{"id":211576,"date":"2026-03-19T16:09:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T16:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/211576\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T16:09:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T16:09:09","slug":"sxsw-celebrates-austin-housing-progress-the-austin-chronicle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/211576\/","title":{"rendered":"SXSW Celebrates Austin Housing Progress \u2022 The Austin Chronicle"},"content":{"rendered":"

It might seem a stretch to refer to the large number of new housing units<\/a> that have been built in Austin over the last 10 years as a \u201cmiracle.\u201d But for community leaders who have fought for that housing, the term fits. Wednesday\u2019s SXSW panel \u2013 No Perfect Plans, Just Progress: Austin\u2019s Housing Miracle<\/a> \u2013 served as a celebration of their success.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really wonderful to understand how your city is broken. It\u2019s a lot harder to actually have people who want to fix it,\u201d said Felicity Maxwell, executive director at Texans for Housing, referring to groups like AURA, HousingWorks, and Safe Streets Austin that nurtured a pro-housing consensus among city residents and helped install a supermajority on the City Council which reflected it. \u201cWe really focused on getting people who are committed to doing housing and transportation work once they\u2019re elected, and I think that that\u2019s been a huge part of our success,\u201d Maxwell added.<\/p>\n

In recent years, the Council has approved a series of measures encouraging the creation of more housing. They have eliminated minimum parking requirements for new development, gave homeowners the right to build three housing units on residential lots, allowed builders to create housing stock closer to large buildings, and provided incentives to developers to create affordable housing, among other things.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The panelists recalled the resistance they encountered as they pushed for the measures. Council Member Zo Qadri, who led the effort to eliminate minimum parking requirements<\/a>, remembered a homeowner telling him, \u201cIf you eliminate parking, Hamas will attack my neighborhood.\u201d Awais Azhar, executive director at HousingWorks Austin, recalled a resident opposing a townhome development because it would disturb their anxious dog. \u201cNot to belittle someone whose dog has high anxiety, but we cannot develop a city around thinking about a single dog\u2019s anxiety,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The panelists also looked back on their fight to get Austin to replace its antiquated Land Development Code, which specifies what can get built where and has been blamed for slowing development. The struggle to replace the LDC with an updated set of rules called CodeNEXT stretched from 2013 to 2022 and ultimately failed. Azhar said that was the result of wishful thinking on the part of some Austinites, that \u201cIf you don\u2019t build it, they won\u2019t come.\u201d Yet, they did come. During the COVID pandemic, individuals flocked to Austin in record numbers, creating a full-blown affordability crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s terrible that it came to that, but that was what I think really galvanized a lot of attention,\u201d Alina Carnahan of the Real Estate Council of Austin said. \u201cEven people who were double-income attorneys were like, \u2018I can\u2019t afford a house in Austin anymore. And if I can, it\u2019s way out in the boonies \u2013 and I thought I had a good job.\u2019 It got humanized for so many people so quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maxwell said that it\u2019s no longer viable for Austin leaders to be anything but pro-housing, especially with young people unable to afford homes. \u201cPeople who are younger, who struggle to pay rent, really feel like housing will always be unaffordable for them,\u201d she said. \u201cBut they are working at the City Council. They are showing up to public comment. They are active in student groups who care about housing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Qadri said that he has done ride-alongs with police, fire, and EMS workers, few of whom can now afford to live close to their jobs. \u201cWhen you talk about teachers who teach our kids, and you talk about the folks who work at City Hall, from city staff to janitorial staff, the folks who literally keep the lights on \u2013 they can\u2019t afford to live in the city,\u201d he said. \u201cI think that\u2019s why you see the work that\u2019s being done. It\u2019s because there is a crisis and people are just screaming from the rooftops, \u2018Help me!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

A note to readers:\u00a0Bold and uncensored,\u00a0The Austin Chronicle\u00a0has been Austin\u2019s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community\u2019s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It might seem a stretch to refer to the large number of new housing units that have been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,1551,3222,12704,2969,2970,79338],"class_list":["post-211576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-feature","tag-housing","tag-housing-affordability","tag-sxsw","tag-sxsw-2026","tag-sxsw-innovation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}