Category Archives: Housing and Community Development

Housing and Community Development refers to housing, community development block grants, mobility as it concerns housing, land use as it concerns housing, and related matters.

Spirit of East Austin

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.

Statesman Op-Ed: Time to help our veteran heroes

This article was also published by the Austin American-Statesman on Nov. 7, 2015

We owe a lot to our veterans, and honoring them is what the upcoming Veterans Day is all about. They have sacrificed and given so much of themselves for us, but what does it mean to truly honor our vets?

How about the simple but profound assistance of helping our homeless vets — our homeless heroes — find a home?

Five years ago, the Obama administration set what some thought was an unreachable goal for an intractable problem with an unrealistic deadline: ending veteran homelessness by the end of 2015. My predecessor, Mayor Lee Leffingwell, accepted this challenge for Austin, and I reaffirmed our community’s commitment. Though we’re not going to get there by Veterans Day this week, we are going to finish the job and find homes for these heroes.

One homeless vet is too many. Yet many are surprised to hear how few veteran men, women and their children are on our streets. We have only about 100.

On Jan. 1, 234 homeless veterans were counted in Austin. That’s the number that needs to get to zero by the end of this year to meet the challenge from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. When the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO) asked me to accept the Mayors Challenge to End Veteran Homeless, 200 veterans still needed housing. I immediately signed on and set an even-more ambitious goal of accomplishing this by Veterans Day.

We used to think veteran homelessness was just a fact of life, less an unsolvable problem than a hopeless condition of modern-day America. But it’s not that way at all. We can, and are, solving this problem because we’ve learned some exciting things about what Austin is capable of.

The first thing we learned is that there’s a ton of support for ending veteran homelessness. When we started the Housing Heroes program, we began raising money to mitigate risks for apartment owners. Initially, we thought we needed $150,000. So far, we’ve raised $375,000 and have increased our goal to $500,000 by the end of the year. Turns out, the veterans aren’t the only heroes in this story.

It’s a good thing we raised more money, because another thing we learned is that we were going to need to buy down some of these rents to make them affordable to those homeless veterans who have jobs. Thanks to the unexpected generosity of so many, we were able to handle this unexpected challenge.

That brings us to the last group of heroes we discovered: property owners and managers. For the first time, ECHO is able to partner with the Austin Apartment Association and the Austin Board of Realtors. This gives ECHO 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 homeless in Austin that will survive the Housing Heroes program.

We’re not there yet. Since May 1, our Housing Heroes program has found homes for 82 homeless veterans. That’s 82 success stories — and more moving in every week and dozens more leases about to close — but we are still short the goal of ending veteran homelessness by the federal government’s original deadline. Thanks to the new cooperation between ECHO and property owners and the financial support of so many, we’re going to finish this job.

Here’s where you come in — because if Austin is going to end veteran homeless by the end of the year, then we’re going to need some more heroes. We need more contributions to the Housing Heroes Fund, and we’re still looking for apartment owners and managers to step up and provide apartments for these veterans. If you can help, go to housingheroesaustin.org.

This won’t be easy. Often, homeless veterans don’t have the spotless backgrounds that landlords prefer to see on rental applications, but clearly these heroes have earned second chances and fresh starts. To reach our goal, we’re going to need property owners and landlords to look past the perfect to see what is possible.

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.

Help End Veteran Homelessness Today

On August 26th, I challenged the Austin community to put an end to veteran homelessness by Veterans Day.

With less than a month until Veterans Day, I am reaching out to make a big push to meet this goal.

Veterans have impacted all of our lives. My father was a disabled World War II veteran, having served in the U.S. Navy, so I am intimately familiar with the sacrifices that our veterans and military families make to preserve our freedoms here at home. That’s why one homeless veteran on the streets of Austin is too many.

We are calling this effort Housing Heroes, and I’m asking for your help.

There are three important ways you can get involved:

1.    If you have a property or know of someone that has a property that can be leased to a veteran, such as an investment property, a garage apartment, a duplex, or a multi-unit residential property, please contact us. We still need over 100 housing units to serve our homeless veterans.

2.    Make a donation to the Housing Heroes fund – the fund will be used to provide rental assistance, find temporary shelter for veterans, support property owners who are providing a unit for a veteran, and more.

3.    Tell your friends about our goal to end veteran homelessness in Austin. Share this message on Facebook & Twitter:

“Join Mayor Steve Adler in the challenge to end veteran homelessness in Austin. If you have a property that can be leased to a veteran or to make a donation, visit HousingHeroesAustin.org. One homeless veteran is too many. Let’s fight for those who fought for us.”

I believe that in a city like Austin, the community can come together to help those who preserved and protected our freedoms find a home. Please join me in ending veteran homelessness by Veterans Day.

Visit HousingHeroesAustin.org for more information.

Results from Spirit of East Austin Community Forum

Feedback from the Spirit of East Austin Community Forum has been overwhelmingly positive due in part to the dialogue focused on ways to create equitable economic and community development in East Austin.  After September 12, a qualitative analysis team assembled and collected 1,990 Post-it notes to help determine next steps.

As part of our next steps, we will be scheduling community meetings to present the initial results and receive feedback to ensure they honestly reflect the community’s needs.  The intention is to continue receiving ongoing input from the community while inviting stakeholders to volunteer for working teams to develop a set of community-based recommendations (i.e., projects, policies, and/or programs).

These working teams would be located in critical areas needing attention including, but not limited to, the following neighborhoods: Montopolis, Dove Springs, Colony Park, Rundberg, and Central East Austin among others. The working teams would not replace current neighborhood organizations or efforts.  Instead, they would form parallel to and in collaboration with these groups to gather information and make recommendations. We want to move quickly to form our recommendations and want all input. We expect to have city staff, community members, and other experts to participate in these working teams. Satisfying a set of community-based attributes, each community team would be responsible for developing a set of recommendations that would fall into one of the following categories:

  • Shovel-ready (up to 1 year): Some recommendations would focus on quick, “shovel-ready” projects that may have already received attention, for example, creating sidewalks to increase walkability.
  • Fertile Ground (1 to 3 years): Additional work would focus on projects that require relatively minimal effort, but they have high impact on the community.
  • Strategic (3 to 5+ years): Long–term investments that offer greater community impact and would be strategically focused on dynamic economic development.

Helpful links:

Spirit of East Austin Community Forum analysis (online, interactive presentation)

Spirit of East Austin Online Community Forum (You must log in to access, contribute)

 

Spirit of East Austin

SPEECH: “The future of Austin rises in the East”

“It’s time to take stock of what is good and to build from that foundation of good a better, stronger and more equitable East Austin. To press forward faster, to taking our best assets and leverage them to bring unprecedented focus, energy, investment and opportunity to East Austin.

“As we Face East, we do not excuse or dismiss the parts of our past that are, at best, ugly and unjust. Rather, we can use this history as fuel for the kind of determination to shape a more equitable and prosperous future in our City’s East Austin. The community has gathered before to participate in studies and help create plans. Just by way of example, The African American, Hispanic and Asian Quality of Life reports; Colony Park master plan; the 1984 master plan; neighborhood Master Plans. We thank you for this important work. From those gatherings, some progress has been made. Yet, we all know that what has happened in the past is not nearly enough and not nearly as great as our potential. And, I hope in knowing that, it makes us all the more determined. I am determined.

“This is our shared dilemma: Many of our highest achievements in job creation, higher education, health and technology, happen in other zip codes. This imbalance has threatened the idea of Austin as a just and equitable community for decades. This imbalance does not come as a surprise. This imbalance comes as the outcome of design – the direct result of where this city has focused. It is time to turn that same level of focus to Face East.”

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