All posts by tim

Dooce posted a link to this great article about the difference between jogging through an upscale neighborhood as a black woman and riding a bike through it armed with a machete as a white man.

Read the Affected Article on Chookooloonks

I was just thinking about this this morning as I ran down the trail at AMD/Spansion with the “No Trespassing” signs. An area where no one has even looked at me twice running.

I think about when a mom in our neighborhood sent out a note that her son was going to be walking to the pool with friends. You know, so we wouldn’t call the cops on them.

And last week I got unintentionally involved in a Travis Heights NextDoor thread where a neighbor reported that an unseen person pounding on her door in the middle of the night “sounded black”. A woman married to a black man who lived in the neighborhood was of course most concerned by this. But in the end the conversation had to be closed because there was too much “hateful talk”. Of course all the “hateful talk” was just pointing out that saying someone you didn’t see “sounded black” was uncool. But we all need to think of the racists’ feelings.

Urbanism 101: Property Tax Rate Cuts won’t help Affordability (much)

Development, Politics

“Experts” in Austin with Austin Afforadbility are advocating cutting Austin’s tax rate as a way to make Austin more affordable.

I agree that we need to address affordability, but we need to do it with more abundant housing. Tax rates are not the driver of un-affordable housing in Austin. Let’s look at my house:

  • In 2013 my house was valued at $168,385

  • My total tax rate was 2.463200% with a final tax bill of 4,147.66 without exemptions.

  • Now let’s say Austin lowered my tax rate to 2.2% (and .2% is a huge chunk since only .5% of my bill goes the COA currently).

  • My total tax bill would be $3,704.47 without exemptions.

Difference of $443.19. Pretty sweet right?

  • Let’s say in 2014 my house valuation goes up the maximum 10% to $185,223.50
  • If the tax rate stays the same at 2.463200 my final tax bill jumps to $4562.43
  • If Austin lowered my tax rate to 2.2%
  • My total tax bill would be $4,074.92

An even better savings of $487.51!

Oh, but look. By my house increasing in value by 10% my tax bill jumped by $414.77 at the current rate, and $307.45 with the slashed rate. One more year of a 10% increase in property valuation and the effect of that tax cut that slashed the city revenue almost in half will be completely gone.

In less than two years of maximum increases in property value I will have completely eradicated any benefit of a significant property tax cut.

Cutting taxes is a shortcut to affordability, but it’s not a long term solution. The only long term solution for housing affordability is slowing the growth of home valuations by providing more abundant housing choices and supply. Abundant housing supply also helps not only those on fixed incomes, but the young and families as well.

Urbanism 101

Development, Politics

I wanted to start writing some basics about how development works in our city. Because I think a lot of people have misconceptions. I used to have a lot of misconceptions. When I got out of college and rents started going up in the dot-com boom I was pissed. I was sure there was a way to stop all this condo building and get things back to normal. Surely the city was doing something wrong to make all this happen! I went looking for answers and realized much of how I thought things worked was completely wrong. Like I was a rube – playing into the hands of wealthy landowners twirling their mustaches – wrong.

Misconception 1: Zoning

I’ll admit. I used to think that if the city zoned something, that was what went there. If you re-zoned a lot as multi-family, then BOOM condos. This must be a side-effect of playing SimCity. Because in real life that’s not what happens at all. Frequently the city rezones, and nothing happens. For decades. Perhaps centuries.

Zoning only matters if developers decide they can make a profit building on an empty lot. For something to be built you need:

1) An empty lot.
2) An empty lot zoned to something useful.
3) An empty lot zoned to something useful that a developer thinks they can make a profit building on.

Everything that is built is expected to turn a profit. This was kind of hard for me to take at first. Because I like to think of human beings as nice people who do nice things. And there are like 2 of them who are real estate developers. But they don’t really make a dent on the system. 99% of the developers are driven by profit and so that’s how things work. I hate that world. But that is how it works.

Misconception 2: Zoning and Single Family

One of the biggest complaints I hear with rezoning for duplexes or condos in single-family neighborhoods is that the city wants to make everyone live in an apartment. While apartments are much more effecient and require less cost to the city in terms of maintaining sewers, electrical, and gas lines, the fact of the matter is – the city cannot change your home.

As long as you live in it. Your home will be single-family. The city cannot convert your home to an apartment.

If you like your home, and you own it, then by and large it will stay exactly as you want it until you die.

Except your grass. Even the City of Austin has ordinances about mowing it.

Misconception 3: Condos and You

Right off the bat. Everyone knows condos are bad, right? I used to think that if the city didn’t multi-family we’d have no condos and cheap single family housing for all!
But you know what? You probably know someone who owns a condo, and multiple people who rent condos. You probably think of it as an apartment. But legally underneath it’s a condo.

This is a condo:
39-large

It’s all about technical legal nonsense and has nothing to do with what the housing looks like. Julie and I were at one point building a 2200 square foot freestanding home (front yard, back yard, fence, garage…) that was technically a condo.

The apartment you lived in in college may have been a condo that was rented to you. A huge number of Austinites rent condos from condo owners. When you’re renting the different between renting an apartment and a condo is negligible.

When you carp about condos you might as well be carping about blue houses raising the cost of living in Austin. Who technically owns the land underneath the building is not what’s raising prices.

Misconception 4: Doing Nothing Is Best

In Austin there’s a conception that doing nothing is best. That building new condos near you will raise prices. And there’s some truth to that. Because remember – developers doesn’t built it until they think they can make a profit.

But there is a cost to doing nothing. Every day 110 people move to Austin. As a renter you sign a lease that contractually freezes your costs for a year or few. Home owners get 30 year mortgages that (mostly) insulate them from changes in the market. When renters leases come up for renewal they’re frequently shocked by the amount their greedy landlords have raised their rents. That’s the cost of doing nothing. Once a year homeowners with mortgages are shocked by the amount their home value went up – the cost of doing nothing again.

During the space of a 1 year lease 40,000 new people have moved to Austin. At least some of them may have more money than you and are desperate for a place to live. All year they’ve been subtly bidding up the price of your apartment while your rent has been locked. So you get the sticker shock when your lease is up for renewal, or when you find out how much they’ve paid for the house next door.

When a neighborhood defeats a new condo development or delays it they’re thwarting some of those 40,000 people from finding a place to live. And so those 40,000 people may decide to pay even more for the housing that exists. And each time they do housing prices and tax valuations go up just a bit more. Multiplied by 40,000. Every year.

So What To Do

I highly recommend reading Dan Keshet’s musical chairs housing model. In a game of housing musical chairs people who have more money will always get housing. The only way to ensure there is enough housing for you, is ensuring that there are enough chairs.

By deciding to work within the system I’m not saying I like the system. I’m not saying the system is fair. I just want my friends to be able to afford to live in the city. I want my tax valuation to stay low enough so that I can continue to live in the city.

We need more chairs.

Demolitions

Politics

So I was attempting to do some data mining for Occupancy Austin an advocacy group focused on keeping Austin affordable by preventing lowered occupancy limits. I’ve created a github project that has the code for downloading and processing construction permits from the City of Austin’s website.

I ended up pulling residential demolitions. The results are probably not that suprising to anyone (hint: if you think someone has bulldozed a lot you’re probably right!). Here’s a fun browse-able map.

Here are my thoughts.

  • West Campus (tract 16.03) is pretty obvious. There is a lot of removal of single-family housing to make way for students. While some may dislike this, it’s really hard to argue that we shouldn’t be stuffing as many students as we possibly can in that area. This should not be an area for single-family housing. It looks like 16.03 is west of Lamar and may be part of whatever trend Allendale is part of.
  • Zilker (13.04) I find especially interesting. The northern edge and Barton Hills do not have the high number of demolitions. But the middle that has much of the very small housing (sub-1000 sq/ft) does. This would seem to correlate with three of the areas with a high concentration of demolitions – North Loop (3.05), Bouldin (13.05), and East Caesar Chavez (14). Desirable areas with homes that are half the current median home size.
  • East Riverside neighborhoods like Santa Monica Park, Sunridge, Audobon Place, and Colorado Hills are untouched. These are mostly homes that are greater than 1,500 square feet and are surrounded by duplexes, four-plexes, and apartment complexes.
  • Bouldin (13.05) has the second highest number of demolitions, despite no longer having much of a student population. I would predict that if the “stealth dorm” ordinance passes and is successful we should expect an uptick in demolitions in the North Loop area as wealthier Austinites find the area more desirable due to the lack of students.

Do you see any interesting conclusions in the data? I can generate maps back further. Is there a particular year you’d like to compare to?

Butler Trail South East Shore Planning

Politics

I attended the Butler Trail (otherwise known as the Lady Bird Lake Hike and Bike Trail) planning meeting. This was for public input and nothing is even remotely set in stone yet. Here are my notes:

  • New (much larger) restrooms and a water fountain are currently being built where the boardwalk ends where the old restroom hut was. These are happening.
  • A lot of support for having as much peaceful, natural area as possible.
  • There was not support for having concessions or amplified concerts.
  • Trail and bridge in front of the hostel building is coming soon. Trail Foundation already has funds.
  • As part of new Holly Shores park there was discussion of a pedestrian bridge connecting Holly Park on the North with the peninsula. There was a small, but very vocal contingent from the Holly neighborhood opposed to this.
  • Propose expanding the pedestrian tunnel under Pleasant Valley 4 to 5 times its current size and adding lighting.
  • A native orchard was proposed at the corner of Pleasant Valley and Lakeshore. A green classroom, natural children’s play area (think more the hill in Butler park/a labyrinth; not a playscape) was also proposed for that area.
  • There is a proposal for a new dam. The current path over the dam was pretty much everyone’s top priority (as well as at the Holly Park planning meeting), but unfortunately is not in the scope of this project. It has to be part of the new dam. If anyone has more info on that planning process or kickstarting it I think there would be massive community interest in getting the ball rolling on that.
  • February 25th there will be boards at city hall. They’re going to try to get them there by lunch time, so you can drop by during the day, view the proposals, and put post it notes on them with your opinions.

Those are my bullet points. A weird point happened that seemed especially pertinent relative to the current Mabel Davis/Winnebago Lane dog park situation. The top two comment getters were the bridges. The third was around dog parks. When asked to summarize the helper said that the comments were for no dog park. Thankfully a woman stepped up and pointed out that there were quite a few post-its in favor of a dog park. The facilitator was somewhat dismissive (in my opinion) and said they’d count them.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but it makes me realize that people who want things are going to start having to be assertive. We think following directions and putting down that we’re in favor of them will be enough. That someone will tally the votes and the majority will have their say. But it really highlighted to me tonight that the people who’d come up to the facilitator and talked her ear off about how much they didn’t want a dog park had clearly made a much bigger impression than the 10+ politely written post-it notes in favor of one.

A little sad that arts people weren’t out to support replacing the Dougherty Arts Center functions moving to the hostel.

If we want to have nice things we have to use the tactics of the bullies who continually seem to get their way.

  • We need multiple people there. Even just two. The Holly Street group only had about 4, but they made an impact.
  • We need to have an organized message before hand. And potentially regroup and craft a custom message there.
  • We need to raise our voices. Facilitators allow people who sound passionate or angry to talk (there was a long diatribe about rowing programs getting kids into college). They tend to cut off or redirect people who are talking politely.
  • We need to not be afraid to speak.

Otherwise we’re going to keep questioning why we get amenities that you can’t walk to, that are poorly planned, and that don’t accommodate the things we want to do there. If you’d like dog parks in the area and would like to work on that cause please do drop me a line.

Letter to the Statesman on the Winnebago Lane Dog Park Article

Politics

Article is here. My comments:

Could you please print which neighborhood groups opposed the park? I’m technically the president of the Burleson Parker Neighborhood Association and we did not take a stance on the park. We border Mabel Davis on the entire eastern side. It’s incredibly frustrating to keep hearing there was “overwhelming opposition”, but there are no numbers and I personally saw what looked like 25 people in opposition to the parks at meetings (with similar numbers in favor). 25 people should not be able to stop a park approved in bonds by tens of thousands of Austinites.

The proposed Winnebago Lane park is a horrible project. It’s in an industrial zone bordered by a lumber yard, train tracks, and downwind from a automotive paint shop that can make breathing hard when the wind is right. I jog around the area, but haven’t jogged down there again due to the lack of sidewalks and connectivity.

I think it will be successful, not because it’s a good project, but because we have so much demand for dog parks in Austin. Kensington Park may border the park, but council member Riley confirmed with the parks department that they’ll need to drive nearly 2 miles to actually get into the only entrance to the park. This park will increase congestion during rush hour.

As a city we need to rise up and stop the tiny minority who keep stopping the projects we want. Call or send an email to council and tell them to put the park in Mabel Davis. Lets actually make the walk-able Austin with nice parks that we all desire a reality.

Missing the Middle on Purpose

Politics

So Chris Bradford wrote an interesting article on the missing middle in Austin’s housing market. I live in a neighborhood with all of these types of housing just around the corner (as well as large apartment complexes). And they’re a huge source of two of the things Austinites say they desire most – affordable housing and students for urban public schools.

But our current code doesn’t support building these sort of buildings, and we have ordinances like McMansion that makes it harder to build them. McMansion was extended to my area so many of the homes could not be replaced with what is currently on the property or what is across the street.

I think that’s somewhat intentional. Look at the following points:

  • I hear again and again that we need to make urban areas more attractive for families so they don’t move out to the suburbs.
  • The majority of kids in urban schools come from multi-family housing.
  • Areas with underpopulated urban schools frequently fight new apartment complexes, duplexes, and fourplexes.

When I look at this I can’t help but think that these neighborhoods are fighting to try to bring suburban kids back. You know, the kind of kids who make a school into a “good school”. I think a lot of our zoning has to do with this perception that allowing lower-income residents a foothold in our neighborhoods will make the changes permanenent.

But the changes are permanent. Affluent white parents are never going to have the approximately 4 kids that each single-family home needs to have in these areas to make up for all the singles. Aging suburbs will never again reach the concentration of kids they had when they were brand new. That’s the nature of suburbs (and almost all of Austin’s urban neighborhoods began their lives as suburbs).

Perhaps we need a new slogan. How about:

“Multi-Family is Family Housing”

You got something better?

AISD and Absences

Politics, , ,

Been brainstorming ways to improve attendance. We lose funding every day a kid doesn’t show up and it also negatively affects our test scores. Even if all the kids do fantastically if enough days are missed we could lose our top ranking. And according to the Attend-o-Meter we could add $50-60 million in funding if we improved attendance 1% district-wide. That would claw back half of what we send the state in recapture each year. And Becker (where Stella goes) is one of the worst attended schools in the district.

It’s funny because they’ve been using perfect attendance rankings forever. But perfect attendance is not really feasible. Kids get sick.

Once you’ve missed one day perfect attendance awards provide zero incentive for kids and parents to miss 2 days rather than 20. Even though that means a loss of $90 vs. a loss of $900.

I think sending home “what your kids absences cost the school” in the report card might be a start. Maybe that auto-dialer could call people and tell them their kid missed school and that they cost the school district $45, k thx bye.

Anyone else got thoughts?

How to make some money off this?

Politics, Uncategorized

I was a little shocked to read this on Mark Cuban’s blog.

I truly believe that supporters of Romney that watched Fox News thought it was a no brainer and that Gov Romney would win. Living in Texas I was around a lot of Romney supporters on Tuesday night who had no doubt that Gov Romney would win. None.

I think I always believe these business leaders were just being cynical and letting all those poor white men watch their Fox News while they picked their pocket. It hadn’t really occurred to me that our business leaders actually watched Fox News.

So now it occurs to me that there are more than likely other disconnects where business leaders are betting on what Fox News says and not reality. I could probably make a lot of money on this…

Is political opposition the most expensive tax?

Development, Politics

I was discussing Travis County Proposition 1 at lunch today with a co-worker whose house is worth about double what mine is. The proposition will increase Travis County taxes by 5 cents per 100 dollars of value. Now whether you think that’s a big tax increase may have a lot to do with how the county appraises your homes value. In my case it’s some money, but not big money. For people whose houses are worth twice as much as mine it’s a big deal.

But I think we’re arguing about the wrong thing. In Texas, the value of your house is a much bigger issue than your tax rate. We could cut the tax rate in half, but if my co-worker’s house doubles in value again in 5 years he still has the same exact problem. And if my house doubles in 5 years (which it easily could), I’ll start having my co-worker’s problem.

So the question about preserving affordable housing in Austin has jack to do with tax rates. It has to do with slowing real estate appreciation. No one wants that. But they also don’t want huge tax bills. So lets call it managing our real estate appreciation.

Ultimately we need more supply in Austin. Pretty much everyone would love to live in the central city, which is why the prices are so high. So we need to focus on building more housing in the central city. And, frankly everywhere.

Neighborhoods fight the city all the time on a number of issues. We tend to think about those issues as having no cost. But think about 10 people moving to Austin. A builder is planning on building a 100 unit housing complex in your neighborhood and there are 2 homes for sale. If the neighborhood allows the housing complex and its built in time all those people will be able to find a house without making the price of homes in your neighborhood rise. But if there is a fight and the new housing is delayed all 10 people will be competing for those 2 houses. And they’ll almost certainly pay more for the house raising the value of your house. Which raises the value of your tax bill.

Now I think there are reasonable reasons to fight development. But being reflexively anti-development is very, very bad for your tax bill. And the tax rate has little to do with it.