Notley/Monitor Poll: Austinites divided on parking requirements, compatibility and other housing policies

Austinites remain divided on housing issues, including what the city should do to reach its affordable housing goals and whether to change compatibility and parking requirements, according to a January/February poll of 429 voters commissioned by Notley and conducted by national pollster Change Research for the Austin Monitor.

Questions about how Austin should grow and change to accomodate a growing population have always been contentious, but the stakes of the debate have only gotten higher in recent years, with housing prices rising out of reach for many. The interactive charts below show respondents’ answers to key local housing policy questions, broken down by age, political affiliation and ethnicity. 

Since City Council passed the Strategic Housing Blueprint in 2017, the city has consistently fallen short of its affordable housing production goals, especially in West Austin. The blueprint calls for 60,000 new affordable housing units by 2027. But as of 2021, only 7,601 units have been built – less than a third of where the city should be by now. 

Given several options for how to get on a path toward meeting these goals, opinions among respondents varied. Among all respondents, allowing multifamily housing like apartments and condos proved the most popular option, followed by reducing regulations and building on city-owned land. Hardly any respondents chose increasing taxes to pay for more affordable housing as their top choice. 

The responses highlighted a stark generational and political divide common in housing policy debates. Younger, more liberal respondents showed much more support for allowing more multifamily housing (including in their neighborhoods) than older, more conservative respondents. Support for multifamily housing was about the same across ethnic groups. 

Removing minimum parking requirements has gained traction in recent years. Some of Austin’s peer cities, including Nashville, Raleigh and Minneapolis, have removed parking requirements, leaving the market to decide how many spaces to provide. Parking requirements dictate how many spaces builders must provide (usually as a function of square feet or number of bedrooms).

Among respondents, 42 percent either strongly or somewhat supported removing parking requirements in Austin, and 44 percent were strongly or somewhat opposed to the idea. 

Developers and affordable housing advocates often say parking requirements make building housing harder and more expensive. Advocates also say the rules hinder the city’s climate and mobility goals, which call for more people to walk, bike and take public transit. Others counter that parking requirements are necessary when most Austinites own a car and drive most places. 

Last year, Council relaxed parking requirements, but only for developments along major streets. Affordable housing projects using the Affordability Unlocked tool do not have to provide any parking besides handicapped spaces.

Discussions about compatibility have ramped up in the past year or so. Affordable housing advocates and developers say the rule limiting building height within 540 feet of single-family homes constrains many sites around the city, meaning less housing gets built. Neighborhood groups, on the other hand, prefer to keep the rule as-is so taller buildings don’t directly abut single-family homes. 

Council lessened the impact of compatibility along major streets last year following a contentious debate about just how much to relax the rule. But even with these changes, the state Legislature has shown interest in overhauling Austin’s compatibility rules this session. Texas state Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, filed a bill last month to only allow compatibility within 50 feet of a triggering property. 

Austin has far more restrictive compatibility rules than peer cities in Texas and around the country, according to city staffers. 

A plurality of respondents (48 percent) said that Council should keep the current compatibility rules to protect neighborhood character, while 38 percent said the rule should be relaxed to allow more housing to be built. Younger respondents were more open to changing the rule. 

For much of the last decade, the city has planned for taller and denser buildings along major streets, including transit corridors. At issue is whether the city should apply rules governing development on corridors evenly across the city or take a more localized approach, with different rules in different places. A plurality of respondents agreed that Council should designate specific corridors, while others thought applying uniform rules would be best. For this question, 24 percent said they were unsure – more than for any other housing question.

As the city grows, we’re likely to continue seeing taller buildings in more places. When asked about preferences for where these sorts of buildings should go, respondents had differing attitudes. While a quarter said that growth should be restricted, most supported allowing some form of growth, either along light rail lines, in downtown-style nodes of density in a few places around the city, or in medium-sized buildings along larger streets.

City Council has passed numerous initiatives in the past year that align with the three pro-growth scenarios. In addition to reducing compatibility and parking requirements along major corridors (including light rail lines), Council also tweaked Vertical Mixed-Use, or VMU zoning, to give developers more height in exchange for more affordable units. 

Up north, a zoning change approved by Council last week will allow buildings in the Domain to rise nearly 500 feet, or 40-50 stories, rivaling many downtown towers. South of the river, Council recently allowed buildings up to 725 feet tall on the former Statesman site and is close to approving a 275-foot height allowance for a proposed redevelopment of the Brodie Oaks Shopping Center on South Lamar.

In a poll commissioned by Notley for the Austin Monitor, Change Research surveyed 429 voters in Austin, Texas, from Jan. 28-Feb. 1, 2023, using a sample reflective of the electorate. Post-stratification weighting was performed on age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, ZIP code, and 2020 presidential vote, with weighting parameters based on voter file data and election results based on numbers released by the Texas Secretary of State. The modeled margin of error for the survey is 5.3 percent. Complete survey results and methodology are available here.

Photo by Larry D. Moore, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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