Vela: Austin may have country’s most progressive housing policy

Chito Vela has had no sophomore slump in 2023. In his second year, the District 4 City Council member has ushered in a new regimen of land use policies tackling Austin’s housing crisis at breakneck speed.

“We were in a real bind for decades, and I think there was universal acknowledgment that our code was not providing the outcomes we needed,” Vela said in conversation with the Austin Monitor. “I think this City Council at large could be one of the most progressive councils in the country in terms of housing policy.”

The whirlwind menu of reforms includes the elimination of costly and land-intensive parking requirements on new construction, proposed by colleague Zo Qadri in May and finalized in an 9-2 vote last month. In a June resolution, Vela tackled Austin’s notoriously strict compatibility standards, calling on staff to rein in setbacks and height restrictions triggered by single-family zoning to fall closer in line with peer cities. The new guidelines, which Vela says will alleviate one of the biggest obstacles to housing units, will return to Council for discussion this spring.

Council closed out the year with another win for housing advocates, voting 9-2 once again to pass Leslie Pool’s HOME initiative, a policy that, among other things, will allow three units on some single family lots. Austin’s code currently allows just two. Vela, who introduced a number of technical amendments lowering front-yard and side-yard setbacks, says the policy will open doors for middle-class homebuyers who have been priced out of Austin’s housing market.

“Over the next five years, I think this will have a substantial but modest impact in terms of housing availability. But over the next 25 years, I think that change will be transformative in terms of what the city of Austin looks and feels like,” Vela said. “Change is hard … but with the average price of homes at half a million dollars, we have to use less land and be smarter about how we use it.”

As a member of Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s board of directors, Vela has also been at work leveraging opportunities brought by Project Connect, which finalized plans for phase one of its light rail system earlier this year. He and his team have contributed to that route extending north to District 4’s Crestview station, a transit hub that Vela says will be a game changer in boosting ridership.

Vela is also looking forward to the project’s impact on denser and transit-friendly housing, which moved forward with the passage of Council’s Equitable Transit-Oriented Development plan in March. Staff will return with more detailed plans for land use changes on transit corridors and Capital Metro-owned land around the North Lamar and South Congress transit centers before applying for federal funding next year.

“The project has a strong funding mechanism and a very good route, which are both important considerations for federal funding, but we have really bad land use, which is another important component,” Vela said. “Before we submit that application for the $2.5 (billion) to $3 billion that we need from them, we have to have better land use along that route. They have made that clear to us.”

As the city prepares for the Texas Department of Transportation’s widening of Interstate 35, Vela also spent the year galvanizing support for the “cap and stitch” plan, what some see as a silver lining in the largely unpopular infrastructure project. It would transform east-west connectivity by covering the newly sunken highway with walkable and developable civic space. Since introducing the idea in February, TxDOT has agreed to incorporate the project as part of its design from Cesar Chavez Street as far north as Airport Boulevard. The once far-fetched proposal now seems poised to move forward, with Council approving $15.4 million in design funding just two weeks ago.

Vela was also excited to see another pipe-dream-turned-reality take shape in the St. John Development Project, which will turn city-owned land near the intersection of I-35 and U.S. Highway 183 into affordable housing, retail and green space. The public-private partnership was made official this August after years of planning, and with the long-abandoned Home Depot finally demolished, it is set to begin construction next year.

In addition to housing and mobility issues, 2023 saw Vela lead the charge on police reform. Since the Austin Police Oversight Act passed with overwhelming support at the ballot box this May, Vela has issued a number of demands from the new Oversight Office, including more robust and publicly available data sharing. Though the oversight measures have gotten a slow start, Vela says he will continue to push for a more transparent and accountable police force.

“We really need more granular data on policing, so that we can tackle public safety in an intelligent and data-driven way,” Vela said. “Getting that data portal up and running so that everyone can look at those results and see where we’re at on service levels and response times will allow for well-informed conversations about how we should allocate resources.”

Following improvements to pay and benefits, Vela was also happy to see city services like public pools and the 911 call center return to functional operation levels after years of understaffing. Next, Vela hopes to tackle the city’s overcrowded Austin Animal Center, introducing a budget amendment for $800,000 in spay-neuter funding and a resolution on mandatory microchipping.

As for the coming year, Vela is feeling optimistic.

“We needed that change in city management when it happened; I kind of led the charge on that and I’m glad that I did. We needed a change in philosophy and leadership,” Vela said. “I will say in general that we seem to be functioning, on a day-to-day level, better than in the past, and I’m excited about getting a full-time city manager on board as soon as we can. I feel pretty decent about the direction we’re going.”

The Austin Monitor’s work is made possible by donations from the community. Though our reporting covers donors from time to time, we are careful to keep business and editorial efforts separate while maintaining transparency. A complete list of donors is available here, and our code of ethics is explained here. This story has been changed since publication to correct a vote tally and clarify the impact of the HOME initiative. 

Posted In: City Hall, District 4