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- BG Reads 6.21.2024
BG Reads 6.21.2024
šļø Bingham Group Reads - June 21, 2024
Bingham Group Reads
Presented by:
www.binghamgp.com
June 21, 2024
Today's BG Reads include:
š£ Urban Renewal Board makes pick for Council from two redevelopment plans for Blocks 16 and 18 (Austin Monitor)
š£ Austin is the most expensive major Texas city for raising a child (CultureMap Austin)
š£ After decades of lobbying by Christian conservative donors, school voucher legislation may finally have the votes (Texas Tribune)
š£ Anti-growth fervor grips US South after pandemic boom (Bloomberg)
Read On!
[BINGHAM GROUP]
[CITY OF AUSTIN]
Per the Austin Chronicleās Austin Sanders:
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Urban Renewal Board makes pick for Council from two redevelopment plans for Blocks 16 and 18 (Austin Monitor)
A plan that looks to combine housing, retail, restaurants and assorted cultural facilities has received an important vote of support in the effort to redevelop two signature blocks of East Austin.
On Monday, the Urban Renewal Board voted 4-1 to recommend the Pleasant Hill Collaborative development plan to City Council as the preferred package for Blocks 16 and 18 on East 11th Street. That plan, which is composed of professionals from Servitas LLC and the Guadalupe Neighborhood Development Corporation, was one of two under consideration to remake the area that has been eyed for redevelopment for roughly three decades.
City Council is expected to consider the matter on July 18, which would lead to the start of entering into an exclusive negotiating agreement with PHC.
That plan would incorporate the Historic Victory Grill music venue as well as an unspecified African American cultural and heritage facility, multifamily housing, live/work townhomes, and assorted hospitality and cultural venues on the two blocksā¦ (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Want to buy a mid-priced home in Austin, Dallas or Houston? You'll need to earn over $100,000. (KUT)
If you donāt make more than $100,000 per year, you canāt afford to buy a median-priced home in three of Texasā largest metro areas: Dallas-Fort Worth, greater Houston and the Austin area.
Thatās one of several findings from a new Harvard University study of the nationās housing situation that shows huge swaths of the population ā renters and homeowners alike āpay more for housing than they can afford.
According to the State of the Nation's Housing report from Harvardās Joint Center for Housing Studies, more than 1 in 3 Texas households pay more than they can afford for housing. A quarter of homeowners and fully half of renters are considered cost burdened.
Many pay more than half of their monthly earnings for housing: 1 in 10 Texas homeowner households and 1 in 4 Texas renter households.
āI think the big picture question with housing is, is over affordability. The lack of affordability specifically, is a big challenge for renters, for homeowners, for prospective owners,ā said Daniel McCue, a senior researcher at Harvard... (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Median income home buyers in Austin would need to put down a more than $200,000 payment to afford a typical mortgage payment (KVUE)
A new study has revealed the extent to which a median-income home buyer in Austin would have to invest if they wanted to afford monthly mortgage costs.
According to a recent study conducted by real-estate marketer Zillow, to afford a monthly mortgage payment on the typical home in Austin, a median-income household would need to put $209,333 down, which is a 44.9% down payment.
That's well above the typical average for the U.S. as a whole, where the study found that a home buyer making the median income would need to put down nearly $127,750, or a 35.4% down payment. That $127,750 down payment is what a household making the median income would need to invest when purchasing a typical home in the United States, valued at about $360,000, so that the monthly mortgage payments take up no more than 30% of a householdās monthly incomeā¦(LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin is the most expensive major Texas city for raising a child (CultureMap Austin)
For those who are considering starting a family, it's always important to consider how much money it costs to raise a child. It certainly isn't cheap, especially in an area like Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, where annual costs of raising just one child can add up to more than $22,000 every year.
That's according to a new annual report by SmartAsset that examined the costs of childcare across 50 of the biggest metropolitan areas in America.
Despite the seemingly high annual price tag ā $22,406, to be exact ā raising a child in Austin is actually more affordable than in most other U.S. metros. The city appeared at No. 18 on the list for the lowest yearly childrearing costs out of all 50 cities in the report.
The study only completely breaks down the total costs of 10 most and least expensive cities, but Austin was comparable to San Antonio (No. 10 least expensive).
There, it costs $21,014 annually to raise a child. Two data points were given for Austin: childcare totals $10,247 (compared to San Antonio's $9,632) and housing beyond what two childless people would need totals $3,485 (compared to San Antonio's $3,132)ā¦ (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
After decades of lobbying by Christian conservative donors, school voucher legislation may finally have the votes (Texas Tribune)
As proponents of private school vouchers racked up win after win across the country in recent years, the largest Republican-led state in the nation remained stubbornly outside their grasp ā until now.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott succeeded in persuading primary voters to remove from office members of his party who had defied him by voting against legislation that would allow the use of state money to pay for private school tuition.
Abbottās success campaigning against fellow Republicans during the primary election sent a clear message that disloyalty would not be tolerated even for those who supported other priorities he outlined. If the pro-voucher candidates who Abbott supported in their primaries win in the November general election, as many are expected to, the governor argues he has the votes to finally pass legislationā¦ (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[US and World News]
āI live in hellā: Anti-growth fervor grips US South after pandemic boom (Bloomberg)
In Gallatin, Tennessee, house prices have jumped by two-thirds since the pandemic, and one local commissioner incensed at nearby homebuilding said she ālives in hell.ā So many Californians have moved to the booming state that locals fear their lefty politics migrated with them, and lawn signs target the āgreedy developersā they say are swallowing up farmland. Tennessee and several of its neighbors in the US South are facing an anti-growth backlash, after turbocharged migration helped boost the regionās population by 2.7 million people ā the size of Chicago.
As traffic snarls in once-sleepy downtowns, apartment complexes replace meadows and municipal water systems strain under new demand, passions are running high in a way that goes beyond regular nimbyism. In Sumner County, where the Cumberland River snakes through the verdant hills northeast of Nashville, the economy grew by 8.5% a year from 2020 to 2022, putting it in the top 7% of all US counties for growth.
The boom ā driven by transplants from blue states like New York and California ā has spurred a right-wing group that marries conservative religious beliefs with restrictive policies on growth into control of the local legislative body. At a planning board meeting in May, the pressing agenda item was whether to boost minimum lot sizes in rural areas to at least 2.3 acres; big enough to ward off housing developers who need more density.
āIf you donāt, youāre going to be one big fat Nashville,ā Mary Genung, a Sumner County commissioner backed by the group ā the Sumner County Constitutional Republicans ā told the planning board. Genung and her neighbors have for two years battled a project by Arlington-based homebuilding giant DR Horton, which plans 675 homes on vacant land in Gallatin, population 50,000. āWhere I live, I live in hell,ā Genung said. The planning board supported the lot-size measure, bumping it up to the County Commission for a vote.
DR Horton didnāt respond to a request for comment. While not-in-my-backyard activists have long fought new developments, local officials and business groups across the South say theyāve seen a heightened level of anger since the pandemic-era growth. Arcane rules that govern issues like zoning exceptions, city annexation and impact fees, which apply levies to new construction projects intended to cover any extra infrastructure costs, are pitting cities against counties and counties against statesā¦ (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Trump dwarfs Biden in latest fundraising numbers in show of political force after felony convictions (Associated Press)
Donald Trumpās campaign outraised President Joe Biden by more than $60 million last month, according to federal filings made public Thursday that detailed the Republican fundraising explosion sparked by Trumpās felony convictions.
Bidenās campaign and the Democratic National Committee together raised a robust $85 million in May and reported $212 million in the bank at the end of the month. The strong showing does not include roughly $40 million raised by Biden and his top surrogates in recent days ā or a separate $20 million donation from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to pro-Biden groups.
Still, Trumpās fundraising for, for one month at least, seemed to dwarf Bidenās.
The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee said it raised a jaw-dropping $141 million in May, including tens of millions donated immediately after Trump was convicted of 34 felonies in the New York hush money case. At the same time, billionaire Timothy Mellon donated a stunning $50 million to a pro-Trump super PAC the day after Trumpās guilty verdict, according to the filingsā¦ (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[2024 Austin City Council Race Watch]
This fall will see elections for the following Council Districts 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, and Mayor.
Declared candidates so far are:
Mayor
District 2
District 4
Jade Lovera
District 6
District 7 (Open seat)
District 10 (Open seat)
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