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BG Reads 3.28.2024

BG Reads 3.28.2024

🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - March 28, 2024

March 28, 2024

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Bingham Group Reads

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March 28, 2024

Today's BG Reads include:

🟣 Republicans’ budding interest in Texas’ housing crisis could create strange political bedfellows

🟣 Renting is now cheaper than owning in all of America’s 50 biggest metro areas

🟣 Austin is raking in millionaires — here's the latest tally

Read on!

✅ CLICK HERE for this week’s City of Austin meeting times and agendas.

[BINGHAM GROUP]

✅ BG Blog - City of Austin org chart red line (as of 2/9/2024)

[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]

What led T.C. Broadnax to Austin? A dysfunctional relationship with Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson (KVUE)

Senior Political Reporter Jason Whitely with KVUE’s sister station WFAA in Dallas reported that Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson and T.C. Broadnax have had a dysfunctional relationship for years. That's said to be the reason Broadnax is stepping away from his role in Dallas.

“More than anything, Broadnax and Eric Johnson just seemingly didn’t like each other, but it wasn’t over how Broadnax did his job,” Whitely said.

In a memo from the city of Dallas announcing Broadnax’s resignation, they said the relationship between Broadnax and Johnson hasn’t been conducive to governing and advancing the city’s interests.

“The dynamic between these key citywide figures has unfortunately hindered the realization of our city's full potential, and it is imperative that we address this issue head-on in order to move forward," the memo read… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Report offers city, developers strategies to reduce parking downtown (Austin Monitor)

A new report from public policy and real estate leaders in Austin recommends a variety of approaches the city can take to reduce the presence and impact of multilevel parking decks in new developments in the downtown core and beyond.

The recently released technical assistance panel report from Urban Land Institute Austin was an attempt by local leaders to “solve” the parking issue that is seen as an obstacle to quality of life downtown. With new towers and high-rises frequently including several-level parking podiums, the report sees those structures as taking away from ground-level activation and adding to projects’ costs because parking spaces detract from the amount of commercial or residential space that can be offered.

One notable policy change supported in the report includes creating a “soft cap” system to limit parking, with fees instituted on the parking spaces in excess of limits, which would likely be recalibrated periodically... (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Austin is raking in millionaires — here's the latest tally (Austin Business Journal)

Austin’s millionaire population has grown by 110% over the past decade.

London-based investment consultancy Henley & Partners has determined that roughly 32,700 millionaires now call Austin home, rising from about 15,500 in 2013.

The Texas capital has seen the largest leap in wealth than any other city in the nation, according to the company's 2024 USA Wealth Report that relied on data from New World Wealth, a global wealth intelligence firm based in South Africa.

Henley & Partners found Austin, which ranked 10th in its total population of millionaires, is home to 92 centi-millionaires — people with a net worth of more than $100 million. That would include billionaires such as Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk and Dell Technologies Inc. founder and CEO Michael Dell… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[TEXAS NEWS]

Republicans’ budding interest in Texas’ housing crisis could create strange political bedfellows (Texas Tribune)

Republican lawmakers have begun to signal that curtailing the state’s high home prices and rents will be a major focus when they return to Austin next year.

Texas Republicans’ traditional approach to combating growing housing costs has been to rein in property taxes, which are among the highest in the nation. But one idea to solve the country’s growing housing crisis has been gaining traction in red and blue states alike: reducing or eliminating city zoning and land-use rules that determine what kind of housing can be built and where.

Many housing advocates believe these policies get in the way of adding enough homes. Curbing or getting rid of them, they argue, would bring down home prices and rents — and give would-be buyers a fighting shot at owning a home.

Unlike many of the contentious issues that drive stark partisan divides among Texas lawmakers, tackling the state’s housing affordability crisis could foster rare alliances between Republicans and Democrats during next year’s legislative session. That’s because the underlying attitudes Texans hold about housing don’t break cleanly along partisan lines… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

North Texas teacher changes name to Literally Anybody Else to run for U.S. president (Dallas Morning News)

A North Texas school teacher has legally changed his name to Literally Anybody Else and announced he is running for U.S. president. Formerly known as Dustin Ebey, Else said he is deeply unhappy with 2024 presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump so he requested a name change in January to make a point. Else’s long-shot presidential bid is attracting widespread attention. On Tuesday, the 35-year-old told The Dallas Morning News he is fielding a flurry of calls from news outlets across the U.S. and as far as Germany and India. Interviews with radio and television stations are piling up.

“People are fed up,” said Else, who lives in North Richland Hills and teaches seventh grade math. “Government is supposed to be by the people, for the people, but that’s not what we have here. We have a billionaire and a career politician.”

Else knows he faces near-impossible odds. Just getting on the ballot will be difficult. In Texas, an independent candidate needs 113,151 signatures of registered voters who did not vote in the presidential primary of either party by May 13 to get on the ballot, per state law. Other states have their own requirements and deadlines. Understanding that will be challenging to navigate, Else is encouraging voters to write in Literally Anybody Else. To spread the word, the U.S. Army veteran campaigned before a Dallas Stars game and is considering hosting a campaign event this month.

Other than that, he is relying on word of mouth, and Else said he hopes to hire an assistant soon to help field media calls. Donations have begun to trickle in on his website and a GoFundMe, reaching just under $1,000 by Tuesday evening. “Literally Anybody Else isn’t a person,” Else writes on his website. “It’s a rally cry.” “We’re victims of political parties that put party loyalty above governing,” Else said. “We need to a send a message that you will represent the people or be replaced.”… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

Abbott announces members for Texas Space Commission that will help shape industry (Houston Chronicle)

Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday unveiled the 18 people who will lead Texas’ efforts to remain competitive in civil, commercial and military space. The nominees – including representatives from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Lockheed Martin, smaller commercial space companies and academia – will guide the Texas Space Commission and the Texas Aerospace Research and Space Economy Consortium.

dThe Texas Legislature created the organizations last year to keep Texas competitive with Florida, Colorado and other states capitalizing on the new era of space exploration. “In this past session, one of the most forward-looking things we did was to create the Texas Space Commission,” Abbott said Tuesday during a news conference at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

The Texas Space Commission will be tasked with developing a statewide strategy that promotes innovation, creates incentives (including grant funding) and develops workforce training. They initially have $350 million to work with, $150 million budgeted for grants and $200 million for a new research and training facility built by the Texas A&M University System.

The Texas Aerospace Research and Space Economy Consortium, which is part of the Texas Space Commission, will identify research and development opportunities and find ways to further integrate space into the Texas economy. Texas is already home to major space exploration companies.

SpaceX is developing and launching the world’s most powerful rocket in South Texas while Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin launches its suborbital rocket from West Texas. Houston is home to NASA’s Johnson Space Center as well as private companies pushing beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Intuitive Machines last month became the first private company to make a soft landing on the lunar surface. Axiom Space is developing a commercial space station… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

[US/WORLD NEWS]

Renting is now cheaper than owning in all of America’s 50 biggest metro areas (Market Watch)

While it was already cheaper to rent than to buy in 90% of metro areas as of last year, a hot real-estate market has pushed that to 100%. And it’s the first time that has happened since Realtor.com began tracking renting versus buying in 2021.

“With rents continuing to fall and the cost of buying a home remaining high” due to mortgage rates and home prices, “renting a home is now a more cost-effective option in all major U.S. markets,” Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com, said in a statement. To be sure, buying a house is a form of forced savings that builds wealth via an asset that appreciates over time. But the current market is too expensive for many Americans, given the steep rise in borrowing costs and home prices, relative to rents, in recent years.

For instance, the median rent in the New York–Newark–Jersey City metro area was $2,852, which was far cheaper than the $4,995 monthly cost of buying. Realtor.com calculates the monthly cost of buying a home by averaging the median listing prices of studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom homes in a market; it is weighted by the number of listings in each market. It also assumes that buyers are putting down 8% on a home purchase with a mortgage rate of 6.78%, and the figures include taxes, insurance and any applicable homeowners association fees.

That gap between renting and buying is the widest in the Austin–Round Rock–Georgetown area in Texas, where the median rent was $1,530, while the monthly cost of buying was $3,695 in February. In other words, it was 142% more expensive to buy a home in that metropolitan area versus renting. Rents were lower there in part because of increased supply.

“There’s definitely quite a bit of rentals on the market in certain neighborhoods,” Cynthia Mattiza, an Austin-based real-estate agent with JBGoodwin, told MarketWatch. Austin has seen a wave of new apartments hit the market in recent years, according to analysis by RealPage Analytics, a real-estate software company. In 2023, over 17,000 apartment units were added to the market in Austin, which increased the total inventory by 6%, the company said. The city is expected to see an 11.2% increase in apartment inventory this year… (LINK TO FULL STORY)

People say they're leaving religion due to anti-LGBTQ teachings and sexual abuse (NPR)

People in the U.S. are leaving and switching faith traditions in large numbers. The idea of "religious churning" is very common in America, according to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).

It finds that around one-quarter (26%) of Americans now identify as religiously unaffiliated, a number that has risen over the last decade and is now the largest single religious group in the U.S. That's similar to what other surveys and polls have also found, including Pew Research.

PRRI found that the number of those who describe themselves as "nothing in particular" has held steady since 2013, but those who identify as atheists have doubled (from 2% to 4%) and those who say they're agnostic has more than doubled (from 2% to 5%).

This study looks at which faith traditions those unaffiliated people are coming from.

"Thirty-five percent were former Catholics, 35% were former mainline Protestants, only about 16% were former evangelicals," says Melissa Deckman, PRRI's chief executive officer. "And really not many of those Americans are, in fact, looking for an organized religion that would be right for them. We just found it was 9%."… (LINK TO FULL STORY)