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CodeNext Forum Review
My city is proposing a new zoning code that is supposed to change the way our city works so that it becomes more bikeable and walkable and more affordable. Oh, and also to update and simplify the code. We're currently on the second draft, which is over 1300 pages, so it sounds like they're failing on the simplification goal.
My previous post is a shorter summary of some of the issues and my conclusions. This post addresses everything I heard at a panel discussion on CodeNext that I went to in order to find out more. The organizers of this discussion were against it, so this was not a well-rounded panel. However, they did have experts from many fields which they felt the city should have consulted. Here's what I got from what they said.
Ed Wendler, real estate developer
Wendler was introduced as the "good" kind of developer. He said developers negotiate, and they hire lobbyists and lawyers to help them negotiate, for the right to build what the people want built, where they want it built. He may claim to do that himself, but in general I think we can count on developers to build where the developers want to build. Also, they are looking only at potential buyers, not at current residents.
He felt that the city was using what he called "Popeil Pocket Fisherman" tactics such as presenting an artificial deadline and building unrealistic expectations.
He said that we are losing residents with household incomes of less than $35K and gaining them for higher incomes, so that's why it makes sense for developers to build more expensive things. But again, I think it's not just new residents we need to look at. As current residents are priced out of their houses, they are going to be looking for lower-cost places to live and leaving available the higher-cost places for newcomers. Also, he assumes that everyone should or will live in the most expensive place they can afford and I think people should be able to live in the least expensive place that makes them happy if possible. I sure do not want to spend the most I can afford on housing if I have that option.
He said that the phrase "missing middle" is a PR term that implies it's for the middle class, but it's at best for the upper middle class. The missing middle refers to residences that are between apartment complexes and single-family homes: duplexes, fourplexes, garage apartments, row houses, etc. He said the current median family income is in the $50K-$75K bracket and they can afford houses that cost $253K or afford rent of $1,562. And then he showed some sample comparison prices of houses versus their associated garage apartment: $569K vs 424K, $474K vs 374K. He found cottages (very small houses) for $429K to $579K, and the new row houses at Mueller are going for $449. So, they may be more affordable than single-family homes, but they are still above the maximum budget for the median Austin family.
Finally he gave a bunch of correlations with housing prices:
* population size: +0.46
* population density: +0.64
* share of creative class workers: +0.46
* share of college graduates: +0.58
* share of high tech workers: +0.54
* share of blu-collar workers: -0.5
I'm not exactly sure what his point was. But if he's trying to say that Austin's plan of attracting better-paying employers and of increasing housing density won't work, I would have to counter that correlation is not causality. In fact, I can't imagine that increasing density of houses increases housing costs--more supply should lower the cost. But it does make sense that when things are expensive, then you start increasing density.
Fred McGhee, urban anthropologist
McGhee talked about Imagine Austin, the plan for Austin on which CodeNext is supposed to be based. He discussed two basic problems. First is that there is no discussion of gentrification or the actual history of our city which includes racism and classism--it's just PR. He insists "Gentrification is a fundamental violation of human rights." This did not make sense to me at first. He says it puts profits over housing. It pits organized money over organized people. It sounds like that the problem is that when you change the code to allow outsiders to build more things, this helps the developers and the new people, but it hurts the current residents often driving them out of their homes. And to the extent that this is done only in lower-cost and/or minority neighborhoods, that leads to results that feel classist and racist. In the question/answer period, someone said, "You don't have to ask which parts of Austin are not changed in CodeNext." But some people did ask. And some people shouted "Hyde Park" and "Tarrytown", two fairly central, very rich neighborhoods. And it's not like they already have way more density and mixed-use areas than other typical neighborhoods.
He also said we have the oldest public housing in America (that seems unlikely!), implying that we also have good history. (Internet searching makes it appear that Austin started public housing soon after new regulations encouraged it in the 1930s, but so did a lot of other places.)
Carmen Llanes Pulido, public health advocate
Pulido said that "Texas diversity" is considered to be 30-30-30. My best guess is that's Anglo-Hispanic-Other. She says my neighborhood used to be the only integrated part of East Austin. (This implies there were some integrated parts of West Austin; I can't imagine what those would be.) She also mentioned a fun map called Judgemental Austin where her neighborhood is labled "house flippers." [Mine is labelled Target Lovers; interestingly that Target location was a two-story Montgomery Wards when I moved here. I find myself curious about the retired state employee section--I think my sister used to live there. Most of my friends live outside the boundaries of this map.]
Pulido dislikes CodeNext because it incentivizes demolition, and this leads to larger, more expensive houses and increased flooding. It's clear to me that CodeNext incentivizes smaller, less expensive housing. It does let us build bigger buildings, but also lets them be divided into more units.
She does have a good point on the flooding though. She says most of our water runs from west to east, so most of our flooding is on the east side. However, you don't just have to be careful with losing ground cover in the east; losing ground cover in the west also increases flooding in the east.
Pulido says community planning via zoning is a terrible idea. "What Austin desperately needs is community planning." First work with stakeholders in the community, and then build the zoning from that.
Supposedly they are building the zoning from "Imagine Austin," but she thinks of that plan as "Imagine Austin Poor." She says we have a long history of institutionalized racism and we have plenty of housing where people can't afford it.
Bobby Levinski, attorney and policy advisor
Levinski said that many neighborhoods have already developed their own neighborhood plans. (And that mine is one of them--Windsor Park and University Hills have a joint neighborhood plan. Interesting.) He doesn't see our current zoning code as ancient code from the '80s patched and re-patched to keep up with the times and now needing overhauling, but as a collection of carefully negotiated agreements that are just being thrown out. He says that relying on market principles too much doesn't take into account existing residents. He says a lot of affordable housing is multi-family units. And he says that both AISD demographers and city demographsers ahve warned the city about the uninetneded consequences of planning for too much growth. (I think he's talking about gentrification again.)
Laura Morrison, former City Council member
Morrison says that making Austin "compact and connected" was supposed to be magical. I say we haven't done it, so of course we haven't seen the magic.
She says CodeNext ignores the Imagine Austin p. 207 directives. Neighborhood plans include "stability areas" with single-family housing (and some deed restrictions disallow duplexes, which I'm guessing would supersede any code changes). She also says that allowing density leads to demolition and rising costs. This code adds residential to business districts, even in communities that have already said no to this. She also talked about a change in "compatibility standards." Before you could only add an extra story or two beyond what was allowed in the areas next door, but the new code allows for abrupt changes: 8-story buildings across the street (e.g., Cameron Road) from single-story dwellings. CodeNext also allows bars and nightclubs in most commercial zones and personal services (such as hourly rental hot tubs) are also allowed pervasively. Not to mention drive-throughs, which actually discourage walking. This code could lead to a complete replacement of who lives here and who the city serves.
She said the new code increases entitlements (allowances for more height, more square footage, more units, vertical mixed-use) without enough affordability (the current requrirement for 10% affordable units is being reduced or removed from many areas). (I think the 10% has to be affordable for households with less than a certain percentage of the mean household income. Obviously, all houses are going to be affordable to somebody.)
Also, the new code is not simplified or streamlined.
Ana Aguirre, flood mitigation task force
Aguirre reminds us that flooding is not just an inconvenience, it leads to deaths and homelessness. Austin is known as Flash Flood Alley, so we don't have the kind of slow flooding that Houston has where there is time to escape.
She also said that Austin has 68 watersheds. (I would think so many watersheds would prevent overbuilding in one area from increasing flooding in another area.) But the fact is, floods have become more frequent and flood plains have expanded. Our city's current solution is buy-outs. Many of the people who were bought out ended up moving out of Austin because they couldn't afford to stay. Yet buy-outs are expensive anyway. We have too many creek variances (variance is exceptions to the rules). Expanding drainage pipes is also expensive.
Robin Rather, sustainability strategist
Rather said that many Austinites have been displaced. We don't even know what has happened to them. Austin needs to focus on people not money (we should not be treated like a big ATM). "CodeNext is the worst thing that' ever happened to Austin." Nicknames include CodeWho'sNext and CodeYou'reNext.
In any deal, it's good look at who gives and who gets. She says with CodeNext, developers win. There's a huge up-zoning of eveyr district in our city. The city also wins with more property taxes. Current residents are the losers.
I'm not sure I'm a loser. I would really love to have more mixed use areas and thus more walkability and eventually better mass transit. More density should mean lots more things are close to us. Like in Europe.
Her next question is: what problem is this solving? Our biggest problem is affordability. Median house prices have gone up:
* [I happen to know: 1996 - 100K]
* 2001 - $149K
* 2007 - $183K
* 2016 - $280K
* 2018 expected - $320K
Currently, 70% of us make less than 100K and thus can't afford a median priced house.
She also says CodeNext is divisive, upzoning the whole city for money. So-called "smart growth" leads to displaceent. She thought we would build in empty areas but instead we have gone for gentrification.
She thinks there should be property tax caps for people over the age of 55 or making less than $100K. I disagree on this, especially on the latter, which would do wacky things like make some raises lead to less income. Also, all of these people need roads and an educated public, etc.
She says our new code should be getting rid of systematic racism and economic segregation and fighting our fossil fuel addiction.
Question-and-Answer
I learned that most new appartments are 80% 1-1's and efficiencies. But that's who's moving here. (But aren't many of the people moving here going to later want to be in bigger families? And are the people who are already here changing more toward wanting smaller or larger units?)
Zoning in Germany is done at the federal level. They just pass laws about civil rights and environmental protection that all areas have to follow.
The League of Women voters has concerns. I looked that up and wow! For elections, they never pick a side, they only dole out three pro and three con arguments on each issue (unless they can't find three). They have a document much like this post only about a forum with different speakers. And a lot shorter, too! But with links to the presentation PDFs. Their recommendations, however, are only about process, not content.
Subsidized public housing leads to affordability.
The average annual household income in Austin is $57K.
Property taxes have grown higher than the mortgage for some people. (I can see this. My P&I was $505, my taxes are $400/month, and I bought my house in 1996. If I had kept my 30-year fixed mortgage (which had a slightly lower P&I) and made the minimum payments, I would still have 9 more years, and that would be happening to me soon.)
The new code is switching from talking about "use" (such as retail) to talking about "structure" (such as number of stories). I think both codes talk about both; maybe the emphasis is changing.
Most people do agree that we need more retail, but not crap retail.
Gentrification can lead to overuse of code enforcement to push people out.
The code is changing for almost the entire city without enough negotiations, with consultants who are too incompetent, and with too many developers on the committee.
My previous post is a shorter summary of some of the issues and my conclusions. This post addresses everything I heard at a panel discussion on CodeNext that I went to in order to find out more. The organizers of this discussion were against it, so this was not a well-rounded panel. However, they did have experts from many fields which they felt the city should have consulted. Here's what I got from what they said.
Ed Wendler, real estate developer
Wendler was introduced as the "good" kind of developer. He said developers negotiate, and they hire lobbyists and lawyers to help them negotiate, for the right to build what the people want built, where they want it built. He may claim to do that himself, but in general I think we can count on developers to build where the developers want to build. Also, they are looking only at potential buyers, not at current residents.
He felt that the city was using what he called "Popeil Pocket Fisherman" tactics such as presenting an artificial deadline and building unrealistic expectations.
He said that we are losing residents with household incomes of less than $35K and gaining them for higher incomes, so that's why it makes sense for developers to build more expensive things. But again, I think it's not just new residents we need to look at. As current residents are priced out of their houses, they are going to be looking for lower-cost places to live and leaving available the higher-cost places for newcomers. Also, he assumes that everyone should or will live in the most expensive place they can afford and I think people should be able to live in the least expensive place that makes them happy if possible. I sure do not want to spend the most I can afford on housing if I have that option.
He said that the phrase "missing middle" is a PR term that implies it's for the middle class, but it's at best for the upper middle class. The missing middle refers to residences that are between apartment complexes and single-family homes: duplexes, fourplexes, garage apartments, row houses, etc. He said the current median family income is in the $50K-$75K bracket and they can afford houses that cost $253K or afford rent of $1,562. And then he showed some sample comparison prices of houses versus their associated garage apartment: $569K vs 424K, $474K vs 374K. He found cottages (very small houses) for $429K to $579K, and the new row houses at Mueller are going for $449. So, they may be more affordable than single-family homes, but they are still above the maximum budget for the median Austin family.
Finally he gave a bunch of correlations with housing prices:
* population size: +0.46
* population density: +0.64
* share of creative class workers: +0.46
* share of college graduates: +0.58
* share of high tech workers: +0.54
* share of blu-collar workers: -0.5
I'm not exactly sure what his point was. But if he's trying to say that Austin's plan of attracting better-paying employers and of increasing housing density won't work, I would have to counter that correlation is not causality. In fact, I can't imagine that increasing density of houses increases housing costs--more supply should lower the cost. But it does make sense that when things are expensive, then you start increasing density.
Fred McGhee, urban anthropologist
McGhee talked about Imagine Austin, the plan for Austin on which CodeNext is supposed to be based. He discussed two basic problems. First is that there is no discussion of gentrification or the actual history of our city which includes racism and classism--it's just PR. He insists "Gentrification is a fundamental violation of human rights." This did not make sense to me at first. He says it puts profits over housing. It pits organized money over organized people. It sounds like that the problem is that when you change the code to allow outsiders to build more things, this helps the developers and the new people, but it hurts the current residents often driving them out of their homes. And to the extent that this is done only in lower-cost and/or minority neighborhoods, that leads to results that feel classist and racist. In the question/answer period, someone said, "You don't have to ask which parts of Austin are not changed in CodeNext." But some people did ask. And some people shouted "Hyde Park" and "Tarrytown", two fairly central, very rich neighborhoods. And it's not like they already have way more density and mixed-use areas than other typical neighborhoods.
He also said we have the oldest public housing in America (that seems unlikely!), implying that we also have good history. (Internet searching makes it appear that Austin started public housing soon after new regulations encouraged it in the 1930s, but so did a lot of other places.)
Carmen Llanes Pulido, public health advocate
Pulido said that "Texas diversity" is considered to be 30-30-30. My best guess is that's Anglo-Hispanic-Other. She says my neighborhood used to be the only integrated part of East Austin. (This implies there were some integrated parts of West Austin; I can't imagine what those would be.) She also mentioned a fun map called Judgemental Austin where her neighborhood is labled "house flippers." [Mine is labelled Target Lovers; interestingly that Target location was a two-story Montgomery Wards when I moved here. I find myself curious about the retired state employee section--I think my sister used to live there. Most of my friends live outside the boundaries of this map.]
Pulido dislikes CodeNext because it incentivizes demolition, and this leads to larger, more expensive houses and increased flooding. It's clear to me that CodeNext incentivizes smaller, less expensive housing. It does let us build bigger buildings, but also lets them be divided into more units.
She does have a good point on the flooding though. She says most of our water runs from west to east, so most of our flooding is on the east side. However, you don't just have to be careful with losing ground cover in the east; losing ground cover in the west also increases flooding in the east.
Pulido says community planning via zoning is a terrible idea. "What Austin desperately needs is community planning." First work with stakeholders in the community, and then build the zoning from that.
Supposedly they are building the zoning from "Imagine Austin," but she thinks of that plan as "Imagine Austin Poor." She says we have a long history of institutionalized racism and we have plenty of housing where people can't afford it.
Bobby Levinski, attorney and policy advisor
Levinski said that many neighborhoods have already developed their own neighborhood plans. (And that mine is one of them--Windsor Park and University Hills have a joint neighborhood plan. Interesting.) He doesn't see our current zoning code as ancient code from the '80s patched and re-patched to keep up with the times and now needing overhauling, but as a collection of carefully negotiated agreements that are just being thrown out. He says that relying on market principles too much doesn't take into account existing residents. He says a lot of affordable housing is multi-family units. And he says that both AISD demographers and city demographsers ahve warned the city about the uninetneded consequences of planning for too much growth. (I think he's talking about gentrification again.)
Laura Morrison, former City Council member
Morrison says that making Austin "compact and connected" was supposed to be magical. I say we haven't done it, so of course we haven't seen the magic.
She says CodeNext ignores the Imagine Austin p. 207 directives. Neighborhood plans include "stability areas" with single-family housing (and some deed restrictions disallow duplexes, which I'm guessing would supersede any code changes). She also says that allowing density leads to demolition and rising costs. This code adds residential to business districts, even in communities that have already said no to this. She also talked about a change in "compatibility standards." Before you could only add an extra story or two beyond what was allowed in the areas next door, but the new code allows for abrupt changes: 8-story buildings across the street (e.g., Cameron Road) from single-story dwellings. CodeNext also allows bars and nightclubs in most commercial zones and personal services (such as hourly rental hot tubs) are also allowed pervasively. Not to mention drive-throughs, which actually discourage walking. This code could lead to a complete replacement of who lives here and who the city serves.
She said the new code increases entitlements (allowances for more height, more square footage, more units, vertical mixed-use) without enough affordability (the current requrirement for 10% affordable units is being reduced or removed from many areas). (I think the 10% has to be affordable for households with less than a certain percentage of the mean household income. Obviously, all houses are going to be affordable to somebody.)
Also, the new code is not simplified or streamlined.
Ana Aguirre, flood mitigation task force
Aguirre reminds us that flooding is not just an inconvenience, it leads to deaths and homelessness. Austin is known as Flash Flood Alley, so we don't have the kind of slow flooding that Houston has where there is time to escape.
She also said that Austin has 68 watersheds. (I would think so many watersheds would prevent overbuilding in one area from increasing flooding in another area.) But the fact is, floods have become more frequent and flood plains have expanded. Our city's current solution is buy-outs. Many of the people who were bought out ended up moving out of Austin because they couldn't afford to stay. Yet buy-outs are expensive anyway. We have too many creek variances (variance is exceptions to the rules). Expanding drainage pipes is also expensive.
Robin Rather, sustainability strategist
Rather said that many Austinites have been displaced. We don't even know what has happened to them. Austin needs to focus on people not money (we should not be treated like a big ATM). "CodeNext is the worst thing that' ever happened to Austin." Nicknames include CodeWho'sNext and CodeYou'reNext.
In any deal, it's good look at who gives and who gets. She says with CodeNext, developers win. There's a huge up-zoning of eveyr district in our city. The city also wins with more property taxes. Current residents are the losers.
I'm not sure I'm a loser. I would really love to have more mixed use areas and thus more walkability and eventually better mass transit. More density should mean lots more things are close to us. Like in Europe.
Her next question is: what problem is this solving? Our biggest problem is affordability. Median house prices have gone up:
* [I happen to know: 1996 - 100K]
* 2001 - $149K
* 2007 - $183K
* 2016 - $280K
* 2018 expected - $320K
Currently, 70% of us make less than 100K and thus can't afford a median priced house.
She also says CodeNext is divisive, upzoning the whole city for money. So-called "smart growth" leads to displaceent. She thought we would build in empty areas but instead we have gone for gentrification.
She thinks there should be property tax caps for people over the age of 55 or making less than $100K. I disagree on this, especially on the latter, which would do wacky things like make some raises lead to less income. Also, all of these people need roads and an educated public, etc.
She says our new code should be getting rid of systematic racism and economic segregation and fighting our fossil fuel addiction.
Question-and-Answer
I learned that most new appartments are 80% 1-1's and efficiencies. But that's who's moving here. (But aren't many of the people moving here going to later want to be in bigger families? And are the people who are already here changing more toward wanting smaller or larger units?)
Zoning in Germany is done at the federal level. They just pass laws about civil rights and environmental protection that all areas have to follow.
The League of Women voters has concerns. I looked that up and wow! For elections, they never pick a side, they only dole out three pro and three con arguments on each issue (unless they can't find three). They have a document much like this post only about a forum with different speakers. And a lot shorter, too! But with links to the presentation PDFs. Their recommendations, however, are only about process, not content.
Subsidized public housing leads to affordability.
The average annual household income in Austin is $57K.
Property taxes have grown higher than the mortgage for some people. (I can see this. My P&I was $505, my taxes are $400/month, and I bought my house in 1996. If I had kept my 30-year fixed mortgage (which had a slightly lower P&I) and made the minimum payments, I would still have 9 more years, and that would be happening to me soon.)
The new code is switching from talking about "use" (such as retail) to talking about "structure" (such as number of stories). I think both codes talk about both; maybe the emphasis is changing.
Most people do agree that we need more retail, but not crap retail.
Gentrification can lead to overuse of code enforcement to push people out.
The code is changing for almost the entire city without enough negotiations, with consultants who are too incompetent, and with too many developers on the committee.