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They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

texasmonthly.com

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Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#61

Post by flukus »

geoduck14 wrote: post #13
ryandrake wrote: post #3

Real estate law has this concept of “Coming to the nuisance” where if you know that there is some kind of “nuisance” nearby and you move next to it anyway, you can’t complain about it later. I’m not a lawyer so I’m probably pedantically wrong about it in some way but that’s my understanding of it. People do this with small local airports all the time. They move in, knowing full well (or should know full well) that th…

There is an asphalt factory 10 miles from where I live, on the access road to a major highway, and in the middle of lots of urban development. The factory has been around since the mid 80s. There is a nearby new housing development with residents complaining about the air pollution (apparently it is really smelly) - and their response is "yeah, we've been here since before you were born, so whatev". It cracked me up.…

> Edit: Oh! I almost forgot, there are people who built their house next to a NASCAR track! WHO thinks that is a good idea?

Depends on how often it's used I guess. At times I've lived a couple of blocks from a formula 1 track and right on a hairpin bend of an IndyCar track. Both were held once a year so even though I don't like car racing it was a feature not a problem.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#62

Post by mips_avatar »

olivermarks wrote: post #34

A variation of this rinsing out of any local culture is going on in Sacramento County California, where arguably gentrification has resulted in a 2019 autocratic edict that residents are not allowed to work on cars in their homes except fluid changes, with fines if you are found to have professional tools on the premises. https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/it-is-illegal-to... Since Sacramento County is appro…

Wow one of my life goals is to have a house with a proper workshop. Guess that won’t happen in Sacramento.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#63

Post by vorpalhex »

NearAP wrote: post #45

According to the article, this event has been happening almost weekly for years 1) Does this mean the developers did not take this into consideration and have a plan on how to deal with this or handle it? 2) Does it mean the folks buying the apartments (or renting) did not do their due diligence and find out this is a weekly event? Takeaways here (for all of us reading this story) - do you research before you move to…

This is an intentional tactic. Buy land at a discount near a nuisance, sue/threaten everyone around you into oblivion, and then enjoy your now-significantly-more-profitable house/condo/apartment building.

This has repeatedly happened with the music venues, which caused them to leave that part of the city. It happened with a really nice gun range. It happened with several bars. Unfortunately the car meetup is probably doomed.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#64

Post by Aloha »

ryandrake wrote: post #3

Real estate law has this concept of “Coming to the nuisance” where if you know that there is some kind of “nuisance” nearby and you move next to it anyway, you can’t complain about it later. I’m not a lawyer so I’m probably pedantically wrong about it in some way but that’s my understanding of it. People do this with small local airports all the time. They move in, knowing full well (or should know full well) that th…

I live next to an airport, I consider that noise to be the sound of progress abs economic growth.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#65

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

gowld wrote: post #21
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #15

alas, these Austin locals did not learn the SF lesson, real estate lesson 101 As soon as foreigners invade your shores (er, real estate spaces) move to grandfather a cap property tax that is particularly beneficial for long time real property owners. I understand that at first, this would do nothing to alleviate the attack on the local culture. The same foreigners would still call the cops. Yet, with enough time, the…

Renters don't get to profit from real estate appreciation. That's the problem with gentrification.

that presupposes the locals were renting to begin with.

I don't see evidence of that, or the opposite.

I admit to be assuming that long-time locals own their property. At least, a significant chunk.

Also note that not enacting a tax cap is not "neutral" to the status-quo of community: for as long as they do not enshrine capped taxes into their code, the longtime locals will be outbid by transplants due to the latter's ability to pay absolute higher property taxes.

This only accelerates gentrification further.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#66

Post by Covzire »

xiphias2 wrote: post #27
tacitusarc wrote: post #24

This is a really abnormal article to see on hackernews. I generally don't expect to see the politics of a random city in the U.S. here. Maybe because Austin is becoming more of a tech hub? So now the politics of the city seem more relevant to the tech community?

Austin looks like the new cool kid in the town, so many famous / rich people moved there. I expect to read more about it in the future.

*Fled

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#67

Post by chrisco255 »

adjkant wrote: post #20
chrisco255 wrote: post #5

"The new arrivals have forced many Black residents to move out of the city: In 2000, about 10 percent of the Austin’s 656,000 residents were Black. By 2017, that percentage had dropped to around 7.5" Well, article definitely commits a statistical fallacy there. Austin is one of the fastest growing cities, especially from 2000-2017 period. The fact that the percentage went down (from 9.5 to 7.5), while the city's popu…

Good callout, but it's important not to fudge the numbers here. Using this source[0], it seems like the population doubled, not tripled, from 911K to 1.84M. If we use that 10% to 7.5% drop, the city's black residents went from 91K to 138k. Hardly tripled, in fact only a 50% increase compared to over 100% population size increase. So the comparative growth was half as fast. I'd still say thats notable to the article's…

Difficult thing is sometimes you look up a source for a city's population and they will show you the exact population of the city limits and sometimes they will show you the population of the metropolitan area. The article rounded up the actual census data from 9.5% to 10% for the 2000 numbers, but left the 2017 number at 7.5% (fudging with precision).

At any rate, if someone moves from East Austin to Del Valle or Manor, are they 'forced out of Austin'? Even if that move affords their family a larger living space? These are satellite communities only a couple miles further out of the city center.

No doubt East Austin has gotten much more expensive in the past 10 years, as the article underscores. There's still quite a bit of low income housing, but it's certainly making up a smaller portion. As the downtown corridor jumps across I-35 and expands east, more and more high rises are being built in East Austin, where older ranch houses and traditional neighborhoods used to exist.

The thing is, many of these older ranch houses on the east side aren't even in great shape and don't really fit modern standards. They have character, sure, but raising a family in a small, wooden, 2/1 or 3/1 1950s ranch house with bad upkeep is not necessarily a desirable thing. Migratory data alone is not enough to interpret the story.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#68

Post by chordalkeyboard »

wutbrodo wrote: post #33
ryandrake wrote: post #3

Real estate law has this concept of “Coming to the nuisance” where if you know that there is some kind of “nuisance” nearby and you move next to it anyway, you can’t complain about it later. I’m not a lawyer so I’m probably pedantically wrong about it in some way but that’s my understanding of it. People do this with small local airports all the time. They move in, knowing full well (or should know full well) that th…

> They move in, knowing full well (or should know full well) that there is an airport there, then a year later they bitch and moan about the noise and try to shut it down. Would this be relevant for something that is in violation of the letter of the law? I ask this purely legally, as the ethical question of community rights and the tyranny of bureaucracy is a separate one.

That is an excellent question and it strikes to the heart of the difference between two people’s interpretation of a given statute (or body of law).

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#69

Post by jimbob45 »

olivermarks wrote: post #34

A variation of this rinsing out of any local culture is going on in Sacramento County California, where arguably gentrification has resulted in a 2019 autocratic edict that residents are not allowed to work on cars in their homes except fluid changes, with fines if you are found to have professional tools on the premises. https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/it-is-illegal-to... Since Sacramento County is appro…

https://code-enforcement.saccounty.net/Programs/Pages/AutoRe...

These rules are draconian. "[Prohibited if conducted] outside a fully enclosed garage or accessory structure and resulting in the vehicle being inoperable for a period in excess of 24 hours."

On the other hand, if you're rich enough to live there, you're probably rich enough to have a large enough enclosure where you can skirt the law anyway.

Re: They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions

#70

Post by brundolf »

adjkant wrote: post #36

At the general level, I doubt anyone is surprised to see this story, and there will likely be more to come as tech flocks to Austin (though it was already a notable tech hub with some of these pressures already before the billionaires decided to give it the seal of approval). To me, the more interesting question here is how does Austin avoid what happened to SF, where tech hollowed out nearly all of its existing cult…

I've been here for seven years. It definitely feels like we're on the track toward what people describe SF as. Several cultural institutions have gone out of business in my time here, everything's getting more shiny and less weird, the homeless camps are growing enormous due to rising rents/displacement, etc. We're not SF yet, but we will be before long if nothing changes.

I held out a small hope that covid and the remote-work wave would stem things a little bit, but it's hard to say whether that's happened. If anything, the influx could have increased due to the exodus from SF.

Overall I don't feel optimistic.

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