Studentrification

The Central Austin Neighborhood Planning Advisory Committee (CANPAC) proposed an ordinance amendment which would severely limit, if not prevent, new Coop or Greek housing in the neighborhoods near campus. Originally this amendment was scheduled to be voted on on August 16th, which would of course preclude most student participation, but council member Chris Riley's office told me they postponed it until September 27th.

Mike Hirsch, president of the Hancock Neighborhood Association told KXAN, "As we know, our houses are our most valuable thing that most of us own, and group residential degrades the value of neighborhoods." Power plants also lower your home's value. But we tend to put those in poor communities like Northeast Austin and Del Valle.

The Northfield Neighborhood Association is fighting student housing in their own way. They propose to lower the number of unrelated adults allowed to live together from six to four. They released a "position paper" about "Stealth Dorms," large houses meant for several students built in single family residential areas.  To be honest, it sounds awful. Developers come in, rip out the existing cottages, build huge cheap six or eight room houses, and then rent out to six different students. Trash, noise and traffic go up, property values go down.

It's like reverse gentrification. On the one hand, we've got affordable housing moving in to a neighborhood, and making the rest of the neighborhood more affordable. Then all the poor people move in. On the other hand, we've got unaffordable housing moving in to an affordable neighborhood, and making it unaffordable. Then all the rich people move in. In my estimation, both are tied to each other; we can't be libertarian in our policy towards East Austin and big government in our policy towards Central Austin.

If City Council votes against new student housing, they will be sending a message that property values near campus are more important than families being allowed to stay in their homes in areas being gentrified. So, I propose an amendment to this amendment: if you or your family has been living in the same neighborhood for over twenty years and property values begin to spike, as long as you stay living in your house and don't rent to someone else, your property taxes will not increase. We'll call that the Secure Communities Act, and it will slow gentrification and studentrification . Looks like we got ourselves a Mexican standoff.

Or do we? Actually, studies show that affordable housing does not have a negative impact on property value. This isn't just wishful thinking: So. Many. Studies and academic analyses find that affordable and group housing does not lower surrounding home values, and that factors like the design and management of projects play a big role in outcomes. In fact, according to this study from the University of Minnesota, "projects managed by non-profit organizations commonly have positive impacts on property values due to sustained, quality management of property."  The idea that students and poor people are scary, and will lower property value seems to be just another example of fear-based conventional logic being at odds with the data.

I look at these sorts of laws and ordinances as just-in-case laws.Their whole purpose is not the intrinsic value of the law, but leverage over a certain group of people, and they are almost exclusively discriminatory in the manner of their enforcement. A great example of this is Austin's sit-lie ordinance, in which people face citations for sitting or lying down on city sidewalks. I have sat on sidewalks several times and have never once been harassed by the police for it. But let's be honest, this law is not for me. It's there "just in case" that someone with a higher status than a homeless person doesn't want them hanging around.

Austin's rule that no more than six unrelated adults may live in the same house is another "just-in-case" example. These laws are designed to be selectively enforced in the just in case that a property owner sees someone or a group as a nuisance. They are not talking about the group of quiet grad students living in the "stealth dorm;" they are talking about the loud, obnoxious ones.

But I guess it's easy for me to say because I don't live near campus. Because I can't stand high concentrations of college students. Luckily, I can choose one of the many other areas of Austin to live.