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- BG Reads 9.3.2024
BG Reads 9.3.2024
🗞️ Bingham Group Reads - August 30, 2024
Bingham Group Reads
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www.binghamgp.com
September 3, 2024
💡 The Austin Council has seven (7) regular meetings left in 2024.
Today's BG Reads include:
🟪 Austin residents are looking at a major increase in gas bills. The city wants to fight it. (KUT)
🟪 Council pushes forward with density bonus changes (Austin Monitor)
🟪 Del Valle food co-op program takes shape, aims to have pilot store next year (Austin American-Statesman)
🟪 Austin plans to move forward with abortion travel fund, officials say (KUT)
🟪 Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have plans to solve the housing affordability crisis. Economists have doubts. (New York Times)
Read On!
[BINGHAM GROUP]
We are proud to represent and have represented a wide range of clients in the Austin Metro and Texas Capitol at the intersection of government and business.
Learn more about Bingham Group’s experience here, and review client testimonials here.
[CITY OF AUSTIN]
[AUSTIN METRO NEWS]
Austin residents are looking at a major increase in gas bills. The city wants to fight it. (KUT)
Austin City Council members were in turns threatening and pleading last Thursday in their first major public discussion over how to fight a big residential rate hike proposed by the Texas Gas Service, the for-profit utility that delivers natural gas to the area.
The rate change was first proposed in June. But, since then, the debate over how the city should respond has taken place mainly in closed-door legal discussions and obscure city commission meetings.
Last week, a required public hearing on the issue gave Austinites their first major opportunity to voice their anger.
It also gave City Council members a need to respond.
Texas Gas Service says the rate hike is necessary to invest in infrastructure and keep up with rising costs due to inflation. The company says the proposed change will bring in an estimated $25.8 million in added revenue annually... (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Council pushes forward with density bonus changes (Austin Monitor)
Though it has been in place only since February, the city’s newest density bonus program – DB90 – was updated by City Council during its Thursday meeting.
DB90, which is a new zoning category ushered through the codification process at a more rapid clip than land development changes usually are, was intended to replace VMU2 after it was invalidated by a court ruling in 2023 shortly after its adoption.
Both VMU2 and DB90 promote density and allow for taller buildings in exchange for community benefits like affordable housing and pedestrian-oriented commercial spaces.
The changes come amid rumblings of discontent about the new density bonus. In addition to the complaints about noise from new development that continues to be spearheaded by the Cesar Chavez neighborhood, the Govalle/Johnson Terrace Neighborhood Plan Contact Team and the Austin Neighborhoods Council have both called for a moratorium on DB90 rezonings “until a review of cumulative impacts can be conducted.”… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Del Valle food co-op program takes shape, aims to have pilot store next year (Austin American-Statesman)
Del Valle residents have tried to attract a comprehensive grocery store for more than a decade, including through several petitions asking H-E-B to move in. Central Texas’ largest food retailer has held a tract at the proposed Velocity development since 2016, but has no timeline to build, company representative Heidi Anderson told the American-Statesman last week.
A possible alternative is a community-run food cooperative. In 2021, the Austin City Council allocated $500,000 of American Rescue Plan Act dollars to the idea. The cooperative's goal is to eventually build a permanent, full-service grocery store in the area.
A co-op is a business that is collectively controlled by its share-owning members, each of whom hold an equal vote for its board. Its profits are often reinvested into operations or distributed to its membership. Communities in Ohio, Michigan and North Carolina have organized similar stores in communities long devoid of private grocers.
Austin Cooperative Business Association Executive Director Drew De Los Santos told the Statesman earlier this year that a full-service co-op could cost between $5 million and $10 million. The association has helped the food cooperative with business plans and financial management.
A co-op is a business that is collectively controlled by its share-owning members, each of whom hold an equal vote for its board. Its profits are often reinvested into operations or distributed to its membership. Communities in Ohio, Michigan and North Carolina have organized similar stores in communities long devoid of private grocers.
Austin Cooperative Business Association Executive Director Drew De Los Santos told the Statesman earlier this year that a full-service co-op could cost between $5 million and $10 million. The association has helped the food cooperative with business plans and financial management… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
Austin plans to move forward with abortion travel fund, officials say (KUT)
The City of Austin will be allowed to move forward with plans to implement its Reproductive Justice Fund, despite a lawsuit challenging its legality, city officials said.
The Reproductive Justice Fund is a provision in the city’s 2024-25 budget that is meant to provide money to people seeking out-of-state abortions due to the medical procedure being banned in Texas. The council approved $400,000 for the fund earlier this month. The money can be used for airfare, gas, hotel stays and food.
But last week, former City Council Member Don Zimmerman filed a lawsuit arguing it is against state law to “spend taxpayer dollars on abortion-assistance activities."
“Any use of taxpayer money inside Texas to procure a drug-induced abortion violates [state law], even if the abortion is being procured outside the state,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit goes on to argue that it is illegal to knowingly use taxpayer dollars to help people seeking these procedures and that the city cannot enact rules inconsistent with state law.
The lawsuit names Mayor Kirk Watson and City Manager T.C. Broadnax and the City of Austin as defendants.
Council Member Vanessa Fuentes led the effort to establish the fund and called it a "vital resource."
"Access to the full range of reproductive health care should be a fundamental right,” Fuentes told KUT last week.
On Thursday, the council voted 10-1 to adopt a resolution declaring reproductive rights as human rights… 🟪 (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[TEXAS NEWS]
Housing shortage in Texas continues according to new report from state comptroller’s office (Texas Standard)
Texas’ largest metro areas continue to be some of the country’s fastest growing, and housing availability and affordability is a well known problem in those areas.
A new study out this week from the state comptroller’s office gives us more details on just how tight the housing markets are all across the state. Costs have gone up the most around Brownsville, Sherman and Killeen.
Overall, across Texas, the median home cost jumped nearly 40% between 2019 and 2023. The report found Texas needed to add 300,000 more homes to keep up with demand.
Much of the data in the report referenced research by Texas A&M Real Estate Research Center. Daniel Oney is the center’s director of research, and he joined Texas Standard to discuss the finding. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below… (LINK TO FULL STORY)
[US and World News]
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have plans to solve the housing affordability crisis. Economists have doubts. (New York Times)
America’s gaping shortage of affordable housing has rocketed to the top of voter worry lists and to the forefront of campaign promises, as both the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, and the Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump, promise to fix the problem if they are elected.
Their two visions of how to solve America’s affordable housing shortage have little in common, and Ms. Harris’s plan is far more detailed. But they do share one quality: Both have drawn skepticism from outside economists. Ms. Harris is promising a cocktail of tax cuts meant to spur home construction — which several economists said could help create supply.
But she is also floating a $25,000 benefit to help first-time buyers break into the market, which many economists worry could boost demand too much, pushing home prices even higher. And both sets of policies would need to pass in Congress, which would influence their design and feasibility.
Mr. Trump’s plan is garnering even more doubt. He pledges to deport undocumented immigrants, which could cut back temporarily on housing demand but would also most likely cut into the construction work force and eventually limit new housing supply. His other ideas include lowering interest rates, something that he has no direct control over and that is poised to happen anyway.
Economist misgivings about the housing market policy plans underline a somber reality. Few quick fixes are available for an affordable housing shortfall that has been more than 15 years in the making, one that is being worsened by demographic and societal trends. While ambitious promises may sound good in debates and television ads, actual policy attempts to fix the national housing shortfall are likely to prove messy and slow — even if they are sorely needed. Here’s what the candidates are proposing, and what experts say about those plans.
Ms. Harris is promising to increase housing supply by expanding the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, providing incentives for state and local investment in housing and creating a $40 billion tax credit to make affordable projects economically feasible for builders.
The point would be to try to very rapidly encourage a burst of building. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s, and Jim Parrott, a housing adviser under the Obama administration, are advising the Harris campaign on housing issues. They estimate that America has a shortfall of three million homes right now, and Ms. Harris is promising to close that gap. But the policies would congressional approval, which is not assured. Given that, the plans are “a framework that makes it very clear what they will prioritize,” Mr. Parrott said.
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We are proud to represent and have represented a wide range of clients in the Austin Metro and Texas Capitol at the intersection of government and business.
Learn more about Bingham Group’s experience here, and review client testimonials here.
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