HOME proponents, opponents speak out

City Council Member Leslie Pool led the charge in talking about the HOME initiative at a City Hall press conference Tuesday. Joining her in promoting the plan to reconfigure Austin’s single-family zoning rules were several Council members as well as representatives of labor, environmental and transit organizations.

As of late, Pool has been the surprise face of changing the rules to promote density. On Tuesday, she said, “When I started on Council in January 2015, Austin was still a place for working families. After all, the median home price was $238,000, and there were a lot of options in almost every neighborhood.” But this year, she said, “the median home price in Austin is $540,000 – well beyond the reach of a middle-income earner whose price point is limited to $350,000.”

In the past, Austin was “a place for young people who came for college or for work and wanted to stay – they could find a starter home and make their way in Austin,” she said. “That is simply not possible anymore, and I think we’d all like to change that.”

That is the goal of the HOME initiative, which stands for Home Options for Middle-Income Empowerment. Council seems very likely to approve the first part of it on Thursday. The first step is allowing “up to three homes on a property, including tiny homes, which is the most affordable way to add a home on your lot,” Pool said.

After the press conference, Pool told the Austin Monitor that a developer is not currently prevented from buying a lot zoned for a single-family house and rezoning it in order to build a duplex or triplex. What the HOME initiative will do is allow a homeowner or developer to build more than one house on a lot currently zoned as single-family without going through the expense of rezoning.

Pool noted that she has been skeptical of such changes in the past, but “the world changed” during the pandemic.

Pool noted that Mayor Kirk Watson is bringing forward an amendment that will require city staff to look at all the changes that may occur as a result of the HOME initiative and report back to Council. According to his post on the City Council Message Board, staff would be required to make those reports in six months, 12 months and 18 months after the passage of the HOME ordinance. He said an annual report will be required for the following five years.

Among those joining Pool in promoting the HOME initiative were Selena Xie, president of the Austin EMS Association, and Ryan Pollock, lead organizer for IBEW Local 520. Xie said her association did a study to find out where their members were living. They found that only 20 percent lived in Travis County.

“We worked really hard to raise our salaries in the last contract negotiations,” she said, but even with the increased pay they were unable to fill their most recent class. Some would-be employees said they would like to join EMS but they couldn’t figure out how to put together first and last month’s rent, she said.

“Our local has been building Austin for over 100 years,” Pollock said. “We all used to be able to afford to live here – on an apprentice’s wages as well. A few years ago, we did a survey of our membership ahead of our contract negotiations, asking where do you live, how much is your rent, your mortgage, etc.”

He said when they laid out a map of where their workers were living it looked like “a donut around Travis County. We now have members driving all the way from Jarrell to build this city. This is a pattern that isn’t sustainable. Our skill sets are in short supply and high demand and we’re not going to stand around, wasting our lives sitting on toll roads and in traffic,” he said.

“If working people can’t make a good life here, they will leave. They won’t build your skyscrapers, they won’t install your ceiling fans, they won’t cook your food, they won’t take out your garbage. Working people need to be able to live here, too. We need to support that density that will support mass transit – because there is no other solution to our growing traffic problem.”

Luke Metzger of Environment Texas told reporters, “Austin’s current development pattern is a disaster for our climate and our environment. We just can’t continue sprawling out into the countryside as we are – driving people to live long, long distances, belting out emissions to get to work and exacerbating air-quality concerns, water quantity and many other issues.”

Austinites, he said, need to live on a smaller footprint, and he urged support for the HOME initiative.

Standing outside the press conference room at City Hall, a number of people told Council to postpone or reject altogether the HOME initiative, including Frances Acuña, one of the plaintiffs in lawsuits to undo changes in development regulations. Acuña expressed her fear that development would drive out current residents of East Austin, herself included.

Richard Heyman, a lecturer at the University of Texas, told the Monitor, “Everybody knows that affordability is a big problem in Austin. And I think that everybody who was at the podium today has all the best intentions, but I think that they are mistaken about what the impact of this initiative is going to be,” especially on lower-income communities on the east side. He predicted that the HOME initiative would increase displacement in those areas.

Council Member Chito Vela, who represents District 4, including numerous minority citizens, expressed the opposite view, saying, “We are so close to putting Austin on the path to organic affordability. And that’s due to the hard work of Council Member Pool,” as well as “the community members of Austin who collaborated on the HOME initiative.”

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