AURA hosted several Candidate Forums August-September 2020 with many of the candidates running for election for Austin’s City Council in November 2020. We recorded each candidate forum and are posting those videos here, along with questionnaire responses that we received from candidates. For our final forum, we also hosted a panel, in collaboration with Farm&City …
Project Connect Media Release (2020-07-20)
MEDIA ALERTFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 20, 2020AURA members identify priorities for November transportationmeasure AURA members overwhelmingly approved a set of policy preferences aimed at shaping Austin City Council’s crafting of a new transportation ballot measure for this November’s election. The specific policy planks approved by AURA members are: AURA supports the 11 cent property tax …
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Should you have to own property to vote? Opponents of more housing in Austin think so.
Who should determine what housing can be built in Austin? Austin’s democratically elected city council or an archaic process that only gives power to property owners? Groups opposed to a new land development code are suing to only include property owners and exclude renters from the discussion. A local judge ruled in their favor and …
Oppose the Burnet Road proposal
The 2016 Mobility Bond provided the City of Austin with funding “to address implementation of Corridor Mobility Reports, which identify short-, medium-, and long-term transportation improvements.” The Corridor Mobility Report for Burnet Road proposes for the long term the addition of center-running transit lanes north of U.S. 183. It assuredly does not propose having six …
The High Price of a Small Lot
People say houses have gotten expensive in Austin. That’s wrong. The houses haven’t gotten expensive — the land has. And it’s mostly due to our laws. Building a house is not expensive. While the cost of building a house went up 13% between 2014 and 2019, the average salary went up 15% over that same …
AURA Statement on the Land Development Code Ruling
The recent decision by the Travis County District Court ruling that policy changes such as the land development code rewrite are subject to zoning petition protests by homeowners is disappointing. Unless overturned, the ruling effectively requires a super-majority of City Council members to pass many of the meaningful reforms that are desperately needed in Austin …
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Project Connect Media Release (2020-03-09)
Press StatementFor Immediate Release3/9/2020 AURA is enthusiastic about Project Connect’s recommended Locally Preferred Alternative (LPA). The proposed light rail lines will run through dense neighborhoods — where lots of people live — and run to downtown, the Capitol, and UT — where lots of people want to go. In 2014, AURA argued for rail on …
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I Moved from Houston and My Rent Doubled
Last May, I moved from Houston to Austin for work. I lived in Houston’s Heights neighborhood, one that shares a lot of similarities with many of the neighborhoods in central Austin under intense discussion with the land development code rewrite. The Heights, as it’s called, is located close to downtown, has longstanding housing stock dating …
Proposed Compromise for a Better Land Development Code
Much of conflict over Austin Land Development Code rewrite occurs over the “Transition Zones”. During the city council meeting on February 12th, Mayor Adler and Council Member Tovo discussed the possibility of reducing the size of these Transition Zones to two-lots off the corridor across the city. Of course, simply doing so without making other …
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How Deed Restrictions Can Impact Our Land Development
Most of Austin’s zoning regulations prevent the construction of missing-middle housing like townhouses, duplexes, and fourplexes. In fact, according to the Imagine Austin Comprehensive Plan land inventory about 80% of Austin’s land zoned for residential use is zoned single-family. But zoning regulations aren’t the only obstacle to these types of housing, especially in wealthy west …
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