When we got there, I looked immediately towards locating a seat. Then I looked for Alan and saw that he was taking in the room, looking at who was there, and had begun sauntering over to a young-looking staffer. Note to self: I should slow down a bit when I come into a meeting. I followed him over and learned that she was recently hired by the Planning & Development Review Department, and had graduated from the CRP/LAS dual-degree program a few years back. She said that she was still getting her feet wet in the department, and so was going to as many meetings as possible to observe.
We took our seats as the meeting started and I saw that Matt Dugan was more or less running the initial part of the meeting. The first three people to sign in and request a time slot were allowed to speak for a few minutes to the Task Force. Three people spoke, and Matt moved to transfer the meeting over to the Task Force, but not before neighborhood activist Jeff Jack insisted on also giving a comment. Matt agreed to let him speak, and Jeff immediately donated his time to another ANC member, who spoke for several minutes about rising property taxes.
Finally the meeting kicked off, and there was a series of presentations by a developer and two city representatives, including Kelly Nichols, the senior planner for the City's Neighborhood Housing & Community Development Department. The presenters talked about current challenges and the impending crisis in affordable housing here in Austin. It was interesting to hear the developer's perspective and a reminder that the private sector needs to be engaged just as much as the public to avoid crisis-type scenarios, and they need to be engaged in a certain way, i.e. looking to a long-term scenario instead of short-term profit. Planners also need to be attentive to what's workable to developers--the developer in this case discussed some affordability standards that would discourage building altogether, for instance. This reminds me that I need to get caught up on "developer-ese"...something I first noticed at my last job in meetings with contractors. My supervisor, who was also a woman, was really knowledgeable and good at holding her own in these boys' club meetings we would go to, and that's something I should and do aspire to.
Kelly Nichols talked about some proposed interesting strategies to mitigate the housing crisis that I definitely want to look more into, such as tax-base sharing, shared-appreciation mortgages, and permanent supportive housing. At the end of her presentation a Task Force member insisted that sprawl was inevitable, and said that trying to implement programs like the ones Nichols suggested would be a waste of time. Another Task Force member interjected and said that she came from the Bay Area--where I'm from--and said that in watching that region transform from relative affordability to an extreme uptick in housing costs and sprawl, that she learned that in situations like this, it's crucial to take "extreme measures" BEFORE the next wave of growth surges into Austin, and that leadership must muscle these ordinances and programs through as fast as possible to avoid diluting them to the point of ineffectiveness, which is something she claims to have witnessed in the Bay Area.
This got me thinking about my concurrent interests in affordable housing and public participation, especially since I do plan to return to the Bay Area after graduating from UT. I'm wondering to what extent efforts to ensure affordable housing provision in a tight or vulnerable market should be participatory and how or what that would look like. I looked up Kelly Nichols and I'm hoping to run into her again to hear her thoughts on that, since judging by her past experience, she comes from a low-income-serving/progressive background.
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