 |
| Our Real-World markup of the City's R4 illustration. |
On Wednesday, the LDC Team presented dozens of modeled code scenarios to City Council. We were really happy to see that they were finally illustrating the code concepts so we wouldn't have to keep doing it for free.
Our joy was short-lived, though. It didn't take long to see a big problem with the presentation. All of the examples we looked at in the R-Zones showed square footages that were significantly short of what the code actually delivers and what the illustrations really showed.
This happened due to two choices made by staff/consultants:
1. The modeling is very optimistic, portraying the code in the most favorable light possible. They didn't push the limits of the code language at all, when we all know too well that in Austin's red-hot market, there's too much money on the line to be lazy when designing buildings. Austin architects and developers play HardBall, and speculative development projects seldom fall short of the limits on FAR and Impervious cover.
The modeled building heights also appear to be lower than those allowed, and 3rd floor spaces look to be well short of what's allowed with "Attic" exemptions. Overall, this means the houses generally look smaller than we know they'll be out in the real world when the code is passed.
2. More suprisingly, none of the City's square footages included the exempted area that's created by the code for stairways (180 sf/unit) and attics (400 sf/unit). [note: "attic" conjures up images of cozy little crawl-in spots, but the exempted "attic" space is just more full-height space on the 3rd floor]
You might think that this is a meaningless and esoteric distinction; that staff just listed the square footages as they'd show up on a "net square footage" line of a hypothetical permit application- staff just chose to communicate using a different standard of measurement, right?
Wrong. Last time you bought a home or rented an apartment, did they give away the "exempted" square footage for free? Of course not! In the market, we pay for homes by the square foot of heated/cooled space. Any discussion that's supposed to be focused on housing affordability should only be using the square footages as buyers would see them on MLS.
We're not talking about chump change here, folks. At today's prices, 580 sf of extra space in a central Austin house adds $200-250k to the price of a home. That's right- staff left nearly A Quarter of a Million Dollars off of the apparent value of every unit in the the illustrated examples of R-zoned land that were prepared for City Council's discussion of Housing Affordability. It's truly mind-boggling.
 |
| Our Real-World markup of the City's R2 illustration. |
You can see for yourself. All of the City's illustrations can be downloaded at this link:
The staff presentation has dozens of examples of redevelopment scenarios that require that existing affordable homes and their occupants get kicked to the curb to make way for wealthy new Austin residents.
Since this entire code re-write process is driven by a false narrative; I guess it was crazy of us to expect honest illustrations or square footage data.