Category Archives: Affordability

Towards creating a more diverse and sustainable Austin for all.

How the Council doubled affordable housing funding

One of the less-noticed passages of the State of our City address was what could have been the biggest news about how this Council is increasing funding for affordable housing:

Over the next 10 years, it is projected that this Council will have put a combined $68.2 million dollars into the Housing Trust Fund and $5.6 million into the Homestead Preservation District, not including Pilot Knob. Making growth pay for the burdens it creates is possible, it’s happening, and it’s working.

We may have buried the lede, but Jo Clifton at The Austin Monitor found it, and she has a good write up of how the Council did this:

In a move that will more than double the amount of tax money going into affordable housing, Council voted to dedicate 100 percent of tax revenues being generated by property previously owned by the city to the city’s affordable housing trust fund. The Dec. 17 vote was 9-2, with Council Members Ellen Troxclair and Don Zimmerman voting no.

One example of such a former city property is the Green Water Treatment Plant redevelopment on Lady Bird Lake, which is slated to have 1.7 million square feet of new development – including offices, apartments and a hotel – when complete. Under a resolution approved by Council in 2000, the city has been transferring 40 percent of the revenue from former city properties to the affordable housing fund. …

According to the city’s financial staff, transferring 40 percent of those tax revenues would have generated $1 million in 2017 and increased each year to $4 million in 2026. However, at 100 percent, the 2017 transfer would be $2.5 million. That amount would increase to $10 million in 2026. The cumulative total for the 40 percent transfer was estimated to be $27.3 million, but the cumulative transfer for 100 percent of the tax revenue is expected to be $68.2 million. …

About 40 percent of the money generated by the properties will serve as a funding mechanism for rehabilitating housing and building new housing stock within homestead preservation districts. Another 20 percent will be used to provide affordable housing development in what are called “high-opportunity areas,” which are generally in higher-income neighborhoods and mostly on the west side. The final 40 percent will maintain the existing funding stream into the housing trust fund.

Let Moratorium on STR 2s Work

Austin Mayor Steve AdlerIn my State of our City address, I expressed a desire not to be so reactive to super-heated issues. I also discussed wanting to join with the Council, deliberately and thoughtfully, to find the right solutions however pitched the broader public discussion may be. The matter before the Council on Type 2 short-term rental houses, or STR 2s, presents us with a fortuitous opportunity to handle a hot issue with cool heads and to find the best solution for all of Austin.

A prior City Council adopted rules to allow STR 2s, and some in our community acting according to those rules bought about 400 houses that they put on the short-term rental market as STR 2s. Because of problems and concerns that arose, last December this Council placed a moratorium on new STR 2s until spring 2017. Importantly, this means that at least for the next year or so there will be no more STR 2s, no further loss of residential housing stock, and no further encroachment into neighborhoods regardless of what the Council does this week. That gives us time.

Read more after the break. Continue reading →

Statesman editorial: Tax swap “makes sense” & “an idea worth exploring”

In an editorial postSSS-Mayor-Steve-Adler-5ed on Feb. 19, 2016, The Austin American-Statesman keyed on a short portion of his State of our City address that could make a big difference in your property tax bill:

“When AISD taxes you a dollar on your tax bill, a big chunk of it leaves and isn’t available to be spent here for services. But if the city taxed you for that same dollar, all your money does stay here. Austin taxpayers could save money or get more for the taxes we pay by having the city and the school district engage in a tax swap.”

The Statesman wrote that the tax swap was “one of the more interesting proposals Austin Mayor Steve Adler cited in his state of the city address” and “an idea worth exploring as the Austin school district is expected to send evermore of its local tax revenue to the state in an arrangement that shortchanges taxpayers and students.”

If done right, a tax swap would present taxpayers with the promise of a tax cut, schools with the possibility of more money, or a combination of both, because it would result in sending less of our school tax dollars to other school districts. Right now, AISD (where 60% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches) sends $181 million in tax revenue our of town in 2015 because of our broken school finance system. This is equal to a quarter of the school districts total Maintenance and Operations tax collections.

Meanwhile, AISD taxes the average homeowner an average of $1,000 a year. People in Austin have a lot to gain from a tax swap, and this could go a long way toward addressing our affordability crisis.

On Feb. 11, 2016, the Council approved Resolution No. 201602011-015 directing the City Manager to explore a tax swap, including the legal issues and a cost-benefit analysis. We’ll keep you posted on how this goes.

Photo credit: Stephen Spillman

Great Cities Do Big Things: The State of our City Roundup

“We are the city of the future, but what future will that be? If we do not do big things now, we will end up with the housing costs of San Francisco and the traffic congestion of Los Angeles.” -Mayor Adler

If you weren’t able to join us at the Topfer Theatre last night for the State of our City address (or watch it live on ATXN) — or if you want to catch up on what people are saying about it — you’re in luck. Consider this page your online library for all of your State of our City needs.

Read all about it after the break.

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“Great Cities Do Big Things” – State of Our City Feb. 16, 2016 Austin, Texas

“Great cities do big things not because they are great. Cities become great because they do big things.”

Thank you, President Fenves. I am grateful for your leadership at the University of Texas and for our growing working relationship and even friendship.

And with the conversations that need to be happening between UT and the City on issues like the development of the Innovation Zone around our new medical school, a replacement arena for the Drum, the future of the MUNY golf course site, as well as expanding opportunities for closer connection between Austin and the incredible intellectual resources of your faculty, there’s a lot for you and me — and the community — to be talking about.

And by the way, I’m grateful to you for skipping the West Virginia game tonight. You get pretty good seats, so I know what kind of sacrifice this is.

President Fenves recounted the story of the Austin Dam. I love that story, because as the Mayor of Austin I’m often asked what the secret sauce is that makes us a magical city and a center for innovation and creativity. Most every other city wishes it could replicate our success. When I attended the climate change talks in Paris, the 100 Resilient Cities meeting in London, the Almedalen Political Rhetoric Festival in Norway, and the traffic control center in Dublin, Ireland, and people found out that I was the Mayor they’d get a big smile on their face and tell me how much they love Austin.

Cities from all over our country and the rest of the world send entire delegations here to troop through our offices in hopes of finding the magic formula written on a white board somewhere.  These leaders from other cities ask me what makes Austin so special. I tell them about Barton Springs and how our commitment to our environment became perhaps our most important asset. I tell them about Willie Nelson and our live music, how by embracing diverse cultures we established an inclusive community where creativity thrives, about a community where it is okay to fail so long as you learn and grow. And I tell them about Michael Dell reinventing the assembly line in his dorm room and how coming up with radical new ideas here doesn’t make you an outcast — it can make you rich and famous.

And then I tell them about the Austin Dam, and how when the dam burst we were set on a path that turned us into a boomtown of the Information Age. The lesson, I tell these visitors from other cities is clear. They need to leave Austin, return to their hometowns, and destroy all their dams and bridges, too.

But some cities just aren’t willing to do the Big Things.

Continue reading after the break.

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