SXSW Celebrates Austin Housing Progress

It might seem a stretch to refer to the large number of new housing units that have been built in Austin over the last 10 years as a “miracle.” But for community leaders who have fought for that housing, the term fits. Wednesday’s SXSW panel – No Perfect Plans, Just Progress: Austin’s Housing Miracle – served as a celebration of their success.  

“It’s really wonderful to understand how your city is broken. It’s a lot harder to actually have people who want to fix it,” said Felicity Maxwell, executive director at Texans for Housing, referring to groups like AURA, HousingWorks, and Safe Streets Austin that nurtured a pro-housing consensus among city residents and helped install a supermajority on the City Council which reflected it. “We really focused on getting people who are committed to doing housing and transportation work once they’re elected, and I think that that’s been a huge part of our success,” Maxwell added.

In recent years, the Council has approved a series of measures encouraging the creation of more housing. They have eliminated minimum parking requirements for new development, gave homeowners the right to build three housing units on residential lots, allowed builders to create housing stock closer to large buildings, and provided incentives to developers to create affordable housing, among other things. 

The panelists recalled the resistance they encountered as they pushed for the measures. Council Member Zo Qadri, who led the effort to eliminate minimum parking requirements, remembered a homeowner telling him, “If you eliminate parking, Hamas will attack my neighborhood.” Awais Azhar, executive director at HousingWorks Austin, recalled a resident opposing a townhome development because it would disturb their anxious dog. “Not to belittle someone whose dog has high anxiety, but we cannot develop a city around thinking about a single dog’s anxiety,” he said. 

The panelists also looked back on their fight to get Austin to replace its antiquated Land Development Code, which specifies what can get built where and has been blamed for slowing development. The struggle to replace the LDC with an updated set of rules called CodeNEXT stretched from 2013 to 2022 and ultimately failed. Azhar said that was the result of wishful thinking on the part of some Austinites, that “If you don’t build it, they won’t come.” Yet, they did come. During the COVID pandemic, individuals flocked to Austin in record numbers, creating a full-blown affordability crisis. 

“It’s terrible that it came to that, but that was what I think really galvanized a lot of attention,” Alina Carnahan of the Real Estate Council of Austin said. “Even people who were double-income attorneys were like, ‘I can’t afford a house in Austin anymore. And if I can, it’s way out in the boonies – and I thought I had a good job.’ It got humanized for so many people so quickly.”

Maxwell said that it’s no longer viable for Austin leaders to be anything but pro-housing, especially with young people unable to afford homes. “People who are younger, who struggle to pay rent, really feel like housing will always be unaffordable for them,” she said. “But they are working at the City Council. They are showing up to public comment. They are active in student groups who care about housing.”

Qadri said that he has done ride-alongs with police, fire, and EMS workers, few of whom can now afford to live close to their jobs. “When you talk about teachers who teach our kids, and you talk about the folks who work at City Hall, from city staff to janitorial staff, the folks who literally keep the lights on – they can’t afford to live in the city,” he said. “I think that’s why you see the work that’s being done. It’s because there is a crisis and people are just screaming from the rooftops, ‘Help me!’”

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