Housing

Get your housing in a row, Part 2

~ dankeshet ~ 13 Comments

In Part 1 of this series, guest blogger Mateo Barnstone discussed how row houses can help with affordability and why they might make a great deal of sense given growth pressures Austin is facing. Today he’ll dig deeper into how the land development code limits the availability of this housing type.

While there are indisputable cost savings to row houses (in a city with a big affordability problem, that is no small matter) and other potential advantages, there are, of course, other considerations that factor heavily in Austin developing land use policies. Many of the regulations contained within our Land Development Code exist specifically as a means of “preserving the character” of our neighborhoods. Take for example Subchapter F – the McMansion Ordinance. The stated goal of the McMansion Ordinance is to “minimize impact of new construction on older neighborhoods,” and the standards chosen specifically were adopted to “protect the character of Austin’s older neighborhoods by ensuring that new construction, remodels and additions are compatible in scale and bulk with existing neighborhoods.” [1]

When we seek to preserve the character of a place, we all understand the intention is to protect that place from getting worse – but it also prevents a place from evolving for the better. We can debate until our eyes roll to the back of our head about what qualities make one neighborhood better than another – but I defy anyone to look at these lovely neighborhoods below and tell me why they’re inherently flawed because of the extensive use of row houses:

Dan’s linked post does a pretty great job of laying out the basic problem in Austin. SF-3 zoning is essentially a suburban code. The problem is that suburban code is the widely applied default zoning of our urban core. Continue reading →

Get your housing in a row, part 1

~ dankeshet ~ 6 Comments

In an earlier post, I described zoning as “the central problem” facing Austin.  That is, inefficient land use makes it that much harder to get efficient public transportation and other public services.  But how, exactly, does zoning restrict land use?  I’ve invited my first guest blogger, Mateo, owner of a Mueller rowhouse, to blog about the benefits of rowhouses and why Austin should allow them in more places:

As many readers of this blog will know, consulting company Opticos has been engaged as the City of Austin’s consultant in the re-drafting of our Land Development Code, a process known as CodeNEXT. Early in the process they tipped their hand and indicated that the current land use codes and regulations by and large prohibit “Missing Middle” housing types. We tend to get high rises in downtown, a few midrises on the transit boulevards and a whole lot of single-family detached housing units everywhere else. We have nearly coded out (or greatly limited) the once common duplex, triplex, fourplex, bungalow court, row house, court yard apartment and live/work units that were a part of the essential fabric of the urban residential neighborhoods. One huge advantage of Missing Middle housing types is that they offer a way to incrementally layer in density without imposing large structures on neighborhoods.  The building mass of Missing Middle housing is similar to or compatible with single-family detached units, but make better use of largely wasted space.

In this blog post I will be discussing a particular Missing Middle housing type that is prohibited from (almost all) of Austin – the row house:

Rowhouse

Continue reading →

Living car-free or car-lite in Austin has gotten a lot easier

~ dankeshet ~ 4 Comments

I’ve lived in Austin for about 8 years, all of that time car-free. When I first moved moved here, I was frankly crazy to do so. I did all sorts of things without a car: dragging mattresses from one apartment to another in West Campus, walking miles because buses weren’t running–or just because. My whole life was planned around living without a car. One reason I lived in coops was so I could choose chores that didn’t require a car. Once I had to do my own grocery shopping, I would regularly take my jumbo grocery cart 50 minutes on the #3 bus up to Costco north, filled it up with groceries (stuffing the rest in my backpack), then take the bus back. I had at least 3 friends with whom I had mutual relationships of calling up and asking each other to use CapMetro’s trip planner for them.

It was actually a fun life for a 20-something, like playing a video game on hard mode. My friends and I spent a lot of time coming up with creative ways to move ourselves and our stuff. Other people had stories of getting drunk and winding up with the police; we had stories of police officers picking us up from walking along 2222, because he just didn’t think we looked very safe.  (He was probably right.) But it was hard. One time, picking up something from Craigslist, I got off the bus in a part of town I didn’t know well, headed the wrong way down the Ben White Blvd frontage road in the 100-degree heat, and got seriously desperate with cars whizzing by at 50MPH and no pedestrian-friendly businesses to pop into before a friend figured out where I was over the phone and set me on the right path. Under the best of conditions, getting any errands done in the summer was exhausting. Calling up a taxi company to get to the hospital and being told that nobody is available for an hour is the kind of experience that makes you question your choices in life.

In part because of recent political debates (legalization of Uber/Lyft,  lowering parking requirements for small apartments and ADUs), I’ve been reflecting on these experiences. Today, I still live car-free but it is considerably less crazy than it used to be. In part, this is because I’m no longer silly enough to think it’s a good idea for me to gather up some friends and carry a chaise lounge through West Campus at 10PM. But in part, it’s because the city and the world is just much more friendly to living without a car today than it was just a few years ago.  Here’s my list of ways my life is easier without a car now than it used to be, in no particular order:

  • Smartphones make it much, much harder to get lost.  My flirtation with heat stroke along Ben White would never happen today: if I were confused, I’d simply check the map on my phone.
  • Smartphones make trip planning much more flexible.  I used to have “last bus” times memorized for a wide variety of buses to make sure I could get home on time–and still got stranded occasionally when I would forget that it was Sunday. Today, I can easily just ask Google Maps or the CapMetro app to figure out the best way for me to take a bus home.
  • Sidewalks are getting more widespread and larger throughout the city, especially in the places I walk most.  Last month the city added a sidewalk in front of Vince Young grill, and a bike lane on 3rd Street.  Along my daily commute, at least a couple patches of missing sidewalk have been filled in that used to force me to cross a street or share a lane with cars–not very safe on foot!
  • Grocery delivery is a million times better.  Between Burpy, Instacart, and Amazon subscriptions, 90%+ of my groceries are delivered.  What would have taken me 3+ hours, heavy lifting, dangerous walking along pedestrian-hostile stroads with 80 lbs of grocery in tow is now done with a button click online.
  • Prepared food delivery is much easier.  Between GrubHub and Favor, pretty much anything can be delivered.
  • Density has brought more local food retail. In the two most recent neighborhoods I have lived in (West Campus and downtown), there has been a big jump in residential and commercial density. There’s a far broader quantity and variety of stores within walking distance of me, whether it’s convenience stores like Royal Blue or the dozen corner stores in West Campus, or tons of restaurants.
  • The food truck revolution. Not only is there more brick-and-mortar, but there are multiple food truck courts within walking distance of me, bringing even more variety of food. It used to be that buildingless parcels would be worse-than-useless to a pedestrian, filled in as surface parking lots. Now, many of those parking lots are being filled with very useful, tasty food.
  • Bcycle has only been in Austin for a few months, but you already see them everywhere. I’m not super confident enough on a bike to make this my main form of commuting, but they’re very convenient when I need them.
  • Uber / Lyft.  Uber and Lyft have been operating for the last few months. Most of my life doesn’t require a car, but since Uber and Lyft have started up, I am far more confident that if I suddenly needed a ride, I could find one.

Obviously, some items on this list are downtown- and campus-centric. People living in lower density places are unlikely to see a wide variety of stores within walking distance of them, for example.  I have the luck of a good job within a 1.5-mile walk of my home. For many people in Austin, it would be, well, crazy for them to live without a car. But these changes are real and more and more people will find that living car-free or car-lite is a good choice for them.

A new slogan: abundant housing

~ dankeshet ~ 10 Comments

AURA, the urbanist group in Austin I’ve been so excited about, has adopted the language of “abundant housing.” The concept is simple: build enough housing for everybody who needs a home. Although abundance and affordability are intimately linked, the call for enough homes for everyone doesn’t require invoking affordability. It’s a strong statement of inclusivity and social justice on its own.

Abundant housing makes all housing more affordable

Even if you don’t buy my argument (and overwhelming consensus among economists, real estate people, etc.) that abundant housing leads to affordable housing, you should stand up for abundant housing because everybody deserves a home.  But I’ll flesh out the link anyway. I’ve compared the housing market to a game of musical chairs. If you don’t have enough chairs to go around, the competition is going to be intense not just for the last few chairs, but for every chair. Similarly, if there aren’t enough homes to go around, the competition for homes will be intense up and down the market. This is the situation today in Austin and in cities throughout the country: rising prices, cash-only sales, homes selling sight-unseen. The competition for homes is intense at all levels; even those who can definitely afford some housing are forced to contend with rising rents. Abundant housing aims both to make sure those at the bottom have a place to live and everybody else isn’t subjected to the intense competition that makes our current housing markets so hard.

Targeted affordability isn’t enough

Affordable housing can refer to mandated Affordability or housing that’s just affordable. Whether the specifics of the affordable housing strategy are bond-driven Affordable Housing, Affordable Housing setasides in new development, or targeted relaxation of laws that only allow new housing that will likely be affordable (e.g. very small units), these strategies are all based around the idea that the best way to improve affordability is to create new housing that will enter the market at the lowest end. In its worst form, you see not only a preference for housing targeted at the cheapest end of the housing market, but opposition to the creation of net new housing because that new housing is at the higher end.

But in a game of musical chairs, the intense competition for chairs doesn’t come from the fact that there are too many thrones and not enough folding chairs; it comes from the fact that there aren’t enough chairs, period. If there are ten fewer chairs than there are contestants, whether you add ten thrones or ten folding chairs, everybody will now have a seat. In this view, discouraging people from adding seats because they aren’t targeted at the particular folks who lost last round is perverse; you are hurting those folks’ chances of finding a seat, not helping them. Abundant housing is built around the same idea: policy that allows new housing to be created easily will allow more homes to enter the market, enough that everybody can find a place to live. With the competition between buyers/renters being less intense, rents won’t rise as much across the market. Whether that’s done through small new units cheap enough to hit the middle-to-bottom of the market, bond-supported Affordable Housing units, or new luxury condos absorbing the demand from the richest, there will be housing for all.

Lack of abundant housing overwhelms Affordable Housing

Affordable Housing policy is necessary to help those who need it, even when there’s enough housing to go around. For the musical chairs analogy, in a game with as many chairs as contestants, an adult might find themselves next to vacant chairs designed for children; a contestant with a mobility impairment might not be able to reach a vacant chair because the path is blocked. This is analogous to a well-functioning housing market in which there are still some folks who need a hand, perhaps temporarily because some bad thing happened or they simply lack funds; perhaps permanently if they have a reason they will never be able to make rent. But these intervention strategies are overwhelmed when there are simply too few chairs to accommodate all contestants. If there are fewer chairs than contestants, no amount of targeted interventions will help. They merely result in a different set of folks going without a chair. But fixing the abundance problem, the Affordable Housing efforts can go back to serving specifically those who need it even when there are enough chairs to go around.

Another positive development (accessory units)

~ dankeshet ~ 1 Comment

Following up on the positive development of Chris Riley and Bill Spelman pushing to lower parking and density requirements for small units along dense corridors, Riley is back at it, this time teaming up with Mike Martinez to lower parking and driveway requirements for accessory dwelling units (secondary structures in the backyard of single-family homes).  Chris Bradford and Steven Yarak have great rundowns on why the ordinance is needed so badly and how it could be even better if it applied to more ADUs.

Chris and Steven can give you a better overview than I can of why ADUs are needed and why parking and driveway requirements make it so hard to build.  So I’ll add a perspective that is so obvious it shouldn’t need to be stated, but now and again we do well to repeat: parking and driveway requirements are unfair, backwards, and detrimental all around.

I live in Austin without a car.  At many apartments I’ve lived in, a solid chunk of the land was (un)used for the worst possible thing: an empty parking space, reserved for the car I don’t have.  That land could’ve been a garden absorbing rainfall and preventing runoff; it could’ve been an outdoor patio, providing me and the other residents with a place to enjoy the weather; it could’ve been more housing, allowing for me to split the costs of housing with another resident or roommate.  Is it useful or fair to require every resident of Austin that doesn’t have a car to still pay the costs of maintaining an empty parking space (and often driveway) next to their home?  Is it beneficial to the city or the planet to encourage residents to drive, over using choices like riding public transit or bikes?  (Crib sheet: answers are no and no.)

Even if I did have a car, though, requiring a reserved parking space for my home still wouldn’t make sense.  I lived in each case on streets with a significant share of their street space reserved for the sole purpose of parking automobiles. The city goes to almost incalculable expense to reserve space along almost every street for no purpose other than parking cars; yet frequently that space goes unused.  It is as if the city spent billions of dollars establishing swimming pools throughout every neighborhood, only to mandate that most private homes have swimming pools to ensure that the public swimming pools didn’t get overused.  Except, subsidizing swimming to that extent, while not a great use of funds, might at least be good for the health and enjoyment of the city, while subsidizing parking encourages emissions and traffic.

Likely, some of those who oppose the reduction in parking and driveway requirements don’t really want the parking requirements specifically; they just know that without them, there would be more ADUs, and they oppose that.  To the extent that this is true, it is a real shame.  The city requires a ton more parking spaces, driving up costs, harming the environment, and subsidizing traffic, all because some who couldn’t get the political forces necessary to achieve their (bad) objective of banning ADUs found a way of doing it by making it practically banned instead of actually banned.

I’m far from the only, first, or best person to make these points about parking.  If you’re interested in learning more, I suggest checking out Graphing Parking, a blog by Austin’s own Seth Goodman; Reinventing Parking, the internationally-themed group blog he participates in, and the canonical work, The High Cost of Free Parking, by UCLA professor Donald Shoup.

Let’s not make a deal

~ dankeshet ~ 2 Comments

If you hang around the Austin (and presumably other city’s) zoning codes long enough, you get used to deals.  I’m not talking about compromises, where one side wants a height limit of 40′, the other a height limit of 100′, and they settle for 60′.  I’m talking about requirements built into code that a landowner can get out of if they satisfy some other requirement.  This principle is built so deeply into code, in fact, that it’s almost impossible to avoid.

The Vertical Mixed Use (VMU) zoning overlay allows a landowner to choose between the “base zoning” of a district or VMU zoning.  VMU zoning significantly reduces some limitations (FAR, density, see the linked Austin Contrarian post for definitions and details), and replaces them with different requirements: detailed specifications on acceptable building designs and requirements for some units to be designated as Affordable Housing (see link for definition of Affordable Housing).  Similarly, the University Neighborhood Overlay (UNO) allows landowners to build significantly more on a single property than they would be allowed under base zoning, but only if they agree to an extraordinarily detailed specification for how their building might look like.  (I continue to be amazed that these specifications forbid developers from developing new buildings that look historical because this “results in the devaluation of the real thing.”)  Transit-Oriented Development overlays work similarly; allowing greater densities in certain locations, as long as you follow certain design specifications.  The Downtown Density Bonus allows greater heights in exchange for funding Affordable Housing.  At a smaller scale, there are deals that allow developers to opt out of minimum parking regulations in exchange for providing bike lockers or providing parking for shared car services (e.g. Car2Go, Zipcar).

In general, I find myself in favor of each of these deals. VMU, UNO, and the DDB all provide an opportunity for a development that’s more of a proper scale for the locations of the building along major thoroughfares, or near UT or downtown. I don’t always think what the buildings are required to do in exchange is for the best, but it’s worth it to have that option.  Similarly, I’m in favor of vastly lower minimum parking regulations; if buildings provide bike lockers or Car2Go spaces, more to the better.

But for the short-term upside, there’s also a long-term downside: if either side of the deal changes, the whole deal will need to be renegotiated, making it much harder to make any changes.  When Council Members Chris Riley, Bill Spelman, and Mayor Pro Tem Sheryl Cole introduced an ordinance to explore the possibility of lowering minimum parking and density requirements for microunits along VMU corridors, the major objection expressed at Council was not toward the idea of allowing greater density or less parking itself, but rather that it would gut the existing VMU deal of less parking in exchange for more Affordable Housing.  (Again, see link for definition of Affordable Housing.)  Lowering minimum parking regulations citywide would have an effect on existing deals involving VMU, TOD, bike lockers, car2go, and thousands of ad hoc deals in which landowners agree to waive some development rights in exchange for reduced parking requirements.  It would be a nightmarish negotiation.  Each deal creates an opportunity for lowering the minimum parking needed in one situation, but also creates a constituency opposed to a broad-based reduction.

I’m not sure how to handle this situation–most new deals that come up are tempting, as they offer greater flexibility to build something of a more appropriate density than base zoning allows.  Some of them (VMU, UNO, DDB) have positively transformed the city, allowing far more people to find homes.  Yet, I fear that the more layers of deals that get added, the more difficult it will be to unravel. Small decisions like lowering minimum parking regulations even 10% will be impossible to make because of the number of stakeholders involved in the negotiations.

Fortunately, I feel very excited that this was one of the primary diagnoses CodeNext made [large PDF] in their review of Austin’s current Land Development Code: base zoning districts are ineffective, leading to complicated layers of opt-in, opt-out regulations.  I hope that a good solution can come up with to unravel these deals and that any future deals are made with caution.  A well-meaning deal that advances two priorities in the short-term can lead to paralysis in the long-term.

What we talk about when we talk about affordable housing

~ dankeshet ~ 6 Comments

One of the most confusing terms in Austin politics today is affordable housing. There are two very different definitions in use.

affordable housing

The first definition, which I tend to call affordable housing without using capital letters, is the plain meaning: a housing unit that doesn’t cost very much.  There are many reasons why some housing is less expensive than other housing. It might be smaller, older, lack amenities like pool access or parking or hardwood floors, be in a worse location (whether unpleasant or distant), or offer less privacy (e.g. shared rooms, shared apartments).  This doesn’t mean that these housing units are terrible by any means! But it does mean that the people who have top dollar would rather pay that top dollar to live in other units.

Affordable Housing

The second type of Affordable Housing, which I tend to spell with capitals, is legally-binding, and either mandated or subsidized. This comes in many flavors, but basic characteristics are:

  • It is mostly means-tested.  That is, they must prove that they have a low enough income to qualify.
  • It is legally bound to remain Affordable Housing for a period, often measured in decades.

There are various programs that create or require Affordable Housing in Austin.  Voters approved a bond to subsidize creation of Affordable Housing units. Some denser developments are required to set aside some of their units to be mandated, subsidized Affordable Housing, and others are allowed to buy their way out of this provision by paying taxes into a fund that subsidizes the creation of Affordable Housing units elsewhere.  There are niche housing developers who specialize in building Affordable Housing, such as the nonprofit Foundation Communities.

There are different types of Affordable Housing.  Permanent Supportive Housing is targeted at the chronically homeless, heavily subsidized (residents may pay rent of $50 per month or no rent at all), and comes paired with social services to help the residents get on their feet.  This housing feels more like a social service than a straight affordability program; it is tightly entwined with other social services and serves a population that otherwise may literally have no housing at all otherwise. On the other hand, a mandated Affordable Housing unit in a VMU development is at the opposite end of the scale. While it only serves people in the lower half of the income scale, it only serves people in a narrow band of that scale, because residents must both prove that they make little enough money to qualify for the program and enough money to pay their rent.  Rents on these units may be as high as $700 for a 1BR, well beyond what many of the neediest are able to pay.

When they conflict

There are some people who support both Affordable Housing and the broader movement towards more affordable housing through other means.  Pretty often, however, affordable housing and Affordable Housing actually come into conflict.  As mentioned above, one mechanism that pays for Affordable Housing is taxing the creation of new, dense development, like the Downtown Density Bonus (DDB) and the VMU affordability provisions. In the case of the DDB, a developer must pay fees if they want to build a taller building with more homes. In the case of VMU,  a developer must set aside units if they want to build less parking.  Parking is very expensive, whether it’s building garages or just dedicating land to surface lots, so accepting reduced rent on some units for decades may still be more profitable than being forced to build parking spaces. This sets up two different ways these programs for Affordable Housing cause conflicts between affordable housing and Affordable Housing:

Taxing Development Reduces The Number of New Homes

By focusing so much taxation on dense, new development, there are probably some projects that would get built or built larger if it weren’t for the tax. Note that this isn’t true for the Affordable Housing bond, which was funded by a broad-based property tax increase, but specifically for the development taxes like the DDB that target only new development. As I discussed before, one of the major reasons for the lack of affordable housing in Austin is that there just isn’t enough housing altogether. In a game of musical chairs, when there aren’t as many chairs as there are players, somebody ends up without a chair–or else sitting in somebody’s lap.  In a game of musical homes, players end up homeless, doubled up, or leaving the city altogether. Landlords and developers have freer rein to raise rents, knowing they will find somebody to pay, reducing the supply of affordable housing. Even if the new developments that would have been created would have been expensive housing, they help to create more slack in the rental market, removing the ability of landlords of cheaper places to raise their rents.

Giving development taxes to Affordable Housing providers creates constituency against allowing more development

There are many supporters of Affordable Housing in the city.  Providing a mechanism that allows some types of new housing to be created only if it they pay for Affordable Housing provides a strong reason for these supporters to oppose any measure that allows other types of housing unless it also creates Affordable Housing. It also provides a much stronger incentive for people to oppose lifting restrictions on building because the taxes that are raised by allowing developers to buy out of those restrictions are dedicated to a particular, organized constituency.

This has happened at City Council most recently in the discussion of a very positive development to allow the creation of more affordable housing.  The ordinance would allow developers to build more small housing units per building in some places than they previously could and also allows them to reduce one of the most expensive amenities housing can provide: a parking space for each unit. This measure encourages the creation of more affordable housing. Developers are always trying to balance the costs of building a unit against the potential rent they can charge (or price they can sell it for).  Some would opt for a high-cost, high-rent model, while others for a low-cost, low-rent model. What this ordinance does is allow some of the costs to be foregone (parking) and others spread out over more units (land), but only if the developer creates smaller, less desirable, more affordable units. This promotes affordable housing in two ways: directly, by encouraging developers to opt for a lower-cost, lower-rent model; and indirectly, by providing more homes overall for the game of musical chairs.

At Council, however, the biggest concern with the ordinance was that, by allowing developers to create affordable housing without requiring them to build parking spaces, the city would lose leverage over the developer to force them to create Affordable Housing. In other words, Affordable Housing advocates were afraid that if developers were allowed to build more affordable housing, they may not agree to build more Affordable Housing.

Words

If that previous sentence–and this entire article–wasn’t confusing to you, you may have been involved in Austin politics too long.  I intentionally made it difficult to read, to help clarify just how crazy using the same words to refer to different concepts can be. There have been many proposals for terms that would help clarify this (e.g. “social housing” instead of “Affordable Housing”, “affordable housing” as a condition (affordability) of housing, and “Affordable Housing” as a housing product type). My plea to my readers is simply this: when talking about either, be clear which you are referring to. When listening to people talk about either, make sure they clarify which they are referring to. If somebody reports on the number of “Affordable” units in the city, make sure they are clear about whether they are counting only means-tested Affordable Housing units or all housing units that don’t cost that much.

And a special plea to the journalists and editors out there: please, please, develop a house style that brings clarity to this issue. When you use the words “affordable housing” to refer only to Affordable Housing (as, say, the Chronicle does here), you are doing your readers a grave disservice and confusing the issue.

A Very Positive Development

~ dankeshet ~ 5 Comments

As Austin Contrarian documents, Council Members Riley and Spelman, and Mayor Pro Tem* Cole, have introduced a very positive item on the agenda for Thursday’s City Council session.  The item would allow buildings to 1) waive “minimum site area” rules and 2) waive minimum parking requirements when they build apartments less than 500 square feet on either Core Transit Corridors or in Transit-Oriented Development zones.

Quick glossary (and readers, correct me if I’m wrong):

  • The minimum site area is essentially a cap on the number of units an apartment complex can have per acre.
  • Minimum parking requirements are rules requiring a certain number of parking spaces per apartment.  The exact requirement varies based on the number of bedrooms in the apartment.
  • Core Transit Corridors are essentially big streets like Lamar or Burnet. You can identify them by the presence of large apartment complexes.
  • Transit-Oriented Development zones are special zoning areas near transit stations that allow developments with less parking (to take advantage of their proximity to transit) in exchange for some special design requirements.

The reason this is such a big deal is that, as Austin Contrarian says in the link above, minimum site areas and minimum parking requirements are some of the biggest impediments to providing homes in Austin. If developers weren’t required to build parking for every lot, they could create targeted developments to people who don’t own cars.  Even if currently there are few people who would be willing to go without a car, the developers can still make money by reducing the price because they won’t have to pay for the extra land for parking.  The reduced price for a nice, centrally located apartment might lure some people to give up their cars.

On its own, this change will not bring a construction boom or affordability to Austin.  As I discussed, only allowing density on select streets greatly limits opportunities for building.  The same logic that makes it useful to get rid of minimum parking requirements on the Core Transit Corridors themselves should apply to areas near the CTCs as well.  After all, most people who don’t have a car can walk a block to the transit corridors as they can get a unit on the exact street itself.  Even if those streets weren’t upzoned to multi-family, eliminating parking requirements would allow many more people to build Accessory Dwelling Unit–also known as granny flats, garage apartments–small “extra” units on a Single Family lot. Indeed, the same logic that says that minimum parking requirements aren’t needed near transit should apply everywhere.  Few people may want to live far from transit without a car, but if somebody wants to, more power to them.

Similarly, the same logic that says that a unit less than 500 square feet could benefit from reductions in parking minimums could just as easily apply to units greater than 500 square feet. 500 square feet is plenty for many single people, but reducing parking requirements for larger units might allow more families currently priced out of the core to ditch a car (perhaps one of two cars or perhaps both if their circumstances were right) and move to a more central location.

Still, this really is a fantastic development, both because of the direct effect it would have and because of the way it focuses on some of the real issues: onerous minimum site area and parking requirements getting in the way of building transit-friendly, centrally-located housing. I urge you to write City Council and express your support for Item 40, your thanks to Riley, Spelman, and Cole for sponsoring it, and a request that Leffingwell, Morrison, Martinez, and Tovo support it as well.

One last explanatory note: the Item itself is not an ordinance. It is merely a request that staff write an ordinance and bring it to Council.  This is actually the second stage in the process; the first was a resolution sponsored by Council Member Spelman asking staff to study the issue of microapartments.  Even if this item passes Council on Thursday, there will still be a long way to go before it becomes law.

* For those not in the know, “Mayor Pro Tem” is essentially “vice mayor.”  Both the mayor and the Mayor Pro Tem are councilmembers with equal vote weighting as any other councilmember.  City Council etiquette dictates that you always refer to and address the Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem as such, though, and not merely as “Council Member.”

My Testimony on Occupancy Reductions

~ dankeshet

I testified against a proposal to reduce the maximum number of unrelated people who can live in single-family structures (6 to 4 in single-family homes, 3 to 2 in duplexes, and 4-2 to 2-2 in Single-family / garage apartment pairs).  Earlier on this blog, I made an argument about this from an affordability standpoint. But at the City Council hearing, I decided to speak about this from a much more personal perspective.

To see my testimony at City Council on Occupancy Reductions, click here and skip ahead to 50:50.

Or you can read the text below the fold: Continue reading →

The Affordable Housing that Bonds Give, Policy Takes Away

~ dankeshet ~ 4 Comments

In November 2013, Austin voters passed a 10 -year, $65m housing bond. I never thought this bond would do much to affect affordability; Austin is expensive because it’s like a game of musical chairs with more players than chairs.  Compared to the size of the game, the bond was tiny*.

But just three months later, the Austin city council is threatening to take away any possible affordability gains by, at a stroke, eliminating one of the major options for affordability in the city: sharing a house or duplex with enough friends to bring prices down. (To read more on the issue, see this facebook event.)  To stretch the musical chairs analogy a little far, it’s as if the city has decided that, even though there are thousands of people on the outside looking in, unable to find chairs, the best option right now is to reduce the number of friends allowed to share a bench. The results of this ordinance will be to scatter some of those who want to share houses to currently affordable parts of the city, raising prices there, and price others out of the city entirely. Taken together, the net effect of the bond and ordinance will be to: 1) raise taxes, 2) use that money to fund quality-of-life issues for the squeaky wheel homeowner minority in university-adjacent neighborhoods.  If you, like me, feel like this is a really bad idea, I encourage you to take action, writing to City Council or speaking in front of the Council.

* The city says that the previous bond of about the same size funded 2,409 units over the course of its 8 year life or approximately 300 new units per year, in a city of 850,000 people.  By contrast, the private market added 11,834 units in 2013, according to the Census Bureau.  Screenshot here; data here.