Mayor Adler reflects on 2015, lays out goals for 2016
Category Archives: Affordability
Letter From Mayor Adler
I wanted to catch you up on what we’ve been up to during the holidays.
First, some good news from Washington — really
We all know that IH-35 through downtown Austin is the worst road in town, and one of the worst in Texas. For years – decades even – the best advice we could give newcomers is how to get around Austin while avoiding IH-35. And as the years go by and more and more people move here, IH-35 gets more and more congested. All of a sudden, the road ahead looks a little better. Just this week, the President signed a new five-year highway bill that provides $305 billion for highways, transit, freight, Amtrak, and passenger rail programs. Even better, the bill, called the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (“FAST”) Act, increases money available for highways and reserves a bigger portion of that funding for larger cities like Austin. In other words, right when Austin needs it the most, we are eligible for a bigger slice of a bigger pie for our biggest problem – IH-35.
Big News for Housing Homeless Veterans
This is a quick note to report back to you on some exciting developments with our Housing Heroes Austin initiative to find homes for each of Austin’s homeless veterans by the end of the year. We’re not there yet, but we’re getting closer, and we’re going to finish this job!
At the beginning of the year, there were 234 homeless veterans in Austin. When I took up this challenge in May, there were 200 remaining without homes. By Veterans Day, we still needed 118 homes for these heroes. Since then, we have secured an additional 40 leases for homeless veterans! We’ve got 78 more to go and only a few weeks left in the year, but with your help we’re going to complete this mission.
You have already done so much. When I emailed last week, many of you offered up apartments and rental houses. Thank you! And we asked you to contribute money, and boy oh boy did you step up. Since Veterans Day, the Housing Heroes Austin Fund has raised an incredible $42,174.47. This kind of support is what makes Austin such a magical city. I can’t thank you enough, but I can ask for more help. If you have apartments you want to lease to homeless veterans or would like to make your own financial contribution, please click here or call the Mayor’s Office: (512) 978-2100.
People used to think that homeless veterans were an indelible feature on the modern cityscape, that this problem was too big to truly solve. Great cities do big things, and we can accomplish this together if we all do a little – though some of us have done a lot. I’ll be updating you as we get closer to meeting the deadline at the end of the year and asking again for your help. You could be the hero we’re looking for to help house these heroes.
Exploring the Spirit of East Austin
On September 12 we, your Mayor and City Manager, made a promise at the Spirit of East Austin Summit to work in partnership with each other, you, the community, and the City Council to co-create equitable, sustainable and transformative development in East Austin. We proclaimed that because we are an interdependent community the future of all of Austin– not just East Austin — rises in the East, just like the sun. We aim to fundamentally change the conditions in the eastern portion of our region, where due to historic intentional policies and practices, as well as benign neglect, inequity had become status quo.
The September community meeting was called to kick off The Spirit of East Austin– this fresh approach to development in East Austin; an approach that will result not only in holistic communities east of IH35, but also in a better Austin.
Mindful of previous missteps, at that September meeting, we promised to listen with our hearts and our minds. We promised to learn from our collective stories and experiences. And – most importantly – we promised to take all of that and report back to you with a plan for thoughtful, meaningful and effective action. That’s what we’re doing in this Op-Ed, but read closely because whether you were present on September 12 or nor, you have a vital role in this ongoing narrative and work too.
Learn more about the Spirit of East Austin.
Are You A Housing Hero?
We owe our veterans more than a parade and our gratitude. This Veterans Day, I’m writing again to give you an update on the progress of our Housing Heroes project – and to ask for your help in giving some veterans much more than a “thank you.” I need your help to give homeless veterans a home.
We’ve got great news: Since May 1, our Housing Heroes program has found homes for 82 homeless veterans. That’s 82 success stories — with more moving in every week and dozens more leases about to close.
Unfortunately, we are still short of our goal to find homes for 200 homeless vets by today, Veterans Day, November 11. We will get there by the original federal deadline of the end of the year because we are getting better and more effectively and efficiently putting veterans into homes. Consider this:
- We’re pulling in new partners to identifying affordable housing for veterans. Affordable housing is a well-known challenge in Austin, but thanks to the Austin Apartment Association and the Austin Board of Realtors, our nonprofit partners like the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition have unprecedented access to property owners and managers, making the job of getting homeless veterans into apartments more doable. This is a new paradigm for dealing with homelessness in Austin that will survive the Housing Heroes program.
- We’ve surpassed our fundraising goal of $150,000 to help mitigate risks for landlords and property owners who rent to vets. As of today, we’ve raised $355,000 thanks to the generosity of the business community and concerned people like you.
But there’s still more to do. We believe that one homeless vet in Austin is too many, so we’re not giving up just because we’ve missed our goal. In fact, we’re stepping up our efforts.
First, we have increased our goal to $575,000 raised by the end of the year. Knowing what we know now about the obstacles that still exist, we’re going to need even more resources to end veteran homelessness this year.
DONATE NOW to be a part of this ground-breaking initiative. Would you consider observing Veterans Day by donating $11.11 to Housing Heroes Austin?
Second, we are reinvigorating our ask of property owners and managers who are willing to partner with Housing Heroes to commit at least one unit to veteran families that might have barriers to renting.
CLICK HERE to help lift veterans off the streets by giving them a second chance.
We’re so close to achieving what we once thought would never be possible, but it takes ambitious goals and audacious plans to achieve big things. I accepted this challenge on your behalf, and now I’m asking for your help to meet it. There is no question that homeless veterans have earned our help or that it is now within our power to find them homes. The only question is if Austin has enough heroes left to finish the job.