In the anonymous editorial titled Developers must be held accountable written for the Austin American Statesman on July 12, the upcoming waterfront development in Austin as a joint deal between Grayco Partners, a real estate development company, and the city of Austin is brought to the table again two years after the deal was made. This time, rather than praising the deal as beneficial to Austin’s development, the author is criticizing Grayco’s failure to follow through on the agreements made in the deal regarding the displacement of low-income families who currently reside on the waterfront property where construction is to begin in August. The author claims that while the city should indeed hold developers accountable for their actions, the impending displacement of these residents ultimately falls on Grayco’s shoulders because they agreed to provide both some affordable apartments and relocation services to those families, but failed to do so in a timely fashion. It seems like the editorial makes an effort to pull at heartstrings of the middle class and pit those sympathizers against big business, but whose failure is this really? More likely the city of Austin’s.
First and foremost, the situation presented is reminiscent of redevelopment efforts in San Francisco, a city that became so ripe with gentrification by the late 1990’s that affordable housing was essentially nonexistent. But by 2002, San Francisco cleaned up its act with an inclusionary housing ordinance that required a certain percentage of new development units to be “affordable.” This was fundamentally an effort by the city the make sure that below-market rate units were available when redevelopment occurred, but the city actually made sure those units became a reality.
That illustrates why this current failure belongs to city of Austin. The responsibility to ensure housing for these displaced people belongs to the city, not Grayco. Grayco is just another private company with private interests, and the public interests that result are only those that were imposed by the city in order for the deal to be valid. Why would Grayco possibly care what happens to those people otherwise? Though the deal made by the city of Austin and Grayco placed that responsibility on Grayco, it is the city government’s role, as protector of its constituents, to make sure they follow through on their end. If there had been proper enforcement on the city’s behalf to find housing for the displaced families to begin with, there wouldn’t be an issue to write about today. San Francisco demonstrated an effort to include affordable housing as part of the law. Perhaps Austin should follow suit.
Moreover, the Grayco wasn’t the only beneficiary of the deal. Using public benefits incentive zoning (again, San Francisco much?), the city of Austin waved zoning requirements in turn for some returned benefits on Grayco’s behalf, including a $2 million donation to the city’s affordable housing trust fund. Why not use some of that money to find homes for the people who are directly affected by this new development?
Though Grayco is not free from blame completely, they are not the major party at fault simply because the city allowed this development project to happen in the first place. Waterfront redevelopment is another step towards creating the sort-of gentrified city tableau that destroys culture and true public space. Not only is Austin allowing the displacement of its own people, but it’s doing so for the building of yet another component of the pseudo-city we see expanding downtown (cough, 2nd Street). Thus, while the editorial still praises the project as a whole, I’m left with an uneasy stomach about the future of public space in Austin and what points towards further exclusion of the lower classes from the city streets, if not from homes.
So no, this is not Grayco’s failure. This one falls on Austin’s shoulders, and suggests a much bigger issue at hand, an issue the editorial only hints at. What is the city doing to make sure that affordable housing is available for the lower-socioeconomic classes? You know…those people that cook our food, clean our offices, build our homes, and sometimes even raise our kids… Where do they get to live, especially if we keep destroying their homes and replacing those buildings with housing that’s simply unaffordable? If the city failed to provide homes for these people on such a small scale, things do not bode well for the future of affordable housing more generally.
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