Austin Contrarian

Sound familiar?

From the Seattle Times:

For every affluent urban area — whether it's San Francisco or New York or Boston — there comes a tipping point at which the people who give the city its character, who help make it so desirable, risk being priced out of their own creation.

Can Seattle really claim to be a livable city when the median home value is half a million dollars and so many who live here feel they may not be able to anymore?

"We live in the same place as the richest person in the world, and that's pretty unique," says Cone, 35. But with the area's wealth comes a trade-off for anyone whose name is not Bill Gates.

"I'm just glad I was able to buy a house," Cone says. "I feel like I just kind of squeaked in."

WHETHER SEATTLE has reached a tipping point is an open question, but for people like Cone it's a burning one.

A Seattle native and the child of artists, he grew up in the thick of things, hanging out at Pike Place Market, catching $1.50 movies at the old Coliseum Theater on Fifth Avenue.

Cone would go on to co-own World Pizza on Lenora Street between Second and Third avenues, a cult favorite with the same hipster clientele that made nearby establishments like the Crocodile Café popular stops on the then-burgeoning Belltown nightlife circuit in the early 1990s.

People who were fretting about the city's high cost of living in those days — as many who were watching districts like Belltown and Capitol Hill begin their rise to hipness did — surely had no idea how good they had it.

Today the old World Pizza location is a Starbucks, the Coliseum is a Banana Republic, the Crocodile has closed and Cone has fled the city center.

Cone and his former girlfriend, Alyssa Stevens, started an antiques business specializing in estate-sale items eight years ago. They opened in Pioneer Square, but moved the business to the industry-fringed Georgetown neighborhood last year to escape the district's parking woes and high rents.

Entrepreneurs like Cone, creative types and everyday workers are all hoping to make a stand on the cheaper fringes of the city to prevent being pushed out altogether. For some, that tipping point is dangerously close.

When asked about affordability in Seattle, the first thing Georgetown Records saleswoman Tina Forbes says is the story of so many who are disoriented and frustrated by the fast pace of change here: "I'm getting ready to leave — Portland, man!"

"We just keep getting pushed farther and farther south," Forbes says of people like her who've dealt with rising rents and apartments going condo, which has happened to her twice already.

"Seattle's gonna lose all of its cool people," Forbes says. "Developers need to slow... the heck ... down."

Things aren't quite this bad in Austin . . . yet.  I'd give us two, maybe three, years (assuming our economy holds together).   

But maybe I'm looking at things backward.  New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Seattle are ultra-hip places.  There's really no evidence that running off low-income households, or forcing them into crowded housing, has made these cities any less desireable.  Perhaps we Austinites should be trying to emulate their success, rather than wringing our hands over rising home prices. 

Here's the agenda I'd propose for propelling Austin into the "Superstar City" pantheon:  (1) discourage the construction of traditionally affordable housing like garage apartments and duplexes; (2) restrict the amount of land available for multi-family housing; (3) strictly limit multi-family density; (4) limit the construction of upscale condos and townhomes in order to force affluent homebuyers to compete for the scarce supply of close-in housing; (5) ban small-lot and "urban home" zoning; (6) require property owners/developers who build dense developments to shoulder the financial burden for things like affordable housing, parks and infrastructure; and (7) impose onerous design standards to increase the cost of new construction.

We can call it the "progressive" agenda.  We'll be in the superstar ranks in no time.

Street View of the Hyde Park "no walk-or-bike" tract

For the curious, here are shots of the Hyde Park tract that will be gated and locked to keep pedestrians and cyclists from using 50th St. (clipped from Google's Street View).  First, the overhead shot of the 50th St. entrance to the tract (the tract is on the left):

View Larger Map

Next, the street-level view of the 50th St. entrance (sorry, just a jpeg -- you can get to the Google street view using the link immediately above):

50th Street, of course, is a public right-of-way.  As you can see, there is already connectivity for cars as well as for walkers and bikers.   The neighborhood plan, presumably, will require the developer to replace the chain-link fence with a lockable gate  capable of blocking foot and bike traffic.

Seriously, don't blame last weekend's parking fiasco on neighborhoods

I'm frequently critical of Austin's neighborhood associations, but even I don't blame the Bouldin Creek neighborhood for last weekend's parking fiasco, when simultaneous events (Carmen at the Long Center, a convention at Palmer, and the Reggae Festival at Auditorium Shores) snarled traffic for hours and caused patrons to miss their events.

The City's line is, "Hey, we wanted to put more parking there but the neighborhood associations objected."

Even doubling the Palmer parking garage's 1,200 spaces would not have dented the demand for parking last weekend.  Regardless, the City cannot, and should not, build the parking necessary to accommodate the "perfect storm."  That's a horribly inefficient use of money and space.  And, frankly, who wants to line one of our premiere parks with 5-6 story parking garages?

It's not even clear to me that the neighborhoods were acting selfishly.  Neighborhood associations usually demand more parking than is necessary because the spillover ends up on neighborhood streets.  I'm sure Bouldin Creek knew at the time that less parking on site would mean more parking in the neighborhood streets.

Austin Lyric Opera's patrons and others who use Long Center, Palmer and Auditorium Shores need to know they can get to their events.  (I'm sure the opera lost subscribers last weekend.)  The solution is better traffic management, more shuttles, more buses on Cap Metro's regular routes, and better publicity of alternative parking.  We can't build our way out of messes like last weekend's. 

Saving Hyde Park from pedestrians and bicyclists

Neighborhoods impose conditions on new development all the time.  Some of the conditions are sensible.  Some are strange.  Some are merely mildly irritating.  But a "no pedestrian/bicyclist" provision?

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department wants to sell off a tract abutting the UT Intramural Fields (the Game Warden Academy site).  The tract borders Hyde Park, with 51st Street running along the northern border and Rowena Street along the eastern border.  50th Street dead-ends in the center of the tract's eastern boundary (blue arrow):

The land is currently unzoned because it was owned by the state.  The developer wants to put low-density multi-family (possibly detached single family) on a narrow strip immediately to the west of Rowena, and denser multi-family on the remainder of the property.  Presumably, the thin tract will serve to buffer the single-family homes on Rowena.

It's triggered a predictable zoning fight, with some neighbors complaining about the increased density and traffic and campaigning to turn the property into a park.  Garden-variety stuff.

What is noteworthy is the agreement the developer reached with the neighborhood.  (See p. 43 of the staff report.) 

It's not particularly noteworthy that the agreement requires the units to be listed for sale; we explicitly discriminate against rental housing all the time in Austin.  (Remember this one, though, the next time Hyde Park leaders lecture the rest of us about the shortage of affordable rental housing.)   

Nor is it noteworthy that the agreement bars vehicle access to the property via 50th Street.  That's understandable.  The neighbors on Rowena and streets to the east don't want a surge in traffic on their streets.  Cars will have to use 51st Street to get in and out of the development. 

No, the unusual provision is this:  The agreement bans pedestrian and bicycle access to 50th Street.  Pedestrians and bicyclists will be barred from accessing a public right-of-way that dead-ends at their property's boundary.  The neighbors just east of the development not only want to keep out the new cars, they want to keep out the new residents themselves -- whether they're on foot or on bike.  Residents who naturally would like to stroll through their new neighborhood will instead be forced onto 51st Street.

Maybe they'll take the hint and stay on it.

It gets worse.  The fire department might require access to the new development via 50th Street.  The agreement recognizes this possibility and specifies that the 50th-street entrance be gated with emergency vehicle access only.  In other words, even if AFD requires that 50th Street be extended into the development, the developer must put up a gate to keep the peds and bicyclists from wandering into Hyde Park proper.

The Planning Commission, to its credit, not only approved the zoning, but recommended that the Council require pedestrian and bicyle access.

Thus it came before Council Thursday night.  There was no debate.  There was no discussion . . . except for Councilmember Cole's motion to adopt the ban on bicycle and pedestrian access to 50th Street.  To which the other council members meekly acquiesced.

Oh, by the way, here was item 63 on Thursday's agenda:

Approve a resolution supporting efforts to upgrade the City of Austin’s bicycle network by establishing the city’s intent to become the first Texas city to attain Gold level bike-friendly status from the League of American Bicyclists; supporting the work of the Street Smarts Task Force January 2008; and directing the City Manager to study and report back to Council with recommendations for inclusion of the Street Smarts Task Force findings into the Austin Bicycle Master Plan. (Mayor Will Wynn Council Member Brewster McCracken Council Member Sheryl Cole)

"Bike friendly" indeed.

Correction:  I screwed up the orientation of the tract in the first draft.  (I had 51st on the east rather than the north.  Dumb.)  Since there were so many references to north, south, etc., I didn't note changes with strike-throughs because it was too distracting.

Props to Council

City Council continues to show that it is serious about opening the core transit corridors to Vertical Mixed Use development by standing up to neighborhoods trying to wriggle out of the VMU bargain.

A couple of recent actions by Council are especially reassuring:

The neighborhoods in the East MLK Combined Planning Area asked to opt out all of their eligible tracts, most of which lie along Manor Road east of Airport Boulevard.  They offered the typical pretexts (pp. 8-9) -- e.g., lack of infrastructure (although citing chronically stopped up toilets was probably a first), increased impervious cover, inadequate planning and coordination -- while still managing to invoke New Urbanist guru Andres Duany as cover for their unambiguously anti-Urbanist stand.

Props to Council.  At its February 28 meeting, it voted 7-0 to retain VMU zoning on all of the tracts, and approved parking reductions and additional ground floor uses to boot.  (This was 1st reading only; 2nd and 3rd readings are on the March 20 agenda.)

Bryker Woods was not nearly as intransigent as the East MLK neighborhoods.  It agreed to leave most of its tracts in the VMU district, but asked to exclude seven tracts (mainly over worries about parking, from what I saw of the Planning Commission hearing.)  Council voted (6-0) to zone five of the seven tracts VMU anyway, and deferred the other two to its March 20 meeting. 

Council has decided that it is not a rubber stamp.

Not every neighborhood is an East MLK.  Some neighborhoods have embraced VMU unreservedly.  Not only did North Loop not ask to exclude any of its VMU-eligible properties, it asked to opt in several other tracts.  Some neighborhoods, at least, recognize that VMU developments will enhance their neighborhoods even as they provide additional room for multi-family development.

Condo conversions

One argument frequently trotted out against zoning for greater density is that it encourages the redevelopment of low-income rental.  But it is silly to believe that zoning can maintain the stock of affordable housing.  When rents lag behind home prices, owners will simply convert the apartments into condos. 

I'm aware of three condo conversions on South Lamar, one on Thornton (around the corner from my house), one off Oltorf, and one on South Congress.  There apparently are many more:

Last year, 824 apartments were converted to condos in Austin, from the downtown area to the suburbs. This year, 1,167 more units are expected to be converted in the Austin area, said Robin Davis, manager of Austin Investor Interests LLC, which tracks the apartment market.

That's a lot of low- to moderate-rental taken out of the market.  On a positive note, the converted condos are a lot cheaper than the new stuff being built.

I suppose Austin could take the San Diego/San Francisco/Berkeley approach of limiting condo conversions.  A saner approach would be to permit small infill projects that blend in with the neighborhood.  And lots of dense multi-family projects on transit corridors.  The stuff built today will be the affordable housing 20 or 30 years down the road.   

If you thought Kyle was bad . . .

try Sunnyvale, an eastern suburb of Dallas.

It faced a lawsuit similar to the one pending against Kyle.[1]  Here's the federal judge's description of Sunnyvale's set-up:

Nestled in the midst of towns defined by the shopping malls and dense apartment development for which the Dallas Metropolitan Area has become famous, Sunnyvale presents a stark contrast. It is a beautiful, rural, Texas town with almost 11,000 acres of rolling hills and green grassland and only 2,000 residents. Sunnyvale has no shopping malls and no apartment developments. The secret to Sunnyvale's success is its unusual zoning laws, including an outright ban on apartments and a one-acre zoning requirement for residential development.

The judge ruled that Sunnyvale's zoning had a disproportionate effect on African-Americans.  More damning, he ruled that the city had adopted the regulations with the intention of discriminating against African-Americans.

The judge was probably persuaded by citizen comments like this one, made at a zoning hearing on the town's first proposed multi-family project:

We'll build that fence up, we'll hold that gate there and as long as we can hold those Indians off, fine.  And, when they bust through then we pay the price . . . there's an over abundance of multi-family housing around here and we're not like that.  But, we're boxed in . . . personally, I'd rather not see any apartments or any cottage homes in Sunnyvale.  Period.

I've discounted the possibility that Kyle was actually motivated by race.  I suspect that's unlikely with fast-growing suburbs because they're less likely to be racially homogeneous.  But obviously, if the plaintiffs have turned up hard evidence of discriminatory intent, Kyle will be in real trouble.  The hit to its reputation would dwarf any impact on its zoning authority.

[1]Dews v. Town of Sunnyvale, Texas, 109 F. Supp.2d 526 (N. D. Tex. 2000).

Kyle's all-masonry housing ordinance has landed it in court

Here's a thought-provoking case:  The Home Builders Association of Greater Austin Inc. and the National Association of Home Builders Inc. have teamed up with the NAACP to sue the City of Kyle. 

In 2003, Kyle passed ordinances that increased the minimum lot size for single-family homes by 200 square feet, to 6,825 square feet; set a minimum of 1,200 sq. ft. for single-family houses; and mandated masonry exteriors.

Kyle officials say the ordinances were designed to slow growth in the wake of a spurt that has sent the city's population skyrocketing — from 5,314 in 2000 to 23,285 in 2007, according to estimates from the Texas State Data Center. The rules followed development moratoriums after sewer and water systems became overburdened.

"The passage of the ordinances that are at issue here today was just one more step that the city took once the development moratoriums were lifted in order to address those growth issues," Kyle's lawyer Bradford Bullock said.

The homebuilders and NAACP (strange bedfellows indeed) aren't buying it:

The trio of plaintiffs say the rules violate the federal Fair Housing Act because African American and Hispanic home buyers have been disproportionately pushed out of the local market.

"They raised the bar on every single district within the city," Michael Klein, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, said in his opening arguments. "What they did was basically say, 'We're going to increase the cost of living in Kyle.' "

Klein is absolutely right.  Kyle is dead set on increasing the cost of housing there.

This is not necessarily an expression of bigotry, though.  Kyle is arguably attempting to cure a market failure, although clumsily.

A city like Kyle, which has no commercial or industrial base to speak of, can only fund its schools, parks, police and other city services with residential property taxes.  All of the homeowners have the right to share equally in these services -- the kids go to the same schools, everyone gets the same police and fire protection, etc.  The homeowners don't pay equal shares of the cost, though.   The more expensive the home, the bigger the homeowner's share.   

Duh.  That's always the case.  But a town like Kyle has plenty of undeveloped land.  That creates a problem for homeowners who want the town to provide a high level of service.  (Say, a well-funded high school someday.)  They can vote to fund high-quality services, but that makes the town more attractive to potential residents, including lower-income residents.  If the town attracts enough low-value construction, the new growth might actually lower the average property tax per household, thereby reducing the money available per capita to spend on services.   

This poses a dilemma for the original homeowners:  If they want to maintain the high-quality services they were initially willing to fund, they will have to raise their taxes because the city's per capita collections will no longer cover the bill.  If they don't want to raise taxes, then they must cut services, which is obviously a second-best solution.

The residents of Kyle have settled on a third option:  They have imposed what is essentially a minimum property tax by requiring that new homes have a minimum value.

I'll wager Kyle's attorneys don't put it this way in court.  I don't have a problem in theory with cities offering different levels of services, though.  When there are lots of suburbs offering lots of variety, home shoppers can pick the city that suits them best.   (Urban economists call this Tiebout sorting, after economist Charles Tiebout, who proved that fragmented suburbs could generate efficient levels of government under certain conditions.)

Zoning is a pretty clumsy tool, though.  Minimum lot sizes, home sizes and all-masonry construction all impose tremendous inefficiencies of their own.  Among other things, they reduce the options available to prospective homeowners who are willing to pay for the services but who don't want the standard suburban set up.  It would be much more efficient simply to charge an impact fee to cover the homeowner's share of fixed costs.  That's hard to do under Texas law, though.

I've also got a problem with using zoning to cartelize the supply of housing to push up the current residents' land prices.  That shouldn't be the case in Kyle, though.  There's lots of land around Kyle, and no natural amenity that makes the land in Kyle more attractive than in another town.  The citizens of Kyle, in other words, don't have the market power to raise their land value through zoning (as opposed to the structure value).

None of this addresses the lawsuit's claim, which is that Kyle's ordinance has a disproportionate impact on minorities, which is almost certainly true.  That's not the end of the analysis, because the law tolerates some facially-neutral ordinances even when they have a disproportionate impact.  If Kyle loses, enjoy the ensuing firestorm.  I imagine even Austin would end up getting scorched.

Zilker's VMU application, part II

An open letter to City Council, my belated response to this Chronicle piece:

Dear City Councilmembers:

I note that the Zilker Neighborhood Association has discovered a "good eats" exception to VMU zoning.  It has asked to opt out more than 70 of its eligible parcels, largely for the sake of "beloved" restaurants and other preferred local establishments.  (I couldn't help but notice that the "beloved" restaurants are especially likely to sit near single-family housing.) 

Before basing major zoning decisions on the quality of the Tex-Mex, please consider this:

The Zilker neighborhood is almost completely built out under current zoning entitlements.

According to the City's residential acreage data (pdf), a paltry 11% of the Zilker neighborhood's residential property is zoned multi-family.  Only 2.6% is zoned at the reasonably dense MF4 or MF5 levels. 

These multi-family parcels are nearly maxed out. According to data collected by the city demographer, ZNA had 933 occupied multi-faily units in 2005, or roughly 1,000 total units (assuming a reasonable vacancy rate).  Using the residential acreage data above, the City's minimum site area standards, and a reasonable assumption about the mix of one-room and two-room apartments, I've calculated that the current zoning permits fewer than 1,200 multi-family units.  While some of ZNA's 1,000 existing units are non-conforming (i.e., not built on MF-zoned property), there is clearly little room for more housing under current zoning entitlements.  And we all know what happens when a developer asks for greater entitlements in the Zilker neighborhood.

As Mayor Wynn likes to point out, the City of Austin has doubled in population every 20 years, and will likely continue to do so.  Thousands of these new residents (and plenty of the current ones) will want to live close to downtown and central Austin's other amenities.  We must find space somewhere.

VMU zoning is supposed to provide that space.  That was the "deal" with the neighborhood groups:  density will go on the transit corridors and not in the neighborhood interiors.  That deal did not, and does not, permit neighborhoods to gerrymander the VMU district to indulge their officers' fondness for a particular business -- or a dozen or more businesses, in ZNA's case.  (It must sting the local businesses who weren't favored by ZNA to discover their customers left them off the "beloved" list.) 

A number of neighborhoods -- including neighborhoods represented by high-ranking ANC officers -- have taken the VMU deal seriously.  ZNA has not.  The City Council has the right to deny a neighborhood's opt-out application in its entirety.  Please do so here.

Footing it to class

Richard Florida at the Creative Class Exchange:

Ohio State university sociologist, Kent Schwirian summarizes the results of an OSU study of the relationship between where students live and their grade point average and the time they take to graduate.

Percent graduating in four years:

• Walking distance 60.8%
• Near campus 47.5%
• Rest of county 36.7%
• Outside of county 21.1%

Grade point average:

• Residence hall 3.33
• Walking distance 3.16
• Near campus  3.12
• Rest of county 2.97
• Outside of county 2.94

Correlation doesn't imply causation.  But it makes some sense here.  Being a student is easier when you live within walking distance of campus.  It's easier to get to class.  It's easier to study with other students.  It's easier to make a professor's office hours.  It's easier to get to the library. (Do college students use libraries any more?)

Just another data point for evaluating the harm the City of Austin inflicted on University of Texas students by its years-long ban on dense development in West Campus.