On Saturday, June 2, City Hall will hold a hearing at 10:00 AM for residents who are concerned about CodeNEXT, the controversial redevelopment plan that threatens to worsen Austin’s affordability crisis. (Those new to CodeNEXT should take a quick look at this timeline compiled by the Austin American-Statesman.) Here are three good reasons to attend:
This could be your last chance to talk to our mayor and city council before they adopt CodeNEXT on their own.
Saturday’s event is the final of four public CodeNEXT hearings held by the City of Austin. Hundreds of residents attended the previous meetings, demanding that the plan be stopped or put to a public vote. Many were from areas of Austin already suffering from gentrification, and they took to the microphone with stories of friends, family, and neighbors who have been forced out of their homes by high-end redevelopment and the rising costs that come with it. They know CodeNEXT will worsen their problems, because one of the consultants working on the plan has admitted it: During a meeting of Austin’s Joint Land Commissions, he acknowledged that CodeNEXT is designed to increase the amount of luxury housing throughout the city, catering to what he referred to as “top-income” individuals. So if you’re like these residents and are worried about affordability in Austin, then make sure to attend the hearing this Saturday, sign up to speak, and give our mayor and city council a piece of your mind!
Nearly 32,000 Austinites signed a petition to force a public vote on CodeNEXT, but our mayor and city council don’t seem to care.
Last week, Mayor Adler and a handful of other CodeNEXT supporters on the Austin City Council made a daring move. They decided to ignore a public petition signed by nearly 32,000 Austin residents demanding that the redevelopment plan be placed on the November 2018 ballot, when area voters would have an opportunity to weigh in on it. This isn’t the first time city officials who support CodeNEXT have broken the rules: They allowed the California-based consultants in charge of the plan to ignore local laws governing the hiring of people of color, for example, and they have also encouraged Austin’s Planning Commission to continue operating despite the fact that too many real estate professionals sit on it. Their failure to enforce a legally certified petition is a serious violation of state law, however, and the matter will soon be heard by a court. In the meantime, they need to hear from people like you. Let’s make that happen!
Austin’s Planning Commission has spent the last couple of weeks quietly amending CodeNEXT so that it’s even friendlier to land developers.
Austin’s voter-approved City Charter limits the number of real estate professionals who are allowed to sit on the 13-member Planning Commission to four for a reason: That body makes important decisions about local land development, so it must be free of conflicts of interest. Unfortunately, that law isn’t being enforced at the moment. Eight of our current planning commissioners (more than half) work in real estate or have close professional relationships with those who do, a problem that our city council has chosen to ignore. Predictably, the Planning Commission has spent the last couple of weeks quietly inserting hundreds of developer-friendly changes into CodeNEXT that will accelerate displacement and home demolitions if adopted by our mayor and council. The commission has proposed the creation of dozens of new “corridors” with high-density development zones almost a half-mile on either side of Cameron Road, William Cannon Drive, Enfield Road, Springdale Road, Mesa Drive, Great Hills Trail, Manor Road, West Mary Street, Stassney Lane, Burnet Road, Lamar Boulevard, Brush Country Road, Jollyville Road, and more than 100 other Austin streets. Land developers would be allowed to erect new buildings ranging between five and 12 stories high along these corridors, and dense new multifamily housing stretching a quarter-mile into the neighborhoods that surround them. We’ll have more details on the Planning Commission’s recommendations soon. In the meantime, we urge you to go to City Hall this Saturday and demand further information from our mayor and city council.
City Hall is located at 301 West 2nd Street, and sign-up for residents who wish to speak begins at 9:00 AM. We hope to see you there!