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- BG Reads 12.28.2023
BG Reads 12.28.2023
🗞️ BG Reads | News - December 28, 2023
December 28, 2023
Today's BG Reads include:
🤖 UT expanding semiconductor research capabilities
✅ Chaos, Fury, Mistakes: 600 Days Inside New York’s Migrant Crisis
đźš— Tesla blamed drivers for failures of parts it long knew were defective
Read on!
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Black and Latino Austinites are moving farther east. City says affordability is key issue. (Austin American-Statesman)
Austin's Eastern Crescent, its belt of traditionally economically-disadvantaged and often non-white neighborhoods, continues to move farther east and into Travis County, according to the city of Austin.
A Dec. 12 report from the city's demographer shows that while the state's capital city ranks highest in many quality-of-life metrics among Texas’ metro areas, these advantages were not equally experienced by all. Disaggregated, the numbers indicate continued disparities along racial and ethnic lines, with Black and Latino residents often lagging behind others. Lower rates of educational attainment correlated to lower household income and rate of homeownership, the city's demographer Lila Valencia told the City Council during a work session.
At the same time, the city's historically Black and Latino neighborhoods have lost large numbers of their populations and are now found further east, north, and south than before.
“Our city is growing, but we are seeing a farther eastward movement of the Eastern Crescent, which indicates that many families, mostly of color, are moving farther away from our city’s resources," Valencia said… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
See also:
Fuentes spent 2023 on program implementation (Austin Monitor)
City Council Member Vanessa Fuentes continued her focus on working families and delivering community-focused policies in 2023, bringing forward 19 items and co-sponsoring another 80 resolutions.
“We’ve been very active and collaborative with my colleagues on the dais,” Fuentes told the Austin Monitor.
She is most proud of the measure she sponsored directing the city manager to find ways to lower city-imposed barriers that child care providers face in setting up new facilities, which passed unanimously in February.
“We’re trying to expand access to high-quality, affordable child care,” Fuentes said. “That work in trying to make it more affordable, more accessible and more convenient for families has really carried through throughout the year.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
After hiatus, Harper-Madison puts focus on wellness, community involvement (Austin Monitor)
Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison speaks plainly about the burnout and fatigue she was facing for much of 2023, which led to her decision in September to take a nearly two-month leave of absence from her seat on City Council. A deterioration in sleep patterns, eating habits and her general state of mind was accompanied by the realization that, as a once-avid gardener, Harper-Madison had neglected the plant life outside her home.
It was one more real-world sign that she’d been overwhelmed by the demands of life as a highly visible public servant and needed to focus on her health.
“​​Some of that is the direct result of just trying to do too much and then taking better care of myself. I can’t do anything for other folks if I’m not taking really good care of myself,” she said. “If I’m not in tip-top condition, I’m not the best Council member, I’m not the best mom, I’m not the best friend, I’m not the best employer, I’m not the best for my church congregation.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
UT expanding semiconductor research capabilities through $175M project in North Austin (Austin Business Journal)
With semiconductor production being a major force in the Central Texas economy, the University of Texas at Austin is bolstering its research capabilities in the field.
UT plans to renovate the existing Microelectronics Research Center located at the J.J. Pickle Campus through a $175 million project, according to its 2023-28 capital improvement program. The two-phase project will also include construction of “a number of support buildings,” according to a filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation for the project’s “B-2” phase.
The project is another example of how the university is investing in emerging industries in the local area.
The expansion would allow the university to submit a more competitive proposal this year for grants from the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, according to the capital improvement program published in February… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Diversity offices on college campuses will soon be illegal in Texas, as 30 new laws go into effect (Texas Tribune)
When Texas college students return to their campuses after the winter break, they’ll discover the lights are still off in their campuses’ diversity offices.
That’s because a new law that outlaws such work at the state’s higher education institutions goes into effect, Jan. 1.
Another 29 laws also will go into effect in the new year that aim to change the economy, tax codes and the criminal justice system.
Many of the new laws seek to streamline tax codes and update property appraisal processes, while others touch on more unique issues like e-cigarette usage in minors and commemorative state license plates. Here are some of the laws… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
After a disastrous year, commercial real estate sector hopes for better times in 2024 (Dallas Morning News)
Commercial real estate investors and developers are hoping for a decline in interest rates next year to improve prospects for their business. 2023 was the worst year for the commercial property industry since the Great Recession, with debt costs doubling and lenders slamming the window on loans for many purchases and new construction. “The tone in July was pretty optimistic,” said Andrew Alperstein, a real estate partner with PwC. “By the time we got to September it had turned pretty pessimistic. “I think it’s going to be an interesting early 2024,” Alperstein said.
“Putting aside office, the fundamentals for retail, industrial and multifamily real estate are still pretty good.”
Since the pandemic, office leasing in Dallas-Fort Worth and across the country has plunged as fewer workers returned from home than expected. Vacancy rates in the North Texas office market have soared to near-record levels. And construction — except for a few notable corporate office projects — has all but stopped. At the same time, new starts of apartments and warehouses have slowed because of the tougher borrowing environment, even though demand for those buildings remains strong.
Commercial building starts in D-FW were down about 17% in the first half of the year. But North Texas was still second in the country for new construction behind only New York City. The D-FW area led the country in commercial property sales during the first nine months of 2023, even with a more than 60% decline in purchases from 2022. Alperstein said many investors are waiting for a sign interest rates are moderating before getting back in the buying market… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[US/WORLD NEWS]
Blinken Meets With Mexico’s President About Surge in Migration at the Border (New York Times)
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and other top American officials discussed the root causes of migration with Mexico’s president on Wednesday in hopes of figuring out a strategy to slow the surge in illegal crossings at the southern U.S. border.
President Biden dispatched the officials to Mexico City at a pivotal moment, as border crossings have hit record numbers and there is growing pressure on Mr. Biden to solve — or at least contain — a crisis that has proved to be a consistent political vulnerability.
The situation at the border is at the center of some of Mr. Biden’s biggest priorities going into 2024, particularly as Republicans in Congress demand a new crackdown on immigration in exchange for wartime aid for Ukraine and Israel.
“As we made clear in Mexico City today, we are committed to partnering with Mexico to address our shared challenges, including managing unprecedented irregular migration in the region, reopening key ports of entry and combating illicit fentanyl and other synthetic drugs,” Mr. Blinken said in a post on X… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Chaos, Fury, Mistakes: 600 Days Inside New York’s Migrant Crisis (New York Times)
Nearly 70,000 migrants crammed into hundreds of emergency shelters. People sleeping on floors, or huddled on sidewalks in the December cold. Families packed into giant tents at the edge of the city, miles from schools or services.
And New York City is spending hundreds of millions of dollars a month to care for them all.
This fall, an official in the administration of Mayor Eric Adams referred to the city’s obligation to house and feed the 500 new migrants still arriving each day as “our new normal.”
It is a normal that could scarcely have been imagined 18 months ago, when migrants began gravitating to the city in large numbers from the nation’s southern border.
The migrant crisis in New York is the product of some factors beyond the city’s control, including global upheaval, a federal government letting migrants enter in record numbers without giving most of them a way to work legally, and a unique local rule requiring the city to offer a bed to every homeless person… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
See also:
Tesla blamed drivers for failures of parts it long knew were defective (Reuters)
Neither Tesla nor top executive Elon Musk responded to detailed questions for this article. Musk has acknowledged some build-quality problems with Teslas in the past, particularly the entry-level Model 3. But he also says his cars have no peer.
“We make the best cars,” he said of Tesla at a New York Times event last month. “Whether you hate me, like me or are indifferent, do you want the best car, or do you not want the best car?”
Tesla’s handling of suspension and steering complaints reflects a pattern across Musk’s corporate empire of dismissing concerns about safety or other harms raised by customers, workers and others as he rushes to roll out new products or expand sales, Reuters has found.
A Reuters investigation in November documented at least 600 injuries at rocket-builder SpaceX, where employees described a culture of rushing dangerous projects with little regard for workers’ safety worries. In July, the news agency revealed how Tesla had created a secret team to suppress thousands of customer complaints about poor driving range. The report, which found that Tesla rigged an algorithm to inflate its cars’ in-dash range estimates, sparked a federal investigation.
Late last year, Reuters exposed how hurried experiments at Musk’s brain-chip startup, Neuralink, resulted in the unnecessary suffering and deaths of laboratory animals, despite objections from workers seeking to protect them… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Water increasingly at the center of conflicts from Ukraine to the Middle East (Los Angeles Times)
Six months ago, an explosion ripped apart Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine, unleashing floods that killed 58 people, devastated the landscape along the Dnipro River and cut off water to productive farmland. The destruction of the dam — which Ukrainian officials and the European Parliament blame on Russia, even though the structure was under Russian control — was one in a series of attacks on water infrastructure that have occurred during the Russia-Ukraine war. Alongside those strikes, violence linked to water has erupted this year in other areas around the world. In countries including India, Kenya and Yemen, disputes over water have triggered bloodshed. And on the Iran-Afghanistan border, a conflict centering on water from the Helmand River boiled over in deadly clashes between the two countries’ forces.
These are some of the 344 instances of water-related conflicts worldwide during 2022 and the first half of 2023, according to data compiled by researchers at the Pacific Institute, a global water think tank. Their newly updated data, collected through an effort called the Water Conflict Chronology, shows a major upsurge in violent incidents, driven partly by the targeting of dams and water systems in Ukraine as well as an increase in water-related violence in the Middle East and other regions.
“It's very disturbing that in particular attacks on civilian water infrastructure seem to be on the rise,” said Peter Gleick, the Pacific Institute’s co-founder and senior fellow.
“We also see a worrying increase in violence associated with water scarcity worsened by drought, climate disruptions, growing populations, and competition for water.” Gleick has been tracking cases of water-related conflict for more than three decades and cataloged the latest incidents with other researchers at the Oakland-based institute. The database now lists more than 1,630 conflicts. Most of the cases have occurred since 2000, and there has been a rising trend over the last decade, with a spike the last few years. The researchers collect data from news reports and other sources and accounts. They classify instances into three categories: where water or water systems have been a trigger of violence, used as a “weapon” or have been targeted and become a “casualty” of violence… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[2024 Austin City Council Race Watch]
Next fall will see elections for the following Council positions, District 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, and Mayor. Candidates can’t file for a place on the ballot until July 22, 2024.
Declared candidates so far are:
District 2
District 6
Krista Laine
District 7 (Open seat)
District 10 (Open seat)
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