Austin to allow more homes on one plot of land in the pursuit of cheaper housing
Austin to allow more homes on one plot of land in the pursuit of cheaper housing
Council members voted Thursday to amend the city's land use rules, allowing developers to build up to three homes where only one or two were previously permitted.
This is one of the more misdirected things the city has done. There are literally rows of empty houses and empty apartments near me that stay permanently empty except some weekends when they are filled with bachekorettes going WOOO at 1 AM.
You can walk down Haskell and see such a row of small apartments, all empty and used strictly for STRs.
And the removal of occupation limits hamstrings one of the only tools holding the AirBNB owners accountable, not that they care much about fines anyway.
The STR issue is rapidly killing our neighborhoods, and now there will just be more.
Here is data if you don't believe me.
http://insideairbnb.com/austin/
Also people are doing this anyway, just building sheds from scrap lumber and running an extension cord to them and renting them out. Code doesn't seem to care, so how could this ever go wrong?
I find it interesting that the majority of people who spoke for 11 hours were against this resolution, but the majority of the council ignored them and approved it anyway.
It sounds like you live in a really desireable part of town. Haskell is ripe for Central Business District zoning, it's literally a 2 block walk to Rainey Street.
Personally, I think these rules are great. I'm zoned SF-2 right now and cannot build an ADU under code, but I could skirt code and build a "shed" that's under a certain size with just electricity. My neighborhood has pretty good size lots, why shouldn't we be able to build ADUs?
Separately, the data from that site you linked is dubious. There are 3 houses near me shown on that map that have been occupied full time by their owners for all 8 years I've lived in this neighborhood and are absolutely not STRs
ADUs are fine. Duplexes are great. Tearing down existing homes to build six tiny homes on the same lot with no parking and no sewage or road upgrades are not. This is just a giveaway to developers.
We should be building more planned mixed use developments instead, like Mueller and the Domain, but in place of one story strip malls like Gateway, Arbor Walk, and Hancock Center. There are huge swaths of empty land in Austin as well. Build new desirable neighborhoods instead of trying to cram more people into existing ones.
"Tearing down existing homes to build six tiny homes" is a blatant mischaracterization. The new rules plainly state up to 3 units on a lot where it used to be single family homes or duplexes. I 100% support increasing density across the city and am sick of the wealthy single family homeowners in Hyde Park, Bouldin Creek, Zilker, Travis Heights, North University, and Rosedale putting up barriers to every attempt at building more housing.
We should be building more planned mixed use developments instead, like Mueller and the Domain, but in place of one story strip malls like Gateway and Arbor Walk. There are huge swaths of empty land in Austin as well. Build new desirable neighborhoods instead of trying to cram more people into existing ones.
We live in a world with private property rights...the city can't just create a new PUD out of thin air, private actors have to want to create one, apply for it, and fund it. The city is already building residential mixed use on some of those lots it does own, e.g. the St. John's Home Depot project that's getting started
AirBNB goes to great lengths to obfuscate the data, includng the location of the rental until you rent. The insideairbnb.com data is not preciseb locationally but the overall count of full time units is near the city's estimates.(and that's just AirBNB, not the other STR companies).
You can argue if more density in this manner is better or worse, but it does not achieve the goal if huge percentages are just bought up by corporations for short-term rentals. Entire apartment buildings on Rainey are AirBNBs. Those ten thousand unavailable units put a huge squeeze on what is already extremely limited resources (capped by geographic limitations no matter how much you build).