The problem with neighborhood plans

1

While it appears – based on the extremely handy infographic attached to the article below – that Zilker’s neighborhood plan is “suspended” for some reason, this article provides a stark example of how NPs as well as neighborhood contact teams (both of which many of Austin’s NAs used as a cudgel to combat CodeNEXT) are grossly inequitable towards renters in particular, but also newer homebuyers as well. Btw I’m not clear whether all NPs require five years of residency before someone can contribute to them, but the requirement of membership in a given area’s private (traditional) NA is alarming, to say the least.

I also realize that most, if not all, of Austin’s “preservation” activists would pitch a hissy fit if the city did away with NPs and contact teams altogether, it nonetheless seems like the most equitable solution on whole: allowing one group representing all neighborhoods to develop long-term plans in accordance with Imagine Austin. As we’ve seen firsthand throughout the entire CodeNEXT imbroglio, traditional NAs will by default opt for zero substantive change to their existing NPs and FLUMs – in other words, maintaining single-family homes as the default housing variety in perpetuity (since they’re acting out of their own self-interests as opposed to those of the city on whole). Mr. Spock said it best: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

2

Interestingly, it is my understanding the reason why Zilker does not have a Neighborhood Plan is that the ZNA at the time did not want to be locked into anything. In other words they wanted to be free to oppose whatever they wanted on their terms with no clear policy.

It is quite beneficial to urban planners, developers, etc to have these plans because it helps them to understand if their project is inline with the vision of the neighborhood.

Friends of Zilker approached the city to restart the process, but as they were in the middle of CodeNext they had no interest.

3

They were working with Bouldin on the South Lamar Neighborhood Plan, but it got suspended when CodeNEXT started.

Neighborhood plans can be great or terrible… One thing I will say is if the city decides to start taking them again, FoZ should put one together.

4

Jp and others

Your assumptions about why Zilker does not have a neighborhood plan are not correct. I was on the City created committee to create the guidelines for neighborhood planning in 1997 and was a strong advocate for community drive, staff supported and council ratified neighborhood plans but over the year and having watched how almost 50 NP’s created by this evolving and then saw how they were manipulated, when it can to the South Lamar Combined Neighborhood Plan area ( Galindo, South Lamar, Zilker, Barton Oaks, and Barton Hills) when we started the planning process we asked staff two questions 1) Who was going to write the plan and 2) how was the contact team to be structured. Staff refused to answer these two questions but we participated for almost 2 years and at the end of that time asked the same two questions, Again no response from staff. At the same time we had worked through the adoption of the Vertical Mixed Use ordinance where in for Zilker we had made recommendations for adoption of VMU on appropriated tracts along South Lamar. The VMU adoption by ZNA was approved by City Council unanimously without any changes and has resulted in almost every multifamily project build along South Lamar in the last 10 years. What VMU did was to grant the development community more zoning entitlements so they could build bigger projects with less parking but with the proviso of providing some affordable housing. To date the VMU projects along South Lamar have been some of the most successful projects in Austin at providing real affordability.

And so when we got no response from staff on the two questions, having felt we had dealt with the most pressing issue that most NA face in their neighborhood planning process, how to provide additional opportunity for housing while protecting the character of the neighborhood, we decided that there was not much to be gained from continuing to work on a neighborhood plan that we had no assurance of how the final version would be written or who would oversee its implementation, so we asked to be removed from the NP process. The city however asked us to engage with the dispute resolution program of the UT law school to try to resolve this problem. We agreed to do that but at the first meeting again stated the two questions we need answered and provided suggestions on how to answer these questions.

To the first question on Who was going to write the plan at the end of the process which would be either a) staff or b) the community. We asked this question because we has seen that in many neighborhood plans that staff had inserted items that were not agreed to by the community in the final published and adopted plans, much to the dismay of those who had participated in the planning effort. For the second question about how the neighborhood contact team was to be structure, it was important to know if the contact team would be a honest broker in ensuring the implementation of the adopted plan. In some NP the contact team ordinated by staff did not reflect the community and did not ensure true advocacy for the provisions of the plan. So we suggested several rational ways to the contact team to be structured. It could be structure on the number of folks in the neighborhood with representational proportionality between home owners, renters of apartments, renters of single family homes, workers in the neighborhood, and property owners not living in the hood. Another suggestion was to base the proportionality on the property tax valuations for the different zoning categories such as if commercial values in the hood represented 43 % of total valuations then they would get at least 43% representation on the contact team and so forth. I think there was several more way to slice the pie that were suggested as rational ways to distribute the seats on the contact team, but we just want to know up front who was going to be at the table at the end of the process and who would be governing the implementation of the adopted plan

After 9 months of meetings with the dispute resolution folks we still did not have answers from staff on these tow fundamental questions so we stopped the process. And that is why we do not have a formal neighborhood plan. Please note that we were not demanding the staff answer these questions one way but just wanted to know what the intention of staff was so that we could participate in a process whose outcome we could depend on.

Thanks

Jeff

5

Jimmy

The South Lamar Combined Neighborhood planning process was stopped long before CodeNEXT was initiated and include Bouldin, South Lamar, Barton Oaks, Zilker and Barton Hills. All of these neighborhoods agreed to stop the process not just Zilker for the reasons I have stated in my reply to Jp.

Thanks
Jeff

6

I recall you telling us specifically that the S Lamar plan was stalled and couldn’t continue b/c of CodeNEXT at a FoZ meeting. Perhaps I misheard. Either way, I’ll defer to your previous lengthy email.

jjack2 wrote:

7

Jimmy

While the SLCNP was put on hold years before CodeNEXT stated, the discussion on resuming this neighborhood planning effort was put on the shelf pending the outcome of CodeNEXT.

Thanks for the clarification.

Jeff

8

To date the VMU projects along South Lamar have been some of the most successful projects in Austin at providing real affordability.

Congratulations: you just made me do a literal spit take on my laptop! This may be the single most detached-from-reality statement of yours I’ve seen to date – and that’s saying a lot. Only in the Bizarroworld Austin you appear to inhabit are apartments starting at $1,600 per month – for a 400 sq ft studio, mind you – and escalating to $5K a month “affordable” even under the loosest definition of the term.

Back in the reality-based world, the only “affordable housing” at any of these VMU developments are the minute number of units set aside for occupants making less than 80% of the area’s MFI. In case you forgot, I happen to live at Lamar Union and am intimately familiar with both its pricing and general operations. Out of over 400 units overall, care to guess how many affordable set-asides it has? Four. And they’re all studios large enough for only a single resident. LU has exactly zero housing that fits the “missing middle” definition specifically, or that would be classified as “affordable” by any rational, detached observer.

P.S. Please do not bother trying to search through every VMU complex on S. Lamar to “disprove” my comment about $1,600-a-month studios. Yes, I acknowledge there might be marginally less expensive units. A $1,500-a-month studio is just as bad.

9

Jeff

Your data for market rate does not include the affordable housing in each unit that the VMU calls for. The VMU that Zilker negotiated was for 10% of units at 60% MFI (mean family income) most projects that the city has gotten approve are for 80 % MFI, You can check with the city analysis of the effectiveness of their density bonus programs and their data will show that the south Lamar projects have a better deliverable than other programs. While the 60% MFI was what we got, which as I note was better than other density bonus programs, we advocated for rents to be in the 30 – 50% MFI range but the CITY would not go that far due to the push back from the developers. So don’t blame ZNA for not a deeper affordability target, blame the city and the developer. And while we are glad we got some affordability, we asked for but never got any analysis of just how much more profit the developer got out to the deal (The bigger project with less parking) that was not passed on to the consumer. That information surely would have been helpful to know in negotiating any more increases in entitlements or density bonus programs. If you don’t know the value of what the “give” is how do you determine how much that “ask” should be?

And yes we did get only 4 units or 10% of the total, but that is all that the VMU ordinance passed by the council would allow. By the way if you have many documentation for what the missing middle housing definition of affordability is from the consultants to CodeNEXT who coined the term “missing middle housing” and have pushed for it as solution to affordability, please share, If you can find any evidence that creating missing middle housing will provide units of affordability at 30 to 50 % MFI that would be very interesting since there the CodeNEXT process has provided no example where in other cities who have adopted this zoning strategy in the context of a expanding local economy has ever produce truly affordability for moderate and lower income folks,

The argument that we should allow missing middle housing in all urban core neighborhoods goes something like this. Currently SF new homes are going for about $1milion in the urban core, but if we allow two, three or four units to go where one now is allowed that will bring the price down for each of these multiple units thus providing the supply of affordable housing we need in the city. But the fact that a single family house that would have cost over $1 million and replacing it with even 4 units that will go for about the same market rate as you describe would result in those units going as condos for $600K to $700K hardly makes them affordable, or as rental units at a similar premium, hardly affordable in the 30 – 50 % range. And the indirect consequences only make the problem worse as the net impact is to drive up the land values even more that the next developer has to factor into his sales price. A snake eating it’s tail solution to affordability.

Jeff

10

I agree the idea that 600k is affordable is laughable. However, it is more accessible than $1M+ houses. If we allowed for third stories and could create 4 family homes on the same lot as a single family home, you’d at last be keeping the neighborhood accessible to a larger pool of people. True affordable housing is something that can’t be achieved on the dirt value in our neighborhood without some sort of sponsorship and/or density on a level that is unrealistic. The idea though is to increase supply and increase density to push the needle in the right direction or at least keeping it from moving from insane to ludicrous.

11

The argument that we should allow missing middle housing in all urban
core neighborhoods goes something like this. Currently SF new homes are
going for about $1milion in the urban core, but if we allow two, three
or four units to go where one now is allowed that will bring the price
down for each of these multiple units thus providing the supply of
affordable housing we need in the city. But the fact that a single
family house that would have cost over $1 million and replacing it with
even 4 units that will go for about the same market rate as you describe
would result in those units going as condos for $600K to $700K hardly
makes them affordable, or as rental units at a similar premium, hardly
affordable in the 30 – 50 % range. And the indirect consequences only
make the problem worse as the net impact is to drive up the land values
even more that the next developer has to factor into his sales price. A
snake eating it’s tail solution to affordability.

jjack2 wrote:

The argument that we should allow missing middle housing in all urban
core neighborhoods goes something like this. Currently SF new homes
are going for about $1milion in the urban core, but if we allow two,
three or four units to go where one now is allowed that will bring the
price down for each of these multiple units thus providing the supply
of affordable housing we need in the city. But the fact that a single
family house that would have cost over $1 million and replacing it
with even 4 units that will go for about the same market rate as you
describe would result in those units going as condos for $600K to
$700K hardly makes them affordable, or as rental units at a similar
premium, hardly affordable in the 30 – 50 % range.

Sure, 600-700 units are expensive, but they’re a hell of a lot more
affordable for SF than 1 million. Also, adding multiple families in the
place of one aging family increases the workforce and tax base. Thus,
better services and programs.

And the indirect consequences only make the problem worse as the net
impact is to drive up the land values even more that the next
developer has to factor into his sales price. A snake eating it’s tail
solution to affordability.
Again, this is wrong. Every study shows that more density leads to
greater affordability.

12

Before going any further I just want to clarify for folks reading this that we’re discussing two different varieties of “affordable housing” here:

  1. Set-aside affordable housing units. These come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and can consist of both rental and individually owned property, but they share a simple commonality: ALL of them require that residents have household incomes well below the area’s median family income (MFI). The percentage can vary, but most such units are reserved for occupants with a steady employment history who earn between 50% and 80% of the current MFI. Note: set-aside units have absolutely nothing to do with zoning, and were thus entirely unrelated to CodeNEXT – despite the efforts of groups like Community Not Commodity (CNC) to falsely conflate the two.
  2. Market-rate affordable housing. This is, quite simply, housing that does not have any MFI requirements for buyers (or renters), but is priced within reach of an average middle-class family. One of the terms for such housing is “missing middle,” so named because it’s a) intended for the middle class and b) is, well, missing from the city’s housing mix. Creating such housing is, and always was, one of the primary points of CodeNEXT as well as any future rewrite of Austin’s land development code (LDC). Yes, CNC grossly distorted reality in this regard as well, arguing that the proponents of missing-middle housing are somehow “backed by evil developers wanting to bulldoze existing neighborhoods wholesale and plop Soviet-style multifamily units on every parcel of land in the urban core.” Again, the “urbanists” broadly attacked by CNC and its thugs support affordable housing, not the other way around!

Moving on…

You can’t “negotiate” percentages of affordable units with the city. Literally. It’s illegal under Texas law for a municipality to condition approval of any multifamily residential project on the inclusion of affordable housing, assuming it’s on privately owned land. (Mueller has 25% affordable units, but only because the city owned the land outright.) A more interesting question is how you’re apparently not aware of this fact, given that you’re an architect and former head of the Board of Adjustment and current ANC president.

So don’t blame ZNA for not a deeper affordability target

I wasn’t blaming ZNA for anything. I was blaming you for your ridiculous comment that the market-rate VMU complexes along S. Lamar are “affordable.”

By the way if you have many documentation for what the missing middle housing definition of affordability is from the consultants to CodeNEXT who coined the term “missing middle housing”

Yes, you’ve mentioned that – repeatedly – in what I can only assume is some sort of attempt to delegitimize the term. (You’ve unambiguously tried to turn “urbanist” into a bad word, after all.) Regardless of whatever label one uses, it is irrefutable fact that all of Central Austin, including the Zilker area, has a dire shortage of market-rate housing priced within reach of middle-class families; that a primary causal factor of this shortage was the ban on multifamily units throughout 98% of inner-core neighborhoods in 1983, initially put into place for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with “neighborhood character”; and that Zilker and every other central neighborhood will only get more and more expensive (and thus cost-prohibitive to the middle class) absent a change of the status quo.

As already noted, you continue to falsely conflate CodeNEXT with set-aside affordable housing, despite the fact that the two issues are entirely separate. Unfortunately Community Not Commodity managed to con a solid chunk of East Austin into believing this bunk but it was, and is, total bullshit. What will help create set-aside affordable housing units is the bond designed for that explicit purpose that’s on the November ballot.

Once more, with feeling: set-aside affordable housing has nothing whatsoever to do with zoning or CodeNEXT. Nor has it ever.

If you can find any evidence that creating missing middle housing will provide units of affordability at 30 to 50 % MFI that would be very interesting

I agree - it would be very interesting, but not for the reasons you infer. Missing middle housing is not synonymous with affordable housing (as in the technical term). There are no MFI requirements for it; the term, quite simply, refers to housing suitable for families that’s priced within reach of an average middle-class family. It has no commonality with set-aside affordable housing. You are falsely conflating the two.

But the fact that a single family house that would have cost over $1 million and replacing it with even 4 units that will go for about the same market rate as you describe would result in those units going as condos for $600K to $700K hardly makes them affordable

Again, I’m flabbergasted that you’re running ANC but appear to be entirely unaware of the median home prices either in Austin on whole or on a per-neighborhood basis. Zilker is (thankfully) one of the city’s only neighborhoods – aside from “rich” ones like Old Enfield or Pemberton – where new-build SF houses routinely sell for over $1 million. It sounds like you don’t travel north of Koenig very often, but if you did you’d see plenty of new-build homes for closer to $500K.

For argument’s sake, let’s assume someone could build a 2,800 sq ft $750K house on a large-ish (0.20 acre) lot a bit further north. The affordable alternative – one that would allow a developer to still earn a reasonable profit while increasing both the amount of overall housing as well as that priced within reach of middle-class families – would be to build something along the lines of three detached houses at a price point of around $325K-$350K. Right now this is, of course, impossible given that SF-zoned lots are limited to single-family homes or “duplexes,” but thankfully we’ll get another shot at fixing the code – the right way, that is – shortly after the November elections.

Oh, and guess what? You have virtually no chance of successfully getting the right to put any future code changes to a public vote! Even if your referendum passes in November, it will be nullified post-haste either by the courts or the legislature, given that it unambiguously violates state law!

13

Just to clarify this topic, since it’s at the core of CNC’s anti-density argument: upzoning land to multifamily has no effect on property values unless and until said land is actually converted to multifamily! I would be more than happy to provide specific examples, but one of them is in Clarksville. Nearly every parcel north of W. 12th St. is zoned MF-3, despite most of them containing single-family houses. Nearly every parcel south of 12th is zoned SF-3. Despite the difference, land values for both areas are identical on an apples-to-apples basis (a single-family house on a 0.2 acre MF-zoned lot has an identical land value as an identically sized one a block away that’s SF-zoned).

So no, your property value will NOT suddenly skyrocket if your neighborhood is upzoned.

14
15

Spy

The neoliberals amongst us started the push for more density with the claim that if we could just increase the supply then housing would become “affordable” for moderate and lower income folks, this simplistic view traded well on the good intentions of the community to provide housing for the folks most in need. When the data was examined it became clear that in a booming economy where the income levels were rising significantly due to in migration populations compared to the existing income level of the older population, that the strategy of promoting density for “affordability” no longer held any water, then there was a shift in propaganda to “more reasonably priced housing” to somewhat acknowledge that building the missing middle housing in the urban core was not going to provide real affordability to those who are in the greatest need. It simply provide more wealthy folks cheaper housing. But at what cost to the rest of the community?

What we have seen in Zilker is a lot of previously affordable housing being sold for the land, and that affordable unit being replaced by the maxed out single family $1million homes, There is a limit to the ownership pool who can afford those homes. But if you increase the entitlements then the investor pool grows much larger and the number of homes sold to be demo’d will increase and we will lose even more of the existing affordable housing stock. Eventually if that pattern is repeated we will have a neighborhood of the very wealthy and the just plain old ordinary wealthy with no moderate housing left. Great for the investor class but not so good for the rest of us as Reagan “trickle down” economic theory goes. So while acknowledging the problem of the $ 1 million dollar tear downs, why are we ignoring the increase in the problem by expanding the investment potential by increasing entitlements (density)? in short why would we support speeding up and expanding the gentrification of the moderate income folks out of the neighborhood! I know that the typical retort is that those moderate home owner will make a killing by selling the land and go away with a big hung of change, buy a better cheaper house outside Austin and be happy ever after! And many may do just that but what about the folks who would like to stay in their homes but are forced to sell due to the increase in property taxes that come from what we are experiencing now, just image what property values will be if missing middle housing is allowed on all SF lots? It won’t take too many property tax cycles before all the moderate income folks are gone from the urban core.

This leads of course to the real problem that is not related to zoning directly and that is the demand side of the economic equation. If the city council has no stomach to tell businesses that want to locate here that they will have to show that there employment profile will not add to the gentrification problem , then they will get no city tax breaks, city land or city paying for the infrastructure to support their businesses, they will have to pay their own way. When it is suggested that we look at managing demand better some density advocates will say we cannot build a wall around Austin or pull up the drawbridge and they are right in that we cannot prevent individuals or businesses from moving to Austin but we do not have to use tax payer dollars to make it cheaper and easier to make that move, incentivizing economic growth at the high end is like throw gasoline on the gentrification fire that is happening all over Austin.

So if you have any suggestions on how to craft city policies to better manage demand to offset the problem of increasing zoning entitlements, please share hem with this list and send them to the City Council!

Jeff

16

They were working with Bouldin on the South Lamar Neighborhood Plan, but it got suspended when CodeNEXT started.

Jimmy, just to clarify: nearly every other part of the city, including Bouldin, has had an NP in place for 15 years or more. Here’s a map showing all such areas. As you can see, the only other exception – aside from Rosedale and Allandale being entirely absent from it, for reasons I don’t know – is the North Shoal Creek area, which happens to be what brought NPs back into general discussion on Facebook et al this week: the city council is currently working with its contact team to finally complete its plan. It will likely come as no surprise that neighborhood activists initially proposed keeping nearly the entire area SF-zoned in perpetuity, but thankfully multiple CMs (and notably Jimmy Flannigan) have pushed back against the notion.

FYI, here’s the NP for Bouldin specifically, adopted way back in 2002 (and yet again raising the question of why neighboring Zilker failed to produce one at any point in the 16 years since then - even a decade ago before CodeNEXT was even in its conceptual phase). Also, here’s a link to the city’s page listing every existing NP, including their respective FLUMs and contact teams.

Finally, as for why the Bouldin NP is problematic in a modern context, look no further than the first section of the formal plan itself (p. 14 of the plan or p. 16 of the PDF as a whole):

OBJECTIVE 1.1: Maintain the Single Family Residential Character of the Neighborhood Interior.
Properties located within the interior of the neighborhood that are zoned single family should remain as single-family land uses.

While this notion may have made sense when the plan was drafted between 2000 and 2002, this was a period of time when South Austin was still considered “weird,” and one could purchase nearly any “average” house in the area (e.g. renovated '40s and '50s-era bungalows) for under $200,000. The Austin metro area’s population was also half what it is today, and many of its now burgeoning suburbs (e.g. Kyle and Buda) didn’t yet exist other than as small towns on the edge of the city.

Multifamily development was effectively nonexistent even on its FLUM, which you can see here. The few areas designated as such were ones with pre-existing development on them: the two big orange areas near the bottom were (and still are) public housing projects, and the one near S. 1st and BSR was (and still is) a smattering of apartments built in the '60s and early '70s.

The problem: Bouldin is less than a half-mile south of downtown Austin. I know plenty of people will deny it until their dying breath, but its suburban-style layout does not work in the context of what is now the 11th-largest city in America (and destined to enter the top-10 within the next decade). It doesn’t work in Zilker, either – and no, constructing a bunch of mid-rise luxury apartment complexes (as opposed to the fictional “affordable” ones cited by Other Jeff) along its periphery doesn’t alert the reality that both Zilker and Bouldin need to accept, and ultimately embrace, change.

In closing I’ll paraphrase Darwin instead of Spock: adapt or die.

17

I spy with my little eye almost no density. I don’t see how you can state something doesn’t work when it never happened.

I spy with my little eye hypocrisy. When you say demand is the problem you are really saying “those outsiders” are the problem. If Austin didn’t attract more people and have a booming economy you could keep your same old neighborhood. To the contrary, demand is not the problem. High demand. Booming economy. These are good things. Stagnation and the refusal to mature as a city and build more density is the problem.

18

I am going to divert this while debate a bit. Everyone talks about affordability and then focuses on Zilker/78704 but it begs the question why is Zilker even so expensive and why is the neighborhood just south of it so much cheaper, yet not an acceptable alternative for anyone on this board.

I am going to give my non-expert analysis with some thoughts.

  1. ZIlker has good schools which other areas don’t necessarily. The expensive houses are consistently feeding into good schools with drastic drops along school boundaries. One might argue that if we could increase the supply of good schools, the price of housing on average would decrease.

  2. Zilker/78704 is very close to downtown and many highways. The value is that you can get to a lot of places quickly. If you could get to a lot of places just as quickly from other parts of the city, the supply of houses that are a short drive from a lot would increase, people who really care about that could move there, and average price of housing would decrease.

  3. We are very close to the “cool” stuff. For this one, it just is what it is, but improved public transit would probably make it easier for people to get to cool stuff and back home.

  4. Zilker is cute/charming/interesting/iconic. This is the one people talk about the most but I am going to assume this is far from the primary driver for our ultra high pricing.

In short, my feeling is that if you want more affordable housing, invest in roads, public transit, and schools so that other neighborhoods can be “good” neighborhoods too. You aren’t going to make more land here. If you overpopulate it, the schools will become inadequate and the traffic will get worse. If you want more supply of “acceptable” housing in order to decrease housing prices, focus on making more neighborhoods in Austin acceptable. spread the pain of traffic and infrastructure; hell put the roads and infrastructure in other areas to use instead of continuting to overstress what we have here. Improve schools. Fight stereotypes that plague neighborhoods.

That is all I have to say about this.

19

Spy

Try looking beyond Austin, how about NYC, Boston, LA, Chicago, London, and so forth, does their density = affordability? And of course Austin was much more density today than when the Comanche live here. And what about downtown where we have created a lot of residential density, but has that resulted in greater real affordability? As an example, the price in the Austonian last year was $ 1,000 sf or $850,000 for an 850 SF unit. Very affordable for the high income folks out there but not affordable for the moderate and lower income folks of our community.

And what about the indirect cost of the infrastructure to serve the added density? Most of the urban core neighborhoods sewer and drainage systems were built on the premise of one house pre lot with only a max of 45 % impervious cover (IC) which usually meant that the overall IC for a neighborhood like Zilker build in the 1950 and 60” was probably about 30 to 35 % IC (not counting roads) since most of the homes were modest and on lot of at least 5,750 sf. So if we increase the density up to the current level of 45% by building out the max zoning entitlements to get enough sf for multiple smaller units on the same lots, we end up with a lot more storm water runoff and localized flooding. Right now the city is looking at the impact of climate change and the effect it has had on the magnitude and frequency of storms and Watershed is proposing to expand the 100 year flood line out to the previous 500 year flood plain. And that does not even begin to address localized flooding for non 100 year storms

And on top of that if we go from a single family home with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths to 12 bedrooms and 8 baths (four units per lot) do we now need to dig up the sewer line in the street? Which by the way is far more costly that laying new pipe on undeveloped land! And in Zilker we have five sewer catchment drainage service areas all but one is already at the max load under EPA guidelines ( may change under that pro-growth guy in the white house), and there is the cumulative effect if such density increase is allowed in all of our sewer drainage areas, then we have to enlarge the main lines all the way to the treatment plant. And guess who get to pay for the upgrade? Not the developer but the utility rate prayers and property tax payers, thus once again growth not paying for itself but being subsidized by the community again!

Jeff

20

Jeff Jack,

  • In large modern cities, close accessibility to downtown businesses come at a premium. The idea is to create density from the city center, outwards, in an effort to decrease prices for everyone. There will always be premium properties in any city, but we can help create moderate priced homes through volume for all.

  • Ah the Jeff Jack/Dave Piper sewer system argument. I’ve actually asked the city for these plans and presented them back to Dave. The reality is, you are throwing around numbers to sound like you have a sound argument. Impervious cover is a tool that NIMBYs use as a scare tactic. It’s tired. Present some real evidence on this, or really stop bringing it up.

"And on top of that if we go from a single family home with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths to 12 bedrooms and 8 baths (four units per lot) do we now need to dig up the sewer line in the street? Which by the way is far more costly that laying new pipe on undeveloped land! " — I happen to live on such a lot (as do you live on a duplex, I believe). There are duplexes and triplexes all over this neighborhood. Have you seen them scrambling to dig up the sewage line? Seriously, stop with the drama.

Jimmy

jjack2 wrote: