More than 2/3rds of the public comments were against Austin’s proposed Land Code rewrite.
Among those critiquing the LDC is local lawyer Fred Lewis, he said the City is hoping they can get the market to produce affordable housing. But he believes the only way to make homes affordable, is by taking it off the market or downzoning areas. “However, in East Austin when you cut through it all…whether they’re transition zones or whatever… you have upzoned the vast majority of it. You have given more entitlements, there will be three units instead of one. And the whole purpose of that is redevelopment.”
Resident Susan Moffitt said if the LDC rewrite goes unchanged, it’ll make renter’s lives harder in her neighborhood as more entitlements would benefit developers more than residents. “You’re actually incentivizing the demolition of existing market affordable missing middle housing and replacing it with unaffordable new housing.” By her estimates, the rewrite’s upzonings would boost land costs in her neighborhood by at least 50{472691d8feebf3ac64f7dec0cb5f0f1f1cf9d019c0758432a0b0b7afca6d4a7c}, noting none of the area renters will be protected when that cost comes done to them.
But on the flip side about 1/5th were in favor of the Council’s work. Chief among them were a handful of Austin Activists. The Austin Justice Coalition’s RonPaul Connaly explained, thiere support was a bit tentative, but moved to support he rewrite because they are encouraged by the city’s efforts. Despite this he believed nuanced improvements are still needed. “Because we think that both the unqualified calls for more density and the unqualified calls against densification in neighborhoods, both those have a kinda historic legacy of racism in Austin and have led to the displacement of people of color.”
Other activists say the LDC is a way to get the community together and discuss what role segregation has had on growth and development.
Council will restart the Second reading and discussion of Austin’s Land Development Code rewrite at 3pm Wednesday. City staffers expect discussions to run till 11pm tonight.
(Photo:Shutterstock/Brandon Seidel)
