Austin Contrarian

Watson responds

Senator Kirk Watson responded in the comments to my criticism of his bill to incorporate the Congress Avenue Overlay into state law. I don't get many comments from elected officials, much less state senators, so the comment rates its own post.

Thanks for opening this discussion about the bill I've filed with Rep. Howard to preserve the most famous view of one of our most famous and important buildings in Austin. A couple of points I think I need to make:

First of all, this legislation would preserve what the City of Austin has done - it reinforces what the city has passed and implemented, and it acknowledges the variances that the council has already passed. That's the opposite of Austin-bashing bills that seek to undo a city policy or program. This aligns state law with city policy, and it helps ensure that the legislature won't work to actually undermine that policy in the future to help projects that the city doesn't want.

Beyond that, let's face it: the Capitol View Corridor is a technical name for something that the people of Austin place enormous value in. The view of the Capitol, and this view from Congress in particular, is an iconic part of the Capitol City - you see that every time someone stops when crossing Congress (hopefully with the walk sign) to take a picture of the Capitol up the street. It's been a vital part of this city since Edwin Waller first laid out the streets for our downtown in 1839 and designated this part of the city for the Capitol.

I remember the complaints in the late-80s about how new high-rises were blocking the view of the Capitol, and the grim jokes about how developers were going to start building in the middle of the street. How would Austinites react if 21st Century high-rises encroached on their Capitol view even more? No other Texas city has this wonderful downtown resource; it can't be the first thing we sacrifice in the name of making things easier for certain developers and property owners.

Furthermore, keep in mind, this beautiful building is in Austin, but it belongs to all of Texas. Legislators from other places like that they and their constituents can see it. It's much, much better to get rules in place before there's a problem than to deal with repercussions after a problematic project goes up.

One other point that needs to be made: there's no question that there should be opportunities to enhance our 24-hour downtown. But the notion that a lively downtown requires huge new buildings that encroach on the Capitol view and violate longstanding city policy is simply wrong. The Warehouse District, Sixth Street, South Congress and the Second Street Retail District - to name just four - all speak to that.

So it's a false choice to say that we have to choose between creating a vibrant section of downtown or preserving a famous, beloved view of the Capitol. Instead, what Rep. Howard's and my bill declares is that developers have to conform with Austin's figurative view of its downtown and our literal views within downtown. The bill rejects piecemeal development that's done on-the-cheap and variance-by-variance. And it ensures our community's face and its future aren't made subservient to private-sector profits.

I understand there are problematic properties on Congress that are difficult to develop under these long-standing rules and policies. But it's not the responsibility of the people of Austin and Texas to sacrifice something we hold dear and fundamental to our identity simply to solve the problems of the private sector. And don't forget, even if this bill passes, any indisputably good development can still come to the legislature and get exempted from this law.

So this bill doesn't end development on Congress. It simply limits bad development that encroaches on something Austinites hold dear, and it helps us preserve this thing that makes Austin special.

I appreciate the response and will put up something later responding to a few of these points.

 

Senator Watson has introduced a bill to strip Council of discretion to grant variances from the Congress Avenue Overlay

Back in the 1980s, the Austin City Council adopted something called the  Congress Avenue Overlay. The Overlay, which applies to both sides of Congress Avenue between Lady Bird Lake and the Capitol, requires any portion of a structure over 90' high to step back at least 60' from Congress Avenue. Its purpose, City code tells us, is to "protect the historic character and symbolic significance of Congress Avenue and to enhance the pedestrian environment of the area."  Austin City Code Sec. 25-2-165(A).

The Congress Avenue Overlay, until now, has been purely a creature of City ordinance, unlike the Capitol View Corridors, which are established by both City ordinance and state statute.

Austin's own Senator Kirk Watson wants to fix this. He's introduced a bill (SB 1272) that would prohibit the construction of new structures over 90' tall within 40' of Congress Avenue's eastern boundary and within 60' of  Congress Avenue's western boundary. This would eliminate Council's  discretion to weigh various public interests and grant variances from the Overlay.

I could understand such a bill being pushed by an Austin-bashing legislator from, say, Dallas, but this seems like a very odd piece of legislation for a former Austin mayor to propose.

I don't say this merely because I believe the Congress Avenue Overlay to be a bad bit of regulation (although I do believe it to be a bad bit of regulation). Fettering Council discretion like this is automatically bad for the City.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that requiring deep stepbacks along Congress Avenue vindicates some sort of public interest in the street's historic character or pedestrian charm or views of the Capitol. There are other interests at stake as well. These include the City's interest in redeveloping stagnant sections of Congress, its interest in encouraging the elimination of surface parking lots along Congress, and its interest in providing more room for hotels and office space along Congress. As things stand now, Council has the discretion to weigh the individual pros and cons of a specific project and decide whether the City's residents will receive a net benefit from a variance. Council also enjoys a lot of discretion to impose conditions on a variance, including design criteria that make the building more pedestrian-friendly. 

Council has granted such variances in the past for buildings on the east side of Congress Avenue -- most notably, the Frost Bank Tower, for which it reduced the setback from 60' to 40'. (I'm sure it's no coincidence that Senator Watson's bill adopts 40' for the eastern setback rather than the 60' provided by City ordinance.) On the other hand, Council recently rejected a variance for a proposed hotel on the west corner of 8th and Congress. In the case of the Frost Bank Tower, Council concluded the benefits from the project outweighed the costs of allowing the intrusion into the setback. In the case of the Austin Hotel, it concluded the opposite.

The point isn't that one decision was right and the other wrong. The point is that Council has a bunch of interests to weigh, and in a specific case, the benefits of allowing a building to intrude into the setback might outweigh the "cost" of the intrusion. A bill like Senator Watson's strips Council of its ability to weigh various interests, and elevates the interest served by the Congress Avenue Overlay (whatever that is) above everything else. 

What's more, Senator Watson's bill has no variance process. Anyone who wants to build in the setback will have to start by finding a senator or representative willing to sponsor a piece of legislation. That's probably too high a hurdle for any development project to jump. Such projects simply will not be proposed. This will make it impossible to track the opportunity cost of the Overlay in the long run. How can you keep a tally of foresaken projects when the projects are never even proposed?

There is value in a city having the right to make its own land-use decisions without having to appeal to state officials. That was obvious enough to Senator Watson yesterday, when he was quoted in the Statesman making similar arguments. Representative Paul Workman has introduced several bills that would limit cities' authority to restrict impervious cover, among things. According to the Statesman:

State Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, the bulwark for Austin against such proposals, said the Legislature shouldn’t step into what he considers a city matter.

“People who oppose development rules that Austin has lived under for more than 20 years have every right to try to change them through traditional democratic means at City Hall,” Watson said. “But when they start to turn legislators — most of whom live a long way from Austin — into a city of Austin appeals court, it starts to look a little undemocratic. That’s why the Legislature has been so skeptical of Austin-bashing bills in recent years. And it’s why I think legislators will be skeptical of these, as well.”

If a city should have the right to regulate impervious cover limits in its boondocks, then shouldn't it have the right to regulate its own main street? I don't understand how Senator Watson can oppose Workman's bills under a "cities' rights" theory while proposing to micromanage his own hometown's  main street. Representative Workman's bills would apply to every city in the state, so they at least have the appearance of being evenhanded; Senator Watson's bill targets a specific street in Austin. 

Austin City Council is more than capable of weighing the various public interests at play on Congress Avenue. The City should be left alone.

Why does Austin have so many zoning fights over dense, multi-family development?

A lot of people have the default view that developers are a congenitally greedy breed who can't be content with  their base zoning entitlements. If you are one of these people, you should take a look at the chart below.

This is from a "zoning capacity" study  prepared by the City's planning staff during the Imagine Austin process.  The table shows how much land lies in each of Austin's residential zoning districts. It further classifies land as "developed" or "undeveloped" and "buildable" or "unbuildable." ("Unbuildable" here means roughly "unbuildable due to environmental features"; it has nothing to do with zoning-type setbacks.  To calculate the "buildable" area, staff took the gross site area and subtracted the acreage burdened by steep slopes, flood planes, and creek buffer setbacks.) It provides a very precise total of the amount of land in the city available for development or redevelopment in each residential zoning district. 

It's very weird that a majority-renter city like Austin reserves so little land for multi-family. Out of nearly 7,900 acres of buildable, undeveloped land in residential districts, less than 10% has been set aside for multi-family. Less than 1% of the undeveloped, buildable land has been reserved for the densest multi-famiy (MF-4, MF-5 and MF-6). Just 1.5 acres -- 0.0189% of the total -- has been reserved for the second-densest district (MF-5), and none at all for the densest (MF-6).

Things are just slightly better when we look at developed land. The city has just shy of 40,000 acres of buildable, developed land in residential districts. 11.8% of this land is zoned multi-family. But, again, just 1.5% of the total has been zoned for high-density multi-family , and just 87 acres (a little over 0.2%) for the highest density MF-5 and MF-6. 

These totals do not include mixed-use. If you look at an Austin zoning map, you will see a lot of "MU" districts. But plain, vanilla mixed-use districts do not allow much density. The protypical mixed-use development is a "live-work" development with offices on the first floor and residences above. They are rarely multi-family projects. Dense multi-family projects are really possible only in vertical mixed-use districts, and then only if the developer provides the community benefits in order to obtain exemptions from the density restrictions.

Thus, if you want to build a dense, multi-family development by right in Austin, you've got slim pickings. Somewhere out there is an undeveloped 60,000 sf tract zoned MF-5.  If you don't happen to own that tract, your options are to: (1) build something in a downtown CBD or DMU district; (2) build a VMU project (but only if you're willing to provide affordable housing); or (3) tear down apartments on some of the meager land already zoned for high density. Otherwise, you're filing for a zoning change or a PUD.

Filtering up

An honest-to-goodness example of an apartment complex about to "filter up." People understand that a tight housing market leads landlords to raise rents. What they often don't seem to understand is that a tight housing market also causes some landlords to invest more money in their properties in order move them into a more expensive submarket. That's how a shortage of units in the $1,200/month submarket (for example) can hurt someone shopping in the $800/month submarket.

In this case, high demand for rental housing in south Austin has convinced Pensam Capital to upgrade what I'm betting are fairly cheap apartments just a couple of blocks from South Lamar. If this were happening a couple of years from now, everyone would be blaming South Lamar's new apartment complexes for gentrifying the area. But other than the Post property a mile away, the others have just started or are just about to start construction. It's hard to attribute Pensam's investment to anything other than high rents and a shortage of upscale rental housing in the area.

Filtering down happens too, of course. It's just that no one sends a press release to the Austin Business Journal when they decide to cut back on maintenance and allow their property to slip in to a cheaper submarket. Extreme instances of housing filtering down still make the news, though.

78704 really is losing children

Stephanie Myers last week had a piece in the Austin Post entitled, “Are Families with Children Being Forced Out of the City?” “Forced” is a loaded term, but families with children undeniably are a declining share of central Austin’s population. Families with children have been declining in share for decades and, as Myers notes, are now declining in absolute numbers in the central city as well.

Why this is happening is up for debate. A fruitful debate, though, requires accurate facts, and I think it’s important to correct the article’s impression that the 78704 zip code somehow is “bucking this trend” and seeing a rise in children. (To orient the out-of-town readers, 78704 is the zip code directly south of downtown Austin.)

The Census data show, clearly and unambiguously, that the population of children in 78704 declined between 2000 and 2010. Back in March 2011, I ran a table showing that nine of the eleven census tracts in ’04 lost children, and the zip code lost nearly 1,400 children overall.

A few months later, I published this chart showing that the population in the zip code declined for every single year of age between birth and seventeen.

 

The loss of children was broad and deep.

There’s yet another way to measure the change, and that is relative to the Austin average. Divide a census tract’s percentage of population under 18 by the citywide percentage of population under 18. This number (itself a percentage) tells you the concentration of children in the tract relative to the citywide average. This is sometimes referred to as a “location quotient.” (The Census Bureau used location quotients extensively in its recent report on U.S. metro area.)

For example, in 2010, 11.15% of the residents of census tract 13.03 (Zilker) were under 18 while 22.2% of all Austin residents were under 18. Children thus were concentrated in tract 13.03 at just 50.2% of the citywide average concentration.

I calculated the location quotients for children under 18 for all of the the 78704 tracts, using both 2000 and 2010 census figures (including the 2000 citywide averages). Between 2000 and 2010, the concentration of children declined, relative to the city average, in every single census tract.

Children were more underrepresented in 78704 in 2000 than 2010, both in absolute terms and relative to their citywide share.

Note that in 2000, 78704 had only one census tract (13.07 – Galindo) with a share of children above the city average. By 2010, though, Galindo’s share had plummeted to 80% of the city average.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that 78704’s low share of children is due to an overabundance of VMU-style apartments, or to an overabundance of rental housing in general. Owner-occupied housing in 78704 is simply less likely to be used to raise children than owner-occupied housing in the city as a whole.

Citywide, 33% of owner-occupied homes were occupied by a household containing one or more related children under 18 in 2010. The percentages were far below that for every single ’04 census tract. The closest was Barton Hills (19.01), where approximately 25% of the owner-occupied homes contained a related child. Only approximately 18% of the owner-occupied housing in tract 13.03 (Zilker) contained a related child in 2010. Across the entire zip code, only 20.5% of owner-occupied homes contained a related child. (Comparable data is not available for 2000, unfortunately.)

I haven’t seen any persuasive evidence that the population of children in ’04 is increasing. On the contrary, we've recently heard a lot of complaints that short-term rentals are further “hollowing out” '04, making it less desirable for families with children. (I’d have more sympathy for this position if these neighborhood associations hadn’t worked so hard to make them inhospitable to larger households.)

The article cites school enrollments, but using raw school enrollment figures to track changes in population is tricky because of transfers. For example, of the approximately 380 students enrolled at Barton Hills Elementary, approximately 180 are transfers. Of course, some of these transfers are from neighboring schools. Calculating the population of school-age children requires accounting for both the source school and destination school for all these transfers, as well as homeschooled and private-schooled children. And it requires doing this for multiple years, because we're not concerned with what might be a random fluctuation from one year to the next, but an apparently long-term, secular trend. I haven't seen anyone do this analysis.

I'm also skeptical of ad hoc recounts performed by local residents. To be clear, I'm not questioning the integrity of their counts, but merely their relevance to comparisons of 2010 census counts and 2000 census counts. It's virtually certain that the census canvassers missed people in 2010 in the Zilker neighborhood, for example, but it's virtually certain that they missed people in every neighborhood in 2010, and in every neighborhood in 2000. If you want an ad hoc survey to count as compelling evidence against the decline thesis, you need a good explanation why the census takers would be more likely to miss children in 2010 than 2000.  Again, I haven't see one.

Why pay for it when we'll keep getting it for free?

Another data point illustrating that Austin's historic landmarking process is deeply flawed.

Last week, the Historic Landmark Commission unanimously voted to grant historic landmark zoning to Westgate Tower, the 1966-vintage condo tower between Lavaca and Colorado at 11th Street. Planning Commission and Council will vote next.

The Staff memo cites several reason for granting the designation:

• it was designed by prominent architect Edward Durell Stone;
• it is an excellent example of the New Formalism approach to modern architecture;
• it was one of the first mixed-use high-rise buildings in Austin;
• it was an early innovator in the now-standard practice of perching a condo tower on a pedestal of parking;   
• its height and proximity to the Capitol made it terribly controversial, and sparked the creation of the Capital View Corridors;
• it has been inhabited over the years by prominent state government leaders; and
• it was at one time the home of the Headliners Club.

Staff could have added that it is an excellent illustration of mid-century architectural flourishes such as the anti-pedestrian faux arcade. Here's the Lavaca streetscape:

 The Colorado arcade is just a few notches removed from a blank street wall:

Westgate Tower is thus a nice counter-example to the principle that street-fronting, ground-floor uses make for pedestrian-friendly buildings.

This is gratuitous snarkiness because I don't really quibble with the Commission's finding that Westgate Tower meets the criteria for landmark designation. It is, in fact, listed in the National Register of Historic Places. And given the very low barthe city has set for historic designation in recent years, Westgate Tower is quite significant indeed.

The fundamental problem here is not the designation itself but the consequence of the designation. The designation comes with an automatic tax break of up to $2,500 in City taxes and up to $3,500 in AISD taxes.  The staff report doesn't calculate the total loss to the city and schools from the designation -- which, frankly, is a glaring omission -- but we're talking serious money:  if the 105 condo owners receive just an average of $4,000 each, that's $400,000 in lost tax revenue per year.  

What, exactly, would we get for all this money?

The building is in no jeopardy of being demolished. Thanks largely to Westgate Tower itself, the northwestern and southeastern portions of the property are in a Capitol View Corridor and all of the property is in the height-capping Capitol Dominance Zone. It's a safe bet that no one will ever be able to build anything bigger there, and I seriously doubt whether it would be possible to squeeze in as much square footage as exists today.

I haven't tried to calculate the market value of the building. Assuming just an average of $400,000 per condo and ignoring common space and commercial space yields a total value of $41 million. In order to be redeveloped, someone would have to assume that the relatively small tract would be worth $41 million (plus cost of demolition) more with another building there. Land just isn't worth that much in Austin.

Even if someone did float a redevelopment proposal, it would have to get the assent of the condo owners. I don't know whether the condo declarations require a unanimous vote or merely a supermajority vote,  but there's no way a rational offer would ever buy near-unanimous agreement among the condo owners to sell out.

And what if someone did make a crazy offer that the condo owners accepted? Because the building is now listed on the National Register, any building or demolition permit application would automatically go to Steve Sadowski, the City's historic preservation officer, who would put a hold on it for consideration by the Historic Landmark Commission.

There is simply no credible threat that the building will be demolished. The city is proposing to give away hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to condo owners for doing nothing other than continuing to own their condos. 

The condo owners association tried to make a case that the building is under threat from rogue condo owners. From Infact Daily:

Ann Dolce, a director of the Westgate Condominium Association, said that throughout her 11-year board tenure she had seen many threats to the exterior of the building. She said the landmark designation would be a major tool to retain the design and integrity of the building.

Dolce cited as threats property owners’ requests to tint windows, install satellite dishes, enclose terraces and remove brick screening. She singled out the board’s greatest concern-- attempts by owners to purchase numerous units to obtain control and make decisions about the building.

If what we're buying is protection from minor alterations such as window tinting, then that's a pretty bad deal. Preserving the original window tinting on Westgate Tower or keeping it satellite-dish free isn't worth hundreds  of thousands of dollars per year in tax breaks. Plus, chances are any alteration that would bug me very much would bug the other condo owners a lot more.

The root of the problem is that the City (and AISD) tax breaks are not tied to the cost to the owners of preserving the property. Tax breaks grossly undercompensate the owner of a run-down building on an underdeveloped piece of property. They grossly overcompensate the owner of a property that is already being put to its approximate best and highest use. The City’s one-size-fits all compensation policy gives neither the city nor the property owners the incentive to make the right decisions.

A better system would tie the City award to the owner’s actual cost. As part of its investigation into the landmark designation, staff should estimate the cost to the owner of any extra maintenance burden and lost development rights, using clear and well-articulated criteria. The City should then award a percentage of those costs when it landmarks the property, whether in a lump-sum grant or in the form of taxes rebated over a fixed period. The County and AISD could follow suit if they want.

The size of the award, naturally, would vary with the stringency of the restrictions. We might be willing to pay someone $10,000 to preserve the building in perpetuity but only be willing to pay $10 to keep satellite dishes off the roof. A flexible system would allow us to pick and choose how much preservation to pay for.

If that were the system in place today, then landmarking Westgate Tower would not be a controversial matter. The Westgate Tower condo owners would receive only nominal compensation for agreeing not to do what they won't be doing anyway. Under the current system, they stand to make a windfall for doing nothing other than buying into a politically savvy condo owners’ association.

Austin's weighted density, 2000-2010

One of the counter-intuitive things about weighted density is, well, that it's weighted. To calculate the weighted density of, say, a metropolitan statistical area, you first calculate the density of each census tract and then assign it a weight equal to its share of the total MSA population. A census tract that has 1% of the total population is assigned a "weight" of 0.01, a census tract that has 2% of the total population is assigned a "weight" of 0.02, and so forth. The idea is that a tract with twice the population should have twice as much impact on the final average, because a person chosen at random is twice as likely to live there. (Weighted density is precisely the expected density of the census tract in which a random residents lives.)

This can produce seemingly weird results. One that surprises people is that a city can add people everywhere (and grow denser everywhere) and yet still experience a decline in weighted density.

Austin provides a nice example. The Austin MSA experienced rapid growth during the aughts, growing by 37.3 percent. But its weighted density (as calculated by the Census Bureau) dropped by 3.9%, from 3,259 ppsm to 3,132 ppsm.  

Here is a graph of the change in weighted density by distance from City Hall in downtown Austin. (I made the chart using data taken directly from the Census Bureau's Excel spreadsheet.)

Austin experienced a sharp increase in density in the center of town (0-1 miles), a steady increase in density between the 7-mile and 23-mile points, and an outright (noticeable) decline in density in only three tracts. But even these declines were relatively small.

You might be tempted to infer from this chart that Austin's weighted density rose, but you do not, in fact, have enough information to make that inference. You need to know where the growth took place. So consider this chart, which shows the population within the concentric bands at one-mile intervals from City Hall:

This chart shows that while the part of town nearest City Hall experienced healthy growth, almost all of the growth in the MSA population occurred between the 7-mile and 23-mile marks. Now, if we go back to the weighted-density graph, and draw in a line (brown) to mark the 2000 MSA weighted density, it's easy to see what happened:

Almost all of the MSA population growth occurred in the area between the black lines. But this entire area, in 2000, had below-average density, because it lies below the brown line denoting the 2000 MSA weighted density. And although the healthy population growth during the aughts pushed up its density some, it generally did not push it up to the 2000 average. Because this area now comprised a greater percentage of the total population, it received a larger weight and pulled down the average. This merely reflects the fact that a 2010 resident was more likely to live in the low-density 7-23 mile band than a 2000 resident. The MSA's weighted density accordingly declined even though the MSA added population or retained population almost everywhere.

The diversity of West Campus

Last week, the Daily Texan ran an interesting article entitled "A Tale of Two Neighborhoods":

The growing diversity of the UT student body has not spurred racial integration in student neighborhoods, census, city and UT records show.

The majority of Asian and white undergraduates living off campus reside in West Campus, while most Hispanic and black undergraduates live in East Riverside.

This trend has intensified in the past 10 years because of a convergence of socioeconomic inequality, disparate living costs in the two areas and alleged discrimination — and some fear it may not change.

The article marshals lots of demographic statistics to support its point that West Campus now, more than ever, draws white and Asian undergraduates while East Riverside draws blacks and Hispanics.

There's no question that West Campus is significantly less diverse than the university's undergraduate student population; blacks and Hispanics, in particularly, are badly underrepresented in West Campus, relative either to Austin's demographic profile or to the University's.

But the article spends a lot of ink on the University Neighborhood Overlay, asserting that this trend toward segregation has "intensified" despite -- or perhaps even because of -- the thousands of new beds that have been added to West Campus since the UNO was adopted in 2004.

Some perspective is in order here.

One point that ought to be made, but was somehow omitted from the article, is that West Campus is significantly more diverse today than in the pre-UNO days.

West Campus is comprised of Census tracts 6.03 and 6.04. Between the 2000 and 2010 Census counts, both tracts added minorities (including non-asian minorities) at a faster rate than nonhispanic whites.

The population count of Census Tract 6.03 rose from 5,273 to 7,793 between 2000 and 2010.

• Nonhispanic whites declined from 75.4% of the population to 65.7%
• Hispanics¹ increased from 9.3% to 12.5%
• Blacks² increased from 1.6% to 2.4%
• Asians³ incrased from 13% to 19.3%

The population count of Census Tract 6.04 rose from 5,199 to 6,496 between 2000 and 2010.

• Nonhispanic whites declined from 70.3% of the population to 59.1%
• Hispanics¹ increased from 9.4% to 13.1%
• Blacks² increased from 2.0% to 2.6%
• Asians³ incrased from 17.3% to 25%

These totals include the population in owner-occupied housing, but since owner-occupied housing contained just 5.0% and 3.2%, respectively, of the population in these two tracts in 2010 (and was not exclusively white), omitting this population would have little affect on the percentages.

Again, it is obvious that blacks and Hispanics are underrepresented in West Campus. But it should be equally obvious that the surge in population permitted by the UNO is reducing the imbalance in diversity, rather than intensifying it. Indeed, focusing on gross population changes, we see that the two census tracts added a total 3,817 residents between 2000 and 2010, only 1,188 of whom were nonhispanic whites. The two tracts added more asians than nonhispanic whites, and almost as many nonasian minorities (1,083) as nonhispanic whites (1,1888). The net result was a much greater percentage gain in the population of blacks and Hispanics (90% and 85.74%, respectively) than in the population of nonhispanic whites (17.47%). The racial balance is not ideal, but it is headed in the right direction, and that's thanks to the new housing supply allowed by the UNO. 

The Daily Texan article was less interested in the demographics of West Campus per se than in the demographics of UT undergraduates. Here's its key conclusion about the demographic trend in West Campus:

According to The Daily Texan’s analysis of demographic data sets, more than 40 percent of all white undergraduates lived in West Campus in 2010, as well as 38 percent of Asian undergraduates. Twenty-two percent of Hispanic undergraduates and 15 percent of black undergraduates also lived in West Campus then.

These numbers are significantly higher for whites and Asians than in 2000, when only 27 percent of white undergraduates and 21 percent of Asian undergraduates lived in West Campus. Fifteen percent of Hispanic undergraduates and no black undergraduates lived in West Campus in 2000.

If these statistics are reliable, then the Daily Texan has identified a real phenomenon. White students who live off-campus are roughly twice as likely to live in West Campus as Hispanics who live off campus and more than twice as likely to live in West Campus as blacks who live off campus. Again, though, its not clear that this is "worse" than in 2000 -- after all, according to the DT's "demographic data sets," no black undergraduates lived in West Campus. A rise from 0% to 15% somehow seems like an improvement. 

The Daily Texans' numbers seem plausible, but I wish the article had been more specific about the "demographics data sets" it was reviewing. For instance, it cites the 2010 American Community Survey at one point, but the one-year ACS surveys don't have census-tract level data. For census-tract level data, you must use the 2006-2010 ACS survey, which is a rolling sample conducted over a 5-year period. For tracts experiencing rapid change, it is a terribly unreliable source of data on the current state of things. For example, the 2006-2010 ACS estimate of 6.03's total population is 6,173. The 2010 census count for 6.03 was 7,793. Likewise, the 2010 census documented a decline in nonhispanic whites from 70.3% to 59.1% of the population. But the 2006-2010 ACS had the nonhispanic white share at 70.1% (+/- 6.1%).

Why the discrepancies? Because 6.03 added about 2,500 residents in the second half of the decade, and the rolling survey relied on samples taken in 2006, automatically resulting in a drastic undercount, both of new residents in general and the influx of minorities. The 2006-2010 ACS provides a statistical snapshot of West Campus that excludes much of the change wrought by the UNO.

And, of course, because the ACS is a survey, its estimates are just estimates; the margins of error are almost as important as the point estimates. 

But I can't tell whether the Daily Texan is relying on the ACS for the West Campus statistics quoted above. It might instead be using the 2000 and 2010 census counts, which tally the number of residents of each age, and making assumptions that residents of a given age group are UT undergraduates. Or perhaps the Daily Texan had access to UT student address records, which would allow for quite precise counts. I don't know. I should know, though, because the article should have disclosed its methodology and data sources more carefully.

¹Hispanic or Latino of any race.

²Black or African American, either alone or in combination with another race.

³Asian, either alone or in combination with another race.

We don't need another university-area overlay

The Planning Commission has initiated a squirrelly amendment to Austin's Land Development Code to create yet another overlay district in the university area, this one to be called "the Central Austin University Area Overlay District."

This new overlay district would have one and only one regulation: the "group residential use" would become a conditional use in MF-4 districts. That would force anyone building a dorm, cooperative, or fraternity house in an MF-4 district to get Council permission first, subjecting them to the patented neighborhood shakedown and to Council lectures about the need to provide "community benefits." The conditional use permitting process is a great way to slip in surreptitious heightened parking requirements and other things to jack up the cost of these projects.

Obviously, dormitories, cooperatives, and fraternity and sorority houses are an important source of cheap housing for students. Land already zoned for medium-high density multifamily a stone's throw from the university is a logical place for such housing. If we were to make it a conditional use in only some of the city's neighborhoods, these should be the last to get that treatment. But the Planning Commissioners evidently believe it's a good idea to make the cheapest forms of student housing get special permission in the neighborhoods that most need it.

Staff couldn't swallow it and, commendably, has recommended against creating a dopey new district which has the sole purpose of discouraging new cheap student housing in mostly student neighborhoods. It has calculated that it would affect only two tracts in the Hancock neighborhood and none in the North University planning area. But the change would affect 34 of the 59 MF-4 tracts in the West University planning area, which contains the city's densest cluster of student housing. (Group housing was already prohibited on the othe 25 tracts through the neighborhood planning process.)

I suspect that there are only a handful of tracts that pose real concern to the homeowners in the area, if only because there are so few homeowners in the West University planning area. And staff suggests that if there are problems with individual tracts being inappropriately zoned today that they be handled on a case-by-case basis.

But there's the rub. A petition to rezone a given MF-4 property would require a three-quarters Council majority if the property owner objected. The neighborhoods don't have enough reliable water-carriers on Council for that. Better try a stealth down-zoning: create a brand spanking new "overlay district" to do essentially the same thing and try to squeak out a majority Council vote. Although all Council members pay lip service to affordable housing, perhaps enough are willing to ignore it when it matters for this strategy to work.

Council was scheduled to vote on this on August 16 but it was postponed which (coincidentally) has allowed students filing back in to campus to weigh in. They have circulated a petition against this. I encourage people to sign.

Whittington loses in the end

The City of Austin condemned a downtown block owned by Harry Whittington and developed it as a parking garage for the convention center. The City did this in lieu of requiring the Hilton Hotel developer to build several hundred spaces of underground parking, which it had promised in its proposal for the convention center hotel.

A jury found that the City's taking was invalid because it was not for a public purpose, but really to benefit the developer of the Hilton, and was fraudulent and in bad faith. The Austin Court of Appeals affirmed.

The Texas Supreme Court today reversed, holding that the City's taking was for a public purpose. The City gets to keep the garage. Justices Hecht and Willett dissented in part.

This was always a tough case. On the one hand, a parking garage owned and managed by the city, open to the public, and catering specifically to convention center business seems to be a "public use." Not to mention the chiller plant the City built on site. On the other hand, there was something unsavory about the City's behavior that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way (including the jurors). The City signed a deal with the Hilton developer that committed the developer to provide underground parking. Soon after that, the City decided to let the developer out of that obligation and, in order to close the parking shortage created by its own decision, chose to take someone else's (Whittington's) property. Whittington felt that he'd been screwed by the City so it could make a sweetheart deal with the Hilton developer.