Month: March 2018

Yesterday, AURA member Kaz Wojtewicz testified before the Housing and Neighborhoods committee in favor of a $300 million bond for affordable housing with an emphasis on public housing.  To address our housing crisis, we need CodeNEXT to deliver a housing market that is easy to build in, allows supply to catch up with and meet demand, and deliver new homes where people want to live.

We also need a strong housing bond to target low income Austinites.  The Strategic Housing Blueprint shows that almost 50,000 new homes are required for families that make 60% or less of the median income, and we’re doing very little to meet this need.  We need to do as much as we can to develop as much market rate housing as people want so they can live where they want, and also spend as much as we can afford to make sure that low income families can afford to live where they want too.

$300 million focused on building public housing by buying public land and awarding RFPs to build on that land to the developer who builds the most public housing there would demonstrate a good way to meet that need.  Together with existing publicly owned land, this could move Austin towards a sufficient housing supply – for everyone.  By mixing market rate and public housing together, we can also help to reduce the rental occupancy rate across the city and help every renter, not just those in public housing.  

The Austin chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, the Austin Justice Coalition, Texas Appleseed and others also joined in on the call for a $300 million investment.  The Austin American Statesman noted that Kaz identified other recent bonds in other cities that invested big in affordable housing and easily passed the bonds. “They included a $1.2 billion housing bond plan passed by Los Angeles; a $258 million proposal passed in Portland, Ore.; and a $290 million plan passed in Seattle. All were approved in 2016 with at least 62 percent of the vote. Wojtewicz recommended Austin officials reach for $300 million.”

Bond Issue	$ size	population	outcome
Los Angeles 2016	$1.2 billion	4,000,000	76% in favor
Portland 2016	$258 million	640,000	62% in favor
Santa Clara County 2016	$950 million	1,900,000	68% in favor
Alameda County 2017	$580 million	1,600,000	73% in favor
Portland 2016	$290 million	790,000	68% in favor

We won’t be able to rely on Donald Trump and Ben Carson to be able to deliver affordable housing for Austin, especially given that Austin is a welcoming community to everyone, regardless of their citizenship.  We need to do what we can on our own.  

Let’s get a strong affordable housing bond and invest at least $300 million in affordable housing.

Fifty years ago, Austinites against integrating neighborhoods worked to put up a petition on the ballot to fight housing integration. They called Austin’s Fair Housing Initiative “Forced Housing.” IndyAustin and its allies are fighting the same fight—they want to freeze Austin’s neighborhoods in amber and forbid more homes west of I-35 in Central Austin, thus accelerating the rapid change and displacement happening in the East. In their attempt to block adoption of CodeNEXT, Austin’s new land development code, they hope to maintain our unaffordable, segregated status quo.

By taking money from Big Billboard to fight against a future for Austin, IndyAustin has shown their true nature: opposition to economic integration. AURA continues its call for an Austin for Everyone, and that means planning our city so that as many people as want to live in a neighborhood can afford to.

IndyAustin’s petition isn’t just bad for Austin, though: It’s a fraud. The fraudulent petition is illegal under state law, which doesn’t allow for ballot initiatives on this type of zoning matter. Any lawyer worth his salt would know what the Texas Local Government Code § 211.015 says on the matter, or at least do some research.  

AURA looks forward to the rejection of this invalid, illegal, and fraudulent petition by the City Council. If for some reason a ballot initiative gets to voters anyway, we hope Austinites embrace the future, continue to be a welcoming city, and bury this effort in our exclusionary past. Their fraudulent petition misled Austinites and was an intentional distraction from the real issues of sustainable and affordable growth.

Capital Metro has bids out for 16 infill stations on the MetroRapid 801 and 803 lines. We’re excited! The stop spacing on the MetroRapid lines has been too far apart. In AURA’s Connections 2025 position statement we called for standard stop spacing every quarter mile. We were encouraged to see additional stops proposed.

However, also in that response, we asked that the stations be brought online as quickly as possible. Riders should not have to wait on construction of expensive “branded” stations. The current stations are difficult to implement due to the need for electrical connections to power their countdown clocks and wireless internet. While these are great amenities, we would rather have the infill stops implemented quickly.

Unfortunately, on and off the MetroRapid lines, Capital Metro has a poor track record of building bus stations that do not protect riders from the elements. The MetroRapid stations were created out of a special design process, but are particularly bad when it comes to shielding from sun or rain—worse than the stations on the regular bus lines.

In 2016, we published our Transit City report, which outlined AURA’s vision for transit in Austin. One of Transit City’s calls for immediate in the action was improved bus stations:

Build generous stations similar to those at Houston’s MetroRail and Dallas’s DART rail platforms at Austin’s busiest bus hubs like the 4th Street/Republic Square and West Mall stops by 2017. They should be sufficiently long and wide to comfortably provide shelter to all riders at peak times. Substantially increase the number of stops with basic shelters throughout the city. The design of these shelters must prioritize effectively shielding riders from sun and rain at a reasonable cost so that as many as possible can be built.

Last year, when we evaluated Capital Metro’s progress toward the Transit City goals, we found that bus shelters were an area that could still use improvement:

Capital Metro has a new, cheaper design for bus shelters, which will enable the agency to deploy them at many more stops. Unfortunately, these new shelters still do not consistently provide shade or protection for the elements. AURA calls for CapMetro to find a shelter design that can be widely implemented and actually provide basic shelter.

Unfortunately, the bid documents for the MetroRapid infill stations demonstrate that Capital Metro will be using the same “branded” MetroRapid station design for the new stations. These stations are expensive and difficult to construct, meaning riders will have to wait longer for badly needed additional stations. Furthermore, they provide little to no protections from the elements. Riders would be better served if Capital Metro could move to a simpler station design that could be implemented quickly, while providing better shelter.

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