Lessons from a conversation with Nefertitti Jackmon, Community Displacement Prevention Officer, Displacement Prevention Division, City of Austin Housing & Planning Department

My key takeaways from Austin:

  • Developing and implementing equity-focused solutions requires deep collaboration with the community at every stage of policy and development. No step is too small to engage the community in decision-making.
  • A top-down commitment to equity begins with the hiring and interview process, and extends to trainings and even creating new equity-focused positions and departments.
  • When we think about affordable housing issues, we typically think about renters. Low-income homeowners are deserving of our attention, funding, and creative problem-solving, too.

What makes Austin’s story about affordable housing unique?

Austin is a small city that’s been forced to grow up quickly. The booming tech industry led to extreme population growth, whether Austinites like it or not. Such rapid growth has posed huge affordability challenges in Austin’s housing market. Housing costs have reached high peaks (a recent report indicated that the average home sale is $500k, up from approximately $200k just 10 years ago), and non-tech industry incomes have not kept pace with these housing price increases. Seattle has faced similar challenges, and Austin hopes to draw lessons from their successes and failures.  

Racialized policies and practices have impacted Austin’s population and housing opportunities through the past and present. Zoning policies that segregated BIPOC communities were documented in city plans as far back as 1928. Now, in a time of economic growth, Austin’s overall population is increasing while its African American population is decreasing. The City of Austin is proactively working to prevent further displacement through dedicated programs, funding, and City departments like Nefertitti’s in hopes of seeing positive results in the next census.

One of Austin’s long-standing cultural mottos is “keep Austin weird.” Keeping the beloved culture intact in the midst of such rapid growth has proven to be difficult. 

What is the state of affordable housing in Austin today?

In one word: challenging. It’s challenging to keep pace with the city’s affordable housing needs while the city is growing. Local affordable housing developers are working at capacity, so the City may need to collaborate with developers that have not traditionally done affordable housing projects. However, the City recently changed its density bonus program so that these developers can pay a fee in lieu of providing affordable housing units, and many are disappointingly opting to pay the fee rather than provide affordable housing units in their market-rate projects. 

Beyond these development complexities, Austin must reckon with the fact that poverty is segregated. Many people resist affordable housing development in their own communities, and these viewpoints must be addressed head on. Many challenging conversations must take place within communities and among policy-makers in order to address housing inequality.

Austin is making serious investments in its affordable housing production to meet goals outlined in the Strategic Housing Blueprint and to prevent displacement. The Blueprint requires that each of Austin’s ten council districts increase access to affordable housing over 10 years. In 2018, a City Council approved a $250 million housing bond, an amount even higher than initially proposed. An additional $300 million bond has been committed to focus on displacement resulting from Project Connect, a large-scale TOD project that will inevitably encourage growth in the developed areas. BIPOC communities, business owners, and homeowners know they have reason to be concerned about displacement in light of this large-scale development project, and the City knows that preventing their displacement is integral to Austin’s success. Community members advocated for the sizeable $300 million bond and probed the City to consider how to put strategic investments in place early to prevent displacement. Taking that call to action seriously, Austin has reviewed models from St. Paul and Seattle to learn how to center equity while successfully implementing displacement measures. Austin has developed an Equity Assessment Tool in partnership with people who have been most impacted by displacement issues, prioritizing their lived experience. Multiple City departments, consultants, and communities worked together to create the tool which, in part, provides a framework for identifying and implementing community-driven solutions for displacement.

If you could wave a magic wand and change any one policy at any level of government, what would it be and why?

While we know that renters are often more vulnerable than homeowners, sufficient support is not provided for low income homeowners’ needs. Due to budgeting complexities, state policymakers wrongly believe that more funds cannot be allocated to this particular population, and many low-income homeowners are just barely over-income qualified for existing support programs. There are heart-breaking personal stories of homeowners who are in their 80s who continue to work to make ends meet because taxes they owe affect their whole families. After working for so many years of their lives, when elders and long-time community anchors lose their assets or are in danger of losing them, there are devastating emotional and financial ripple effects throughout their communities. 

What makes you hopeful about housing in Austin?

Austin’s citizens advocated for and approved a $300 million bond addressing housing displacement, proving that these issues are a community-driven priority. Citizens want housing equity, not just City Council. 

There are encouraging signs that leadership is taking racial equity and community collaboration seriously within Austin’s Housing & Planning Department. The fact that Nefertitti’s Community Displacement Prevention Officer position exists is hopeful; it takes top-down commitment to get this equity-focused work right. Her position was created in 2020 along with the Office of Civil Rights. They collaborate closely with the Equity Office, which was created a few years earlier, and intend to right some of Austin’s past wrongs through collaboration with community members and Project Connect’s Community Advisory Committee. Hiring practices within the Housing & Planning Department are prioritizing a racial equity lens so that policy and practice both center equity, and everybody working on Project Connect is taking part in an undoing racism class. People agree that Austin must do things radically differently to address housing issues equitably. Building trust and having the necessary tough conversations among community members and government employees is moving beyond hopeful rhetoric. This is an exciting time to be in Austin, even with the present challenges!

What are effective ways to include the people most impacted by affordable housing issues in government-level decision making?

Engaging stakeholders early and often is crucial. Community engagement during planning, team selection, policy creation, and project development all matter. Sharing minds between community members and City policy makers creates better solutions. All sides should be learning from each other and growing; we all have valuable insights and ideas. Further, community voices should be paid for their expertise and valuable contribution to the process. It’s also necessary for government decision-makers to proactively consider how they receive feedback from communities and pivot based on that feedback. Engaging the community to harness collaborative solutions is only fruitful if policy-makers honor that time and work by adapting based on the community’s messages.