The long slog for affordable housing
Progress is slow –– but does it have to be this slow?
KUT's Audrey McGlinchy has an interesting story on what the city is doing with some of the money voters have approved for affordable housing.
By the end of 2020, the city of Austin through its affordable housing arm had paid nearly $24.5 million to purchase 22 acres of land. Over the next two years it would buy more, eventually amassing 60 acres of mostly undeveloped land throughout the city.
What unfortunate timing. The city was buying land at the peak of the real estate bubble.
But four years out, almost all of this land remains vacant. The city has cited a lack of resources to be able to move faster. And as the cost of housing has risen in Austin since the pandemic, some people are anxious for the city to start moving.
“We could probably move a little bit faster. I think everybody acknowledges that,” said John-Michael Cortez, who worked as chief of staff and a special adviser to Austin Mayor Steve Adler. “We should hurry up.”
No shit. It's hardly the only thing the city is struggling to build. All of the corridor projects approved in the 2016 mobility bond were supposed to be built by now. Instead, the city has yet to start on most of them and has conceded that some of them are no longer possible without additional funding.
