homeowner, healthy and sick, citizen and immigrant, lifelong resident and new arrival.

The greatest asset our city has is its people, and our city is at its best when it facilitates connections between those people: cultural, economic, and social.

“This is an important step toward allowing more abundant housing in the city of Austin,” says Cory Brown, AURA member. “I’m hopeful that by allowing more housing options within reach of people with modest incomes, we can begin the process of making Austin neighborhoods more integrated and diverse.”

In addition to the substantial public comment in favor of the changes, more than 1,000 Austinites signed AURA’s petition urging Austin’s City Council to allow granny flats and other small houses everywhere in Austin.

“This is a victory for the future of our city. It’s a hard won victory over a handful of incumbent homeowners in establishment neighborhoods who are opposed to addressing our housing crisis,” adds Steven Yarak.

AURA is a grassroots urbanist organization focused on building an Austin for everyone by improving land use and transportation through policy analysis, public involvement, and political engagement.

Contacts:
Eric Goff, AURA Board Member, eric.goff@gmail.com, 512-632-7013
Cory Brown, AURA Missing Middle Working Group, tcory.brown@gmail.com, 512-850-8467

The Austin Convention Center has recommended a long range master plan laying out their case for expansion west, taking the blocks bounded by 2nd on the South, 4th on the North, Trinity on the East, and San Jacinto on the West.  AURA opposes this on a variety of grounds, ranging from the tax revenue for the city to the viability of convention center-driven economic development to impacts on the downtown streetscape.  The economic development case against convention center expansion:

• The convention center industry nationally has been shrinking since the ’90s.  Meanwhile, city after city has been chasing this business, building ever more elaborate, newer, and larger convention center spaces.  Competing for convention center business is not a smart use of resources – its going after a shrinking pool just as many peer cities have entered the competition. 
• Jobs created by conventions are by their nature transitory, part-time, and generally low-wage. This is a business of peaks – generally weekends when a large convention is booked. The caterers, Uber/Lyft/cab drivers, extra hotel staff, and contractors working booths see spikes in business, but it is not enough to sustain week-in, week-out full employment. While there is a place in the economy for these kinds of jobs, spending limited city resources to subsidize them seems unwise given better alternatives. 

The city revenue case against convention center expansion:

• Convention Center expansion is often sold as a free lunch.  The cost of construction could be financed by the increased hotel taxes brought in by hotel goers.  But this turns out to be an almost circular argument.  Hotel taxes have extremely limited uses by state law – they can be used for tourist-related public improvements and for historic preservation. Currently much of our hotel tax revenue already goes to support the Convention Center.  By investing in a bigger convention center, we may indeed be able to capture more hotel tax revenue, but their limited nature makes them much less useful to the city as a whole.  Bringing in more hotel taxes does little for the general welfare of most Austinites. Meanwhile, the city should consider whether it is making the best uses of its hotel taxes – instead of subsidizing an otherwise mediocre convention center, could they be used to support the live music or arts scene?  Could there be a role for hotel taxes in subsidizing the downtown “Drunk Tank” under consideration?  
• Meanwhile, the expansion would take a valuable piece of downtown property off the tax rolls.  Property taxes, unlike hotel taxes, go to the general fund, and are much more useful to the city budget.  There is no fiscal impact analysis taking this into account in the current Convention Center Master Plan. Hotel tax revenue are estimated, but these kinds of large impacts are not projected.  

Finally, the urbanist and streetlife argument against convention center expansion. 

• Convention centers are seldom well activated on the street level.  Austin has invested, with much success, in a Great Streets program, and we are beginning to reap the dividends of a vibrant downtown. Several aspects of the proposed design of the Convention Center Expansion run contrary to the tenets of the Great Streets concept, especially the elevated pedestrian walkways to connect the old and the new Convention Center areas. These kinds of walkways hurt the street life below, and take pedestrians out of contact with each other.  
• The preferred scenario in the Master Plan would also take a chunk of 2nd and 3rd Streets between Trinity and San Jacinto, degrading the downtown grid and taking streetscapes out of play.

In short, the Austin Convention Center Master Plan as currently envisioned should not be endorsed by city council.  The business and economic development case has not been made for such a large capital investment, the opportunity costs in terms of property tax revenue are high, and it be a step back from for Austin’s steadily improving downtown experience. AURA calls on city council to vote this down.