Lacking a sense of cultural belonging, many Black Austinites are relocating

Lack of community bonds, cultural offerings and business opportunities play a large part in the continuing decline in Austin’s Black population, based on analysis and anecdotes shared by a number of local leaders at a recent discussion on the demographic trend.

Wednesday’s breakfast panel for Urban Land Institute Austin looked at possible solutions for retaining the city’s Black community and offered a variety of opinions on steps the city as a whole and assorted pockets of the community can take to prevent continued flight to surrounding suburbs.

Affordability was identified as a persistent problem for Black residents, as it is for many residents, but panelists said the retention problems companies report experiencing with Black hires shows the issue goes beyond economics.

Meme Styles, president of the research firm Measure, said a 2022 study that looked at the population decline showed “lack of belonging” as the second-biggest issue after affordability.

“Eighty percent of respondents said that they are leaving because they do not belong. These are Black folk that were not aware that there was a decline in the population in their own city, however, they were feeling as if they were not belonging,” she said. “Just imagine having that disconnect of not really understanding what’s happening around you, but feeling the impact in your body or driving along the streets or seeing things change all around you – but not having context to what is truly happening in the city.”

BiNi Coleman, co-founder and CEO of the African American Leadership Institute, said her feedback from employers backs up the problem of new Black employees hired from out of the Austin area feeling disconnected because of a lack of businesses and organizations that reflect their culture.

“Whenever we talk to major corporations and employers, they constantly say, ‘We don’t have a problem recruiting people.’ Recruitment is not an issue. … It’s retaining them. Why do they leave? Six to 18 months and they’re gone,” she said. “To me, that eclipses affordability because they knew what it cost to live here when they made the choice to relocate. So, yes, affordability, but they knew that when they came. What they realized when they got here was there wasn’t a sense of connectedness.”

Quincy Dunlap, president and CEO of the Austin Area Urban League, was one of several panelists who talked about the problems caused by gaps in investment in Black communities, which prevents the creation of local businesses as well as innovative new companies that could grow in Austin’s fertile tech community.

“Part of the solution is investing into cultural equality. So if there are cultural facilities, cultural opportunities for African Americans, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he said. “How do we get our community partners and our corporate partners to connect to those solutions that are coming to town and make the right investments and then be engaged beyond writing the check? We need your partnership to help those entities and organizations understand what is the expected ROI and what is the sustainable partnership.”

For Jenell Moffett, chief impact officer for Downtown Austin Alliance, solutions to the population decline need to start downtown with more diversity of businesses that can more accurately reflect the local population.

“Downtown is a neighborhood that’s supposed to be for everyone. So if we get this right, it should happen in a neighborhood that is engineered and structured and created innately for everyone, and we’re missing the mark,” she said. “When I look at the numbers in downtown, compared to the city at large, the disparities are larger for just this small geography.”

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