Last week during a meeting of the Council Housing Committee, Council Member Ann Kitchen thrice made a point of declaring Austin’s 12-year-old Vertical Mixed Use density bonus program a success.
Let’s examine that claim.
The program was started in 2010 as a way to incentivize things that everybody says they want: affordable housing and walkable retail. The deal was that if a developer provided this stuff, the city would offer them an unlimited floor-to-area ratio and a big reduction in required parking, among other things.
The program was then offered to neighborhood associations as something they could choose to allow on their corridors. Some did, some didn’t. Properties that received VMU zoning retained their previous “base” zoning as well. So if the owner wants to redevelop the property, they can either take the VMU deal –– get the relaxed regs in exchange for the affordable housing –– or develop under the rules set by the base zoning.
According to a recent presentation by the Housing Department, there are 818 properties in the city with VMU zoning.
The figure that got a lot of attention last week was “34%.” As city planner Sam Tedford explained during the housing committee meeting, of the properties with VMU zoning that have redeveloped, only 34% of them actually took part in program. The other two-thirds just developed under their base zoning. At best that means that we got an apartment building without any affordable housing. But in many instances it means we got a gas station or a storage facility.
But that figure actually understates VMU’s failure. The number we should be talking about is 3.5%. That’s the percentage of VMU-zoned properties that have actually developed into VMU projects in the past 12 years:
These figures support what people in real estate have been saying for years: VMU is rarely a good enough deal to incentivize redevelopment because most corridor properties are sharply constrained by compatibility standards that limit building height.
So, back to the original question: Has VMU been a success? It depends what your priorities are.
For those of us who believe that Austin is in the midst of a housing crisis that demands urgent action, VMU has been an abject failure. For those of us who believe that building up is better than building out, VMU has been an abject failure. For those of us who believe in encouraging alternatives to driving, VMU has been an abject failure. For those of us who would prefer our corridors to be lively, walkable commercial hubs, VMU has been an abject failure.
But there are plenty of people in Austin, including at least four on City Council, who either do not believe any of those things or believe they are less important than maintaining a certain character or sense of stability in nearby single-family neighborhoods.
For those who feel this way, VMU is a success. It represents the “balance” they believe the city must strike between growth and preservation. They are not against new housing. They just don’t want too much too quickly.
You have to keep this definition of success in mind when evaluating Kitchen’s proposal for a new tier of the VMU program, VMU2, which would offer developers an additional 30 feet of height in exchange for more affordable housing. Based on a cursory review of market conditions, housing staff recommended requiring a certain percentage of income-restricted units. But Kitchen, based on nothing besides a belief that “it’s important for us to get affordable housing,” has proposed increasing the affordability requirement.
The outcome is predictable and reflects what happened with most of the city’s density bonus programs. Council approves a new program, touts its strong affordability requirements and then no projects participate in it and we get no affordable housing. But at least we stood up to those greedy developers!
Yesterday Mayor Steve Adler and four Council members unveiled a proposed reform to compatibility regulations and parking requirements for projects located on “major” and “medium” transit corridors.
That the co-sponsors include two reliable members of the preservation bloc, Leslie Pool and Alison Alter, suggests that it could be approved with unanimous or near-unanimous support. Adler believes that it could be a rare example of the ever-elusive “consensus” that he has spent five years seeking on land use.
The problem, of course, is that this is barely reform. And there are definitely some pissed off members of Council who may refuse to support it because it does so little.
So let’s look at what’s proposed.
Which corridors?
The proposal targets two categories of corridors. The “major corridors” includes corridors that will be home to future Project Connect light rail routes or new MetroRapid bus routes as well as any highway. So it definitely includes N. Lamar, Guadalupe, S. Congress, E. Riverside, Burnet, S. Lamar, Menchaca. It probably also includes much of Airport Blvd; Pleasant Valley south of Webberville Rd; and some other parts of corridors, such as Manor and Springdale.
The “medium corridors” include any identified in the 2012 Imagine Austin comprehensive plan: S. 1st, William Cannon, Slaughter, MLK, Braker, Parmer, E. Cesar Chavez, Anderson Ln, Jollyville, Springdale, Cameron. I’m sure I’m missing some.
Compatibility
Currently height restrictions can be triggered if there is a property that is zoned for single-family within 540 feet. It can also be triggered if there happens to be a single-family home on a property that is not zoned single-family (that happens sometimes).
The proposal would reduce the maximum distance that can trigger compatibility to 300 feet.
For properties within 300 feet of a triggering property, the new rules would automatically offer 5 additional feet of height “by right” beyond what is currently allowed, whether it’s on a large or medium corridor.
Here’s how they explain it:
In the graphic below, the light green represents the existing height limit and the dark green represents the increase in “by right” height if the proposed new ordinance is approved.
The yellow in both graphics represents the additional height that will be allowed if the project is participating in an affordable housing bonus program.
This whole compatibility conversation was prompted by a proposal, floated by Ann Kitchen, to create a second tier of the existing Vertical Mixed Use (VMU) density bonus program. Under her proposal, dubbed VMU2, developers would get an additional 30 feet of height in exchange for offering even more income-restricted units than required by VMU. Critics immediately pointed out that few developers would take advantage of that program because they would not actually be able to get the additional 30 feet as long as compatibility regs were in place.
In theory, this proposal could offer a lot more housing if the bonus programs are calibrated (don’t require too much affordable housing) in a way that makes them attractive to developers.
The problem is that on large corridors you still need to be at least 100 feet away from a triggering property to be able to build five stories. On a medium corridor you need to be 150 feet away. To get to six stories you need to be 200 feet away on a large corridor and 250 feet away on a medium corridor.
The issue is not simply how close a single-family home is to the corridor property, but the depth of the corridor property. If you have a deep lot (like 300-400 feet), then you may have enough space to construct a building that is at least 100 feet away from the house that triggers compatibility. Lots this deep are rare though, and in most cases if you try to build the U-shaped apartment (with a courtyard/pool in the middle) that is considered the most economically efficient, the back of the building will be less than 100 feet away from the property that triggers compatibility.
This means that most corridor properties will not be able to get the height they need to make a mixed-use redevelopment economical, especially if a portion of the units must be offered at below-market rates.
Thus, the single-story uses that we should all agree do not represent the highest and best use of a corridor property –– auto shops, car washes, gas stations, a standalone fast food joint –– are unlikely to be redeveloped into housing anytime soon.
“If they’re trying to do something that truly unlocks density on the corridors, this isn’t it,” said one builder.
At some point, said the builder, those sites will redevelop, but probably not in the next decade and when they do, they’ll likely be two or three stories of extraordinarily expensive condos, rather than the large apartment complexes that we need to have an effect on the middle-class rental market.
Chris Randazzo, chair of the Real Estate Council of Austin, said this:
“While we appreciate that Council is finally taking up changes to compatibility and parking, we are far too deep in a housing and affordability crisis to take half-measures when it comes to increasing housing supply. Compatibility will still affect almost every property in the very places Council has said they want new development—in high-opportunity areas and on transit corridors. The best time for bold housing policy was 5 years ago; the second-best time is now.”
From worst to worst
The document that outlines the proposal includes a helpful graphic that illustrates just how extreme Austin’s compatibility regs are compared to other large cities:
But under the proposed new rules, Austin would still be the most restrictive in terms of “by right” height. For projects that take part in the affordable housing bonus, Austin would remain more restrictive than every other city on this list except Las Vegas. Here’s a graphic someone on Twitter put together:
The nine vote obsession
Discussing the proposal at Council work session yesterday, the mayor acknowledged that it didn’t go nearly as far as some would like but suggested it was the best outcome possible right now.
“This exercise is about trying to get as much done as we can get done –– to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” he said.
He later added, “It doesn’t have us in court for two years. People can start applying it.”
Adler is suggesting that whatever passes must pass with nine votes to protect against a valid petition.
I don’t think that’s accurate, but I can understand why Council members who are traumatized by Fred Lewis’s successful obstruction of the land development code might believe it.
The problem with the LDC rewrite was that the city did not notify property owners. The courts also ruled that owners have the right to protest (via a “valid petition”) the rezoning of their properties.
What is not clear from the rulings is if and how those petitions would trigger a requirement that Council approve the new code with a 9-vote supermajority. In a typical rezoning, the super-majority requirement is triggered if the rezoning is opposed by either the owner of the targeted property or those who own 20% of the land within 200 feet of it.
In this case, the owners of the corridor properties are very unlikely to be opposed to being able to build higher on their land. So they’re not going to be a problem.
So what would be necessary to trigger the super-majority requirement? The city attorneys’ current view is that you’d need signatures from those who own at least 20% of the land within 200 feet of all of the affected properties, which likely number in the thousands.
If Lewis et al want to spend the time and money trying to get all of those signatures, then Council should let them try.
Or let’s say that the city attorneys are wrong, and a court would in fact decide that if if there is 20% opposition for even one of the affected properties, then that property must be voted on separately. Fine. Lift compatibility for all of the others.
This is simply excessive risk aversion. The mayor should stop obsessing about the possibility of losing a legal battle and instead think critically about the probability of losing a legal battle.
Quartz takes a look at the spectacular crash of MiamiCoin, the cryptocurrency embraced by Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who has relentlessly campaigned to make his city the world’s crypto capital.
…Over the last nine months, however, MiamiCoin has lost nearly all of its value, falling about 95% from its September peak to just $0.0032 as of May 13. Its rapid descent has burned investors on the way down, muting the dreams of Miami’s city leaders, and possibly raising red flags for regulators now investigating cryptocurrency transactions…
MiamiCoin is the product of CityCoins, a company that is trying to convince other cities, including Austin, to issue digital coins that, like most cryptocurrencies, have no value beyond speculation.
The way CityCoins works is that people essentially pay (with Bitcoin) to enter a raffle for the chance to “mine” MiamiCoin or AustinCoin or whatever. If you’re lucky enough to win some coin, then you can hold on to it or sell it on an obscure crypto exchange, OKCoin. Meanwhile, the participating city takes 30% of the mined coin, converts it into dollars and hopefully uses it for a good cause (Miami used it for rental assistance).
CityCoin markets itself as a no-lose proposition. After all, it’s not like the city is betting on the currency –– it’s just taking a cut of whatever others bet on it. It’s no different than a state lottery.
Well, there are already good reasons to be against government-sponsored lotteries, which tend to be a tax on the poor and mentally unwell, but at least nobody is led to believe that lottery tickets are a sound investment. That is not the case with cryptocurrency, which has been aggressively marketed as a way to get rich while declaring independence from the corrupt global financial system.
There is a small group of people who really buy into the intellectual case for crypto as an alternative to central banking, but in my experience most people but crypto because they mistakenly believe it’s a wise investment. And this delusion is fed by crypto evangelists online who talk about how much money they made by buying at the right time. You don’t hear as much from the many others who bought at the wrong time.
The government should not be promoting these delusions, even if it stands to make a few bucks off them. As much as I’m sympathetic to finding new revenue streams to fund our cash-strapped city, there are more ethical options. For instance, nonprofits that support public services, such as the Austin Parks Foundation.
Even worse than the CityCoins scheme is Suarez’s stated plans last year to let city employees get paid in BitCoin. The recklessness of such a proposal should have been apparent in November, when he floated it, but when the price is going up how can you argue with it?
Fortunately Suarez hasn’t been able to implement the policy and I imagine that the appetite for it will have diminished along with Bitcoin’s price, which has dropped by 50% since the beginning of the year.
Fortunately the city of Austin has yet to buy into anything this dumb, but Council in March passed a resolution asking city staff to look into ways for people to use crypocurrency to pay fines or pay for other city services. At best, this is likely a waste of staff resources. At worst, it contributes to the impression that converting your savings into bitcoin is a wise (or at least innocuous) decision, rather than an extremely risky one.
Today Council approved the $1.2 million guaranteed income pilot that will distribute $1k/month to 80 families for a year. It was approved on the consent agenda, with only one member, CM Alison Alter, opposed, although two other likely opponents, CM Mackenzie Kelly and Leslie Pool, were absent.
The vote followed supportive testimony from three dozen activists and regular people, including some who had benefited from UpTogether, the nonprofit that will be running the program. They told moving stories about living in poverty and the difference that cash assistance can make for people living on the brink.
One single father described getting financial assistance from UpTogether last year in the wake of his home being severely damaged by Winter Storm Uri. If not for the assistance, he suggested, he would have been able to maintain housing for himself and his daughter may have been taken away by child protective services.
All of these stories captured the tragic reality that the world’s richest country allows so many of its people to languish in poverty. All of the problems they described are an outrage. All levels of government have a moral imperative to address them. But I don’t think city government has a moral imperative to offer 80 households a grand a month for a year.
If anything, it’s frustrating to see so much attention –– from activists, elected officials, the media –– on something that will do so little.
If no other city or state in the country was already doing this, then there might be a case for Austin to lead the way in demonstrating the potential of universal basic income. But there have been many other publicly and privately-funded UBI pilots, including one run by the same group in Austin last year.
Why do we need to spend precious funds studying a program that the city is in no position to scale? Instead, we should focus on tangible ways to reduce costs for the city’s working class and poor. The most direct ways to do that are:
rental assistance
utility discounts through Austin Energy’s Customer Assistance Program
affordable housing bonds to build income-restricted housing
The city can also make a big difference indirectly by making it as easy as possible to build market-rate housing. This addresses the supply crunch that is leading rents to skyrocket. New housing near public transit offers the additional benefit of offering people low-cost alternative to car use, which is a major financial burden for those on the bottom rungs of Austin’s economic ladder.
Explaining her opposition, Alter noted that the city can’t fill key positions –– from lifeguards to 911 operators –– because it doesn’t have the money to pay competitive wages.
“I believe that we do need to invest in people and their basic needs but I’m not sure this is the right way at this time,” she said.
That’s a good start. The next step would be for Alter to recognize that the city’s staffing crisis also has a lot to do with her and others’ refusal to address the housing crisis.
One last point: this is a program that has little policy impact but potentially heavy political consequences. It just feeds the narrative of an out-of-touch City Council pissing people’s tax dollars away. It’s no surprise that media outlets that barely pay attention to City Hall are covering this story. It’s an easy controversy. Hell, Fox News wrote something up on it!
It’s impossible to completely avoid manufactured outrage from the likes of Abbott and Mackowiak –– or even genuine backlash from unhappy constituents –– but why make it easy for them?
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has released new income limits by metro area for affordable housing programs. Somebody who doesn’t know better might regard the figures in Austin as evidence that people here are moving up the economic ladder.
In the past year the median income for a family of four in the Austin-Round Rock metro area has jumped from $98,900 to $110,300.
No, I don’t think the median Austin resident saw their wages increase by 11.5% in the past year. Rather, the income increase reflects an influx of new wealth and the ongoing flight of the poor and middle class.
There are of course other numbers that help explain this outcome, notably the 56% increase in home values over the past year and the harder-to-nail-down-but-still-massive increases in rents.
Even in the absence of hard data, all you need to do is look around your neighborhood to understand what’s going on. The people moving into the new McMansions are richer than the people who moved in 10 years ago.
That is the result of market trends but it’s also a policy choice. The city of Austin could allow developers to replace the bungalows they’re tearing down with fourplexes or sixplexes that would be affordable to a greater range of incomes. Instead they’re only allowed to replace them with one or two $1M+ units. The city could prioritize housing over views of the Capitol. It could get rid of “compatibility” standards that encourage developers to build gas stations over apartments on our major transit corridors.
One of the many large new single-family homes replacing bungalows.
Thus, in defense of a certain architectural or aesthetic character, Austin’s zoning is in fact guaranteeing the transformation of your neighborhood’s cultural and economic character.
With new wealth comes … the same tax revenue
Unfortunately, the richer people and higher property values don’t necessarily translate into more tax revenue for city government, which is on the brink of a staffing crisis because wages for city employees are out of sync with the bonkers housing market.
The city only has two ways to get around the 3.5% year-over-year property tax revenue limit imposed by the state. First, it can authorize a tax rate election to get voters to approve an increase over that limit. For obvious reasons, that’s not something you can count on every year. There’s a much more compelling option, both politically and economically: new development. New construction –– whether it’s your kitchen renovation or a downtown skyscraper –– is exempt from the 3.5% cap.
And, at the risk of belaboring the point, new construction delivers benefits beyond new tax revenue: much-needed housing.
I took a look at city property tax revenue generated by new development in recent years:
FY 14: $8.9M
FY 15: $8.4M
FY 16: $13.7M
FY 17: $13.9M
FY 18: $12.2M
FY 19: $16.6M
FY 20: $15.1M
FY 21: $21.5M
FY 22: $21.4M
City Council should ask staff to conduct an analysis of what policies could help the city generate more tax revenue from new development.
For instance, while there are state-imposed Capitol View Corridors, the city has imposed additional ones that in some cases significantly constrain the height of downtown development. What would be the tax implications of eliminating or relaxing those? But I like views of the capitol! So do I. But how much are you willing to pay for them, either in increased property taxes or a reduction in services (parks, police, EMS, fire).
The same analysis would be useful for compatibility standards. How much tax revenue are we losing out on by limiting the height of buildings on our major corridors? Limiting the height of a development on a corridor because of a single-family home 540 feet away not only results in a reduction in much-needed new housing; it is a tax subsidy to preserve that homeowner’s view.
On Friday CM Chito Vela unveiled two measures that would help an existing density bonus program to produce much more housing at a time when housing is desperately needed.
Vela proposed that any property that participates in the Vertical Mixed Use program be exempt from parking and compatibility standards, which reduce the height of a building if it is within 540 feet of a single-family home.
Council is already discussing an ordinance that would make the following changes to VMU:
Require VMU projects to have 10% of units affordable at 60% of the area median income (instead of the current 80% AMI)
Create a second tier, VMU2, which gives projects an extra 30 feet of height if they offer 12% units at 60% AMI or 10% units at 50% AMI
However, unless the city reduces or eliminates compatibility requirements, not too many developers are going to apply for VMU2. They need to be able to build to a certain height in order for it to be worth it for them to provide the required income-restricted units.
According to a recent staff analysis, only 34% of properties that are currently eligible for VMU would be able to achieve the full height offered by VMU2 due to compatibility. In fact, only 43% can even achieve the full height offered by the base zoning (usually 60 ft).
According to what builders tell me, there are few examples of other large cities with compatibility requirements as stringent as Austin’s. The rules are simply not, er, compatible with the needs of a growing city. And they are certainly not compatible with the goals of a progressive city that wants to be economically inclusive and environmentally friendly.
Eliminating parking requirements for VMU is a no-brainer because parking requirements never make sense and should never have existed to begin with. You don’t have to be a dyed-in-the-wool urbanist to believe that builders should be able to decide for themselves how much parking they need to provide tenants. Not only does the city force developers to devote land and money to building parking that they might have otherwise devoted to more housing units, but the mandate is essentially a subsidy for the auto industry that undercuts the other modes of transportation that the city is supposedly trying to encourage.
We already got a taste of these ideas through Affordability Unlocked, the ordinance that Council approved in 2019 that exempted developments from a number of regs, including compatibility and parking, if at least 50% of the units were income-restricted. In practice that means that the only developments that qualify are low-income housing projects that are subsidized by federal low income housing tax credits.
As great as it was at the time to see Council unanimously support some common sense relief for affordable housers, some of us worried it would make it harder to make the case politically to reform parking and compatibility for market projects. It’s ridiculous to think that one must ask permission to not build a parking lot, but thus is the perverse reasoning that guides City Hall’s approach to housing, where pointless regulations are cherished as leverage to extract “community benefits.”
Hopefully, however, the brutal housing conditions have changed the politics.
Now for the politics…
There was certainly hope that the politics had changed when the first response on the Council message board to Vela’s proposed amendments was a supportive statement from Vanessa Fuentes, whose views on housing have been hard to pin down:
“Given the housing and climate crisis that we are in, I believe it is important we urgently take action at the scale needed,” she wrote.
But then of course came the response from Ann Kitchen. It was Kitchen who actually authored the resolution in the fall that directed staff to develop the VMU2 proposal. The problem from Kitchen’s perspective is that staff actually brought back something that could make a big difference.
Under staff’s proposal, any property that is currently eligible for VMU would be eligible for VMU2 as long as the developer agrees to the additional affordability requirements. Kitchen, however, wants to require developers to go through the rezoning process to qualify for VMU2.
Not only would the tremendous cost in time and money associated with rezoning dissuade many developers from applying from VMU2, but each case would be vulnerable to a valid petition by nearby residents. If those who own 20% of the land within 200 feet of the property sign a petition, then the rezoning would need nine out of 11 votes to pass at Council.
Kitchen’s proposal does not reduce parking or compatibility requirements; she says it allows for “future discussions” on those subjects to occur.
Finally, she proposes raising the required amount of affordable housing for VMU2: either 15% of units at 60% AMI or 12% of units at 50% AMI.
(I don’t have an opinion yet on what the right affordability percentage should be. It is possible that Kitchen’s proposal would make the project unviable but I am not sure. There has not yet been robust economic analysis by staff or others)
Does Council need 9 votes?
Looming over the discussion of this issue during the City Council work session is the recent court ruling that essentially quashed the city’s ongoing effort to rewrite the land development code.
City staff’s interpretation of the ruling is that LDC changes –– even citywide changes –– are vulnerable to valid petitions if they change the zoning on a property. However, “text” changes within a zoning category are different.
Some have argued that text changes within a zoning category are not vulnerable to valid petition at all, but it sounds like city legal has decided that they could be but only if you get signatures from those who own 20% of the land within 200 feet of all of the affected property citywide. So in this case, to challenge VMU2, opponents would have to get signatures from those who own at least 20% of the land within that distance of VMU properties.
Unsurprisingly, today featured a lot of commentary from the preservationist bloc about the importance of “consensus” and “community input,” as well as concern about “protest rights.”
Alison Alter suggested she would be willing to support changes to compatibility standards but did not like the idea of a 90 feet building right next to a single-family house.
Mackenzie Kelly, whose views on housing policy are ambiguous, said she would like any change to have 9 votes.
The good news is that it does not yet appear that the mayor, despite his historic affinity for compromise at all costs, is not falling victim to the 9-votes-or-bust trap.
“I think we should earnestly try to find broad agreement and I’m fully committed to trying,” he said when I asked him after the meeting if he was set on getting nine votes.
Like Vela and other reform-friendly CMs, Adler said he does not support requiring rezonings for VMU2.
The whole purpose is to add some predictability and some ease and speed,” he says.
In an act of goodwill, Vela and other supporters accepted the request, voiced first by Alter I believe, for a postponement. Council will take up the ordinance on June 9.
Adler said that he believed there would be a vote on VMU2 on June 9 but he couldn’t say whether it would be accompanied by changes to compatibility and parking. He appears open to a “relaxed” compatibility, rather than eliminating it entirely.
Beyond VMU2, Adler said he hopes in June Council can adopt changes to reduce barriers to ADUs and allow residential development in commercial zones.
Also in June, he said, Council could direct staff to explore broader changes that affect non-VMU properties on the corridors, including relaxing parking and compatibility standards, albeit to a lesser extent. That would tee those ordinances up to be voted on in the fall.
Many small targets > one big target
It really is sad to see alleged progressives touting the rights of land owners to obstruct housing, but it’s a political reality that pro-housing forces must contend with. That means that if they have reason to believe that any pro-housing reforms are vulnerable to valid petitions, they should avoid bundling them up into one big target. They should flood the zone with a number of rapid-fire changes and force the housing opponents to pick their battles.
It costs a lot of money and time to gather the thousands of signatures necessary to defeat an LDC change. Make sure to remember that.
This is an excerpt from the March 9 edition of the Austin Politics Newsletter. To get daily breaking news and analysis on city politics, click here to subscribe.
Recently the Planning Commission discussed a proposed reform of the Vertical Mixed Use density bonus program aimed at increasing the number of both market-rate and income-restricted units on major corridors throughout the city.
VMU has been around for well over a decade but, like most of the city’s density bonus programs, it has hardly been a game-changer in addressing the housing crisis.
Currently, projects that participate in VMU enjoy relaxed site development standards as long as they offer 10% of their rental units at 80% of the area median income and ground-floor retail or office. If we’re talking about for-sale units, then 5% must be affordable at 80% AMI and 5% must be reserved for those at 100% AMI.
The new deal
The proposal being discussed at Planning Commission, which was crafted by city housing staff, envisions a new program with two tiers. The first tier, VMU 1, would require 10% of units affordable at 60% AMI for rental developments and either 10% at 80% AMI for for-sale development or an equivalent fee-in-lieu.
Here are the most recent income levels in the Austin metro area:
Nobody seems too bothered by the prospect of a steeper affordability requirement. It’s very likely that the market units are already affordable to those at 80% AMI and many developers seeking VMU zoning have already been offering to provide the affordable units at 60% AMI.
Keep in mind that despite the name, you don’t get any extra height for VMU. So you’re allowed to go only high as the base zoning allows, which in most cases on the corridors is 60 ft.
VMU2
Hence the proposed second tier of VMU: VMU2. Under this program, developers would get an extra 30 feet of height in exchange for even greater affordability requirements: either 10% of units for those at 50% AMI or 12% of units at 60% AMI. For ownership units, you’d have to offer 12% of units at 80% AMI or an equivalent fee-in-lieu.
The compatibility conundrum
The impact of VMU2 will be severely limited unless it is exempt from existing compatibility requirements. You’ll recall that “compatibility” is a rule that limits a building’s height based on its proximity to a single-family house.
A single family home that is as far away as 420 feet can prevent you from getting to 90 feet of height.
Indeed, according to city staff, two-thirds of properties that are currently eligible for VMU2 wouldn’t be able to achieve the full 90 feet due to nearby single-family houses. In fact, 59% of VMU-eligible properties can’t even go up to the base height max (usually 60 ft) due to compatibility:
Further analysis of this issue comes from Michael Gaudini, a land use lobbyist for Armbrust & Brown (and ironically a former aide to CM Leslie Pool and a manager for Kathie Tovo’s 2018 reelection).
The first column on the left of this graph shows the total amount of city land that is zoned for a use that triggers compatibility (single-family), while the second shows the total land that is zoned for any of the city’s density bonuses. The small green column represents land zoned for VMU and the nearly invisible purple column on the far right represents VMU-zoned properties that would be able to take advantage of the VMU2 height bonus.
Gaudini then shows what the impact means on specific corridors. Here he looks at all the land within a quarter-mile of Burnet (blue) and South Lamar (orange). Because there are so many single-family homes within that distance, very few properties are able to go up to 60 feet, let a lone 90 feet.
Of course, the other big problem is that much of the corridors aren’t zoned for VMU to begin with. That’s because the city has largely left it up to Neighborhood Plan Contact Teams to decide where to allow it. Sure, developers can still seek to rezone to VMU, but they are reasons they would shy away from that –– there’s always the chance it will become a contentious, expensive battle that might ultimately fail. It might just be a better bet to build a Walgreens.
The image below shows how little (red) of Burnet Rd is currently zoned for VMU and how even less of it (green) would be able to get to 90 feet under the proposed VMU2.
All of this goes to show that zoning for density on the corridors might not change much unless you are willing to address certain other rules that restrict what can be built.
The Planning Commission merely kicked off the conversation last night, but they’ll hopefully be taking action and making a recommendation at their next meeting on March 22. It will then be up to Council to act.
This is an excerpt from the March 9 edition of the Austin Politics Newsletter. To get daily breaking news and analysis on city politics, click here to subscribe.
In response to ongoing criticism of its planned expansion of I-35 through Central Austin, TxDOT has unveiled an updated proposal. Some of its critics say it’s an improvement, even if they’re still pushing to stop the project entirely.
The big change is the frontage roads: TxDOT is proposing that both the northbound and southbound frontage roads would be on the west side of the highway between Cesar Chavez & 15th St, while they would both be on the east side of the highway between 15th & Dean Keaton.
They’re also saying the frontage roads would be designed for a max speed of 35 mph. Right now speed limits on the frontage roads range from 35-50.
There would be a median separating the north and southbound lanes:
These changes could offer two benefits. First, it’s nice not to have frontage roads on one side.
Second, where there are frontage roads, they could become something more akin to a traditional urban boulevard. Having traffic move in both directions could slow things down, at least if it’s designed correctly.
Eliminating frontage roads from one side could enhance access to the parks that might be built on top of some parts of the highway if the city can come up with the necessary funds. The city has said that there are a number of potential opportunities for caps that would cover the highway, including one that would extend all the way from Cesar Chavez to 8th St.
For instance, here is a rendering of the cap concept from a city presentation in. December. This one does not incorporate the frontage road changes that TxDOT has since proposed.
As you can imagine, getting rid of the frontage roads on one side would make the parks much more attractive and accessible.
And yet…
This is certainly a much nicer concept than what TxDOT originally proposed but it’s still going to induce additional vehicle travel, it falls far short of reconnecting the street grid and it doesn’t open up any new land to tax-generating development.
The concept proposed by Reconnect Austin appears to have lost steam. The Reconnect concept would be to cap the entire highway, build a true urban boulevard on top and to allow the land currently devoted to frontage roads to be developed.
It’s not clear whether this is just laziness or a lack of imagination from Austin’s political class. There is a generational project that offers us an opportunity to do something that is far superior environmentally, culturally and economically and it appears we’re settling for something much worse and it’s not clear why.
This is an excerpt from the Jan. 27 edition of the Austin Politics Newsletter. To get daily breaking news and analysis on city politics, click here to subscribe.
The Greater Austin Crime Commission has released its long-anticipated machine-learning study on APD patrol staffing. The study was done by Giovanni Circo, a professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven in Connecticut.
The GACC is a nonprofit that has traditionally had close ties to APD leadership and advocates for increased police staffing. The group is overseen by a board of five dozen people (46 men, 13 women) largely plucked from Austin’s business elite. It’s run by executive director Cary Roberts, a veteran lobbyist. In sharp contrast to the police union, the GACC is diplomatic in its criticisms of City Council and has tried to maintain a seat at the public safety table. Notably, it did not take a position on Prop A.
How long should it take the cops to respond?
The study focuses on the highest priority calls: 0 and 1. The model linked length of response time to certain “outcomes” –– it identifies arresting a suspect or recovering a firearm as two such outcomes.
The model proposes 6 minutes and 12 seconds as a target time for responding to Priority 0 calls, such as shots fired, burglaries and robberies. For the slightly less urgent Priority 1 calls, the model proposes a target response time of 8 minutes and 30 seconds.
730 should do the trick
The study says that in order for the police to respond to high-priority calls quickly enough, the city should add 108 patrol positions, bringing the total to 882. The proposed 882 positions will likely translate to about 730 actual patrol officers, which is about 100 more officers than are currently working in patrol.
Where do you put them?
The study says that adding roughly 100 patrol officers will allow APD to hit the target response times, but only if the department changes the way it distributes cops around the city. If APD doesn’t change the way it deploys patrol, then it will need 162 additional positions to achieve the target response times.
The study highlights major differences between the city’s nine patrol sectors. In recent years calls for service in the downtown George sector have sharply declined, while calls have significantly risen in the northeast Edward sector.
Nevertheless, “George maintained the highest level of staffing while Edward remained mostly unchanged, or even decreased slightly,” says the report. “This is despite large declines in priority 0 and priority 1 calls in George and large increases in Edward.”
On its face, that staffing disparity seems indefensible. Why would the sector with the fewest calls have the most officers?
Alas, one officer tells me, downtown is fundamentally different from the other sectors. Calls for service don’t reflect the main problem that cops are dealing with there, notably the frequent fights outside of bars. It takes a lot of cops to deal with numerous drunk people fighting. Minor arguments that escalate into fist fights are at risk of further escalating into shootings if cops aren’t able to respond immediately.
This cop directed me to a YouTube channel, TXStreetfights TV, that collects videos of brawls on Dirty 6th. It is a fascinating glimpse of human depravity.
Patrol is just one part of a police department
Whereas the ongoing political debate over police staffing over the past year has focused on overall police staffing, this study focused solely on patrol officers. It did not comment on how many cops are needed to staff investigation units, such as homicide and sex crimes.
Show your sources
In the coming weeks, it’s up to journalists and city officials to scrutinize the assumptions built into the study. Trusty Twitter wonk Julio Gonzalez Altamirano says we need “the source data, wrangled data, and R code be made public.” R code is the programming language used in the machine learning model.
JGA also questions the goals articulated by the study. The outcomes cited in the study –– recovering firearms, arresting suspects –– may not necessarily translate to reduced crime. Or at least they may not be the most cost-effective way of reducing crime.
APD Chief Data Office Jonathan Kringen tells me that he believes that all of the data will eventually be made public but that there are copyright issues to navigate. Circo, the researcher, shares the intellectual property with the university.
“It does have market value,” says Kringen.
Circo plans to submit the study to peer review and the code will likely not be available before that process is complete, he said. It’s not clear how long that will take.
This is an excerpt from the Jan. 11 edition of the Austin Politics Newsletter. To get daily breaking news and analysis on city politics, click here to subscribe.
In addition to scrutinizing the demographics of new APD recruits, members of the Public Safety Commission last week delved into reforms of the Austin Police Academy, which is supposed to be a big part of the ongoing “reimagining of public safety.”
The push at City Hall to reform the academy precedes the post-Floyd upheaval and the subsequent “reimagining public safety” thing. It started in 2019, when, in response to allegations that former Assistant Chief Justin Newsom used racist slurs to refer to Black people, City Council voted to halt new cadet classes until the completion of an independent audit. This spring, Council voted to authorize the first new cadet class in over a year after APD unveiled a reformed curriculum.
Anne Kringen, the criminal justice academic hired earlier this year to oversee the reform of the academy’s curriculum, outlined a number of changes. Cadets spend the two weeks prior to the academy in a program aimed at educating them on the community, introducing them to local organizations, leaders etc. The 32-week academy itself includes an additional 30 hours of “community engagement” experience.
When asked how much time is devoted to training on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) or deesalation, Kringen said it would be hard to say because those themes are now embedded in “all the courses.”
However, there is at least one distinct training focused on race: the “Groundwater Analysis” workshop by Joyce James, a local racial equity consultant whose work is informed by the many years she spent examining disparities for the Texas Health & Human Services Commission and the state Department of Family & Child Protective Services.
On her website, James says she and her colleagues, all of whom are social service veterans, “developed a model which has been effective in reducing racial inequities and improving outcomes for all populations. Our assistance program ensures both long and short term support systems for meeting the needs of your staff and clients.”
Prominently featured on the website is a video of APD Chief Joe Chacon’s endorsement of the training, which he calls a key part of the department’s fostering of “an environment that creates a psychologically safe space for the growth of diversity, equity and inclusion of all populations.”
In a message to cadets and existing officers, all of whom are required to take the training, Chacon urges them to approach the course with an “open mind,” acknowledging that it will “not be an easy course for everyone…there will be some challenging discussions.” Nevertheless, he says, “this is not a course that points the finger at any particular individual, but rather examines the impact of “systems” on certain populations.
Finally, adds Chacon, “Our participation in this course confirms our zero tolerance for racism. Because after completing this course, we will all rest on the same understanding of how institutions impact our society, and how that understanding will translate positively on how each of us engage with members of our community.”
Well, that’s naive. In a country where we can’t even agree on who won the last election, can we really expect every police officer to share an understanding of the extent to which racism has shaped and/or continues to shape our society?
The range of acceptable opinions
During the meeting Commissioner Amanda Lewis (Casar’s appointee) raised concerns about what she viewed as a lack of “buy-in” from cadets on the training. She attended one of the groundwater training sessions, which she described as a “very challenging space,” where many cadets were defensive in response to discussion of institutional racism.
“I talked to another community member who is part of Communities of Color United who said that participants were angry at her, told her that she was a part of the problem, all kinds of issues as a community participant,” she said.
Without knowing anything about the conversation that occurred between this person and cadets, I can say it’s not surprising that they might disagree about a thing or two. CCU last year called for a 50% cut to APD’s budget. The landing page of its website features dozens of activists donning t-shirts that say, “No New Cops.” Its mission statement says, “we continue to reimagine a world without policing.”
It’s probably very valuable for police cadets to hear from people with a variety of views on policing, including radical abolitionists. It’s reasonable to expect cops to learn about the distrust and hostility towards police that exists in certain segments of the community. But it’s not reasonable to expect them to agree with everything they hear.
But I think Lewis later asked an important, but probably unanswerable, question:
“What are we doing when people flat out don’t want to talk about it, (or they) think it’s critical race theory, even though they don’t know what that is … is it something that is core to what we think we should be involved in in public safety positions?”
In other words, what range of expressed beliefs are we willing to accept among police officers? And what limits are reasonable to impose without running afoul of the first amendment?
I don’t think there’s an easy response to that question. We can all agree that the open racism that Justin Newsom is accused of engaging in, which includes calling colleagues the n-word, is disqualifying. But can we really expect every police officer to embrace views on systemic racism that a large percentage of this country rejects?
A Gallup poll last year found that 91% of Democrats believe that racism against Black people is widespread. In contrast, only 34% of Republicans agreed. The way that race and racism is discussed has been an extremely polarizing subject in U.S. politics; backlash against perceived political correctness has become the GOP’s main offering.
The city can try to persuade officers to rethink their worldview or politics, but it’s obviously not always going to succeed.
Praying for success
One thing that definitely sets James apart from most diversity consultants, and may make her more capable of bonding with conservatives, is her religion. In a 2014 address to a Lutheran congregation that she posted on her website, she describes her work as “guided and driven by spiritual knowledge and wisdom and understanding that comes from knowing and believing in God.”
She acknowledges during the address that some of what she says might make the congregants uncomfortable or conflict with their firmly held beliefs. “Nonetheless,” she adds, “I have made the commitment to speak to these issues because when I said yes to Jesus’s call for me to do this work, I made the decision to not let anything get in the way of this calling.”
As an atheist, I think harnessing the Bible on behalf of social justice is probably a much better strategy than drawing on the academic garbage that progressives are tripping over themselves to quote these days. Far more people have been to Church than to a college sociology course.
This is an excerpt from the Dec. 15 edition of the Austin Politics Newsletter. To get daily breaking news and analysis on city politics, click here to subscribe.
