Austin Mayor To Update On Efforts Toward Equity Amid Deep Economic Segregation

AUSTIN, TX — Mayor Steve Adler is scheduled to speak Monday morning at the "Economic Development Policy Community Conversation" to detail municipal efforts at reforming economic incentives and workforce programs toward achieving economic equity.

Adler's insights come at at time when Austin has earned the dubious distinction of being the most economically segregated city in the entire nation. In a 2015 analysis by University of Toronto Prosperity Institute researchers, Austin emerged as the most notable of the nation's large metro areas where college-educated rich folks and less-educated, blue-collar workers are least likely to share the same neighborhoods.

That class division is exacerbated by a wave of gentrification that has swept over the fast-growing city—in the last decade in earnest—as industry is drawn to the hot real estate market. East Austin has borne the brunt of the most corrosive effects of this gentrification, which has fueled displacement of longtime residents from the region amid construction-fueled rises in property rates.

Once a blue-collar enclave inhabited largely by Latinos, East Austin is arguably the city's most trendy area, with an influx of new, higher-income residents drawn to the area. The construction industry has eagerly accommodated this new demographic with a brisk pace of luxury housing construction that has had the net effect of pricing out longtime East Austin residents amid escalating property rates sparked by the new high-end properties in their neighborhoods' midst.

A dramatic illustration of this trend was seen in December 2015 when Oracle Corp., the world's second-largest software maker, bought East Austin for a new campus and employee luxury housing while displacing longtime, low-income residents in the process. Officials at Oracle Corp. never returned emails or telephone messages from Patch for comment to discern whether they would assist displaced tenants, which received eviction notices days before Christmas in December 2015.

Some of the effects of this gentrification trend were reported by the Austin Chronicle in April 2015, in a piece titled "Eastward Expansion: Real Estate Prospecting on the Eastside."

The University of Toronto study reiterated this relatively recent phenomenon: "It is not so much the size of the gap between the rich and poor that drives segregation, as the ability of the super-wealthy to isolate and wall themselves off from the less well-to-do," researchers wrote.

The city recently has reacted to the ever-growing economic divisions by allotting land earmarked for future affordable housing and other measures related to economic equity.

Adler's remarks on the matter are scheduled to begin at 8:45 a.m. on Monday, June 5, in the City Hall Council chambers, 301 W 2nd St.

>>> Photo by Tony Cantú of residents displaced when Oracle Corp., the world's second-largest software maker, purchased land for a new campus and employee luxury housing while displacing low-income residents in the process; photo of Austin Mayor Steve Adler via City of Austin.