All, I believe we will get closer to finding common ground if some of these statements and thoughts questioning whether there are “appropriate” density = better affordability opportunities started with - “on some properties (or blocks) in my neighborhood”. I am convinced there are many opportunities that an overwhelming majority would agree are appropriate, and others we would agree are not because the math does not work - so let’s try not to paint the city one color, and I believe the wording of this resolution does not try to.
@Betsy_Greenberg, the resolution proposes additional flexibility in building forms and more efficient land utilization to help address housing costs. It does not promote or preclude renting or owning any of those building forms - row houses can be individually owned in many cities, triplexes / quadplexes can be part of a condominium regime which can be owner occupied. Others are right in saying ownership does not come with any guarantees, in 2009 millions of people in the U.S. were trapped by their house, where they could not afford to leave and look for work elsewhere, unless they declared bankruptcy, because their home was worth less than they owed on it.
@mlibrik, yes, I am in an “established” neighborhood, support density and inclusiveness, have two building directly bordering my property, that have been used in the way you “described”, one is still currently, and will be until it is eventually torn down. I can also see two other newer properties across their roof line that are examples of that type of building on steroids. I look forward to the implementation of Imagine Austin significantly increasing the occupancy entitlement on those bordering properties, bringing down the average housing cost per neighborhood resident as the land will be more efficiently utilized, and putting residents closer to their “work” helping mobility. I support doing so not just because it is important for the City, but can also be a good thing for the neighborhood, if people work together instead of against each other.
Maybe the time has come where we should somehow spend more energy on real world examples using math rather than trying to just debate broad brush concepts. The concepts have been marketed to both sides so long that most are leaning one way or another - let’s look at the facts - and I applaud Betsy’s effort to introduce a few for debate.
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I’d also like to offer up these further reading articles on the effects of including (or excluding) a diversity of housing and how that policy affects the diversity of its residents.
This is an article released by the Economic Policy Institute outlining how segregating housing types can also segregate people by socioeconomic and racial lines, and that those existing policies have begun to be challenged and refuted in courts of law: Housing segregation undergirds the nation’s racial inequities
Citing the Housing Scholars brief, the appeals court noted that “[g]overnment policy, which promised not to change a neighborhood’s composition when constructing affordable housing, exacerbated the stark segregation in America’s cities.” The court also observed that “housing segregation both perpetuates and reflects this country’s basic problems regarding race relations: educational disparities, police-community relations, crime levels, wealth inequality, and even access to basic needs such as clean water and clean air. In this country, the neighborhood in which a person is born or lives will still far too often determine his or her opportunity for success. As the Supreme Court recognized [last June], the Fair Housing Act must play a ‘continuing role in moving the Nation toward a more integrated society’ and a more just one.”
And this is an article put out by the Washington Post outlining how housing homogeneity leads to a lack of diversity and gaps in education across socioeconomic and racial lines as well. The one thing rich parents do for their kids that makes all the difference
Advocates of integrated schools — which researchers believe provide greater benefits for poorer and minority students — often argue that we should use housing policy to address deeply entrenched educational inequalities. Build more affordable housing in good school districts, or simply break down exclusionary housing policies there, and we’d create more integrated schools.
I personally think that a direct line can be drawn from Austin’s clustering of SF zoning (which consequently increases scarcity and prices of those homes) and the budget shortfalls & decreased enrollment numbers facing AISD in recent years.
And this is an ebook published by StrongTowns that details how federal financing systems came to affect how we’ve built cities in the post depression and post-war eras: Distorted DNA: The Impacts of Federal Housing Policy
This is a much longer-form read, and no one quote can really summarize the cause and effects detailed in it. But I’ll post the index here for reference, and an excerpt from the last section where Austin in particular gets a shoutout:
- The Distorted DNA of Your Community
- 5 Reasons America Needs Walkable Neighborhoods
- Suburban Poverty: Hiding in Plain Sight
- Want Community? Build Walkability
- 4 Ways Housing Outcomes Could be Different
Cities with Better Tools to Halt Decline
Federal housing policy creates distorted markets for single-family homes while also accommodating large buildings, sometimes six stories or greater. What’s missing from this approach is the two-, three- and four-story mixed use buildings that used to be the cornerstone of prosperous cities.
I see cities trying to overcome this gap in two ways. First, they feel obliged to accept neighborhood-busting leaps in development. No city exemplifies this more than Austin, TX, where you’ll have a neighborhood of single-family homes with the occasional 12- to 20-story tower. When the next increment of intensity can’t be competitively financed, the outlet for demand is a hyper expansion on the edge along with random towers in the core, an approach that makes a city simultaneously unaffordable and stagnating.
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