How much longer does Austin have? (Highlands, Atlanta: lofts, affordable house, tickets)

[10scoachrick]

Originally Posted by Dport7674

Six weeks. Austin has six weeks.

Nah...The weather will be just about perfect then!!! Watch'em swarm in!!!!

[Austinite101]

Originally Posted by Zifoose

Austin, where the dream is becoming a nightmare....

Speak for yourself.

[sojourner77]

I think Austin has a long time and can only better; but for that to happen, there are some serious decisions that need to be made:


1. How to disincentivize* traffic from using I-35
2. How to improve some of the school tracks schools in AISD and retain/attract the middle class.
3. How to increase the housing supply central
4. How to create white collar jobs outside of Central Austin.




1,3, and 4 are transportation issues.


*swap I-35 and SH130 - get it over with already.

[creepy]

Already happened. I know many people who already left. Unless people figure out the racket and how to stop it-it will continue. Many want it to, because they are getting rich off of it. Greed wrecks beauty in America because of excess capitalism-in my opinion.

[goolsbyjazz]

Originally Posted by pop251808

Like anywhere else, it's a nightmare if you've made unfortunate choices or been very unlucky. I think location is made too much of, and moving won't fix a poorly planned life, usually.
Re: most recent comments: finding a home based on it's square footage and not on its location with regard to the rest of your day is probably a recipe for great frustration in the new Austin. Surprise, surprise.

Well said. That being the case, I moved my family there in 2008, but we ended up moving back to AZ for various reasons. I thought the city was beautiful and kinda cool. The Hill Country was delightful and we weren't far from Dallas, Houston or San Antonio. Traffic was horrendous, though.

[MPfromSD]

I think if you took a poll, residents from almost every US city would say they are losing parts of what used to make theirs great and living conditions have "declined" due to what is mistakenly referred to as "progress." Those great old whatevers were demolished to make room for something new and shiny they didn't ask for. Green space disappears to make room for more people, bigger houses are being built with smaller yards and there are more cars on the road then ever. Its not a unique problem to Austin although Austin is seeing it in a much greater magnitude and more quickly than most others which makes it especially painful.

I'm guilty. I moved here from San Diego 2 years ago. I didn't necessarily want to leave but I just couldn't get ahead financially. I work in tech and my elderly Dad lives in Kerrville so Austin was kind of a no-brainer. While my cost of living here is greatly improved, I can't believe how much I've seen costs sky rocket in 2 years. So for those who have lived here longer I can't imagine what you've seen. And let's face it, that's just one element. Austin is about something else entirely than the cost of living.

I love Austin and hang my head in guilt every time I tell someone I'm one of those horrible Californians. I feel great pride in living here and try to uphold the spirit and embrace everything including the weather (which is not always easy). When I hear people talk about the problems here I think about CA and how their infrastructure sucks so bad it will never catch up, no matter how much money people pay in taxes.

When I moved here they were just reporting about the city deciding to do buyouts after the Floods at Onion Creek. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. You mean there is accountability? Follow up? Action? In CA it would have been a leading news story on Halloween, then I could see some bond measure being passed which would increase taxes to pay a big company on the take to do a study on the flood plain. Then next time it flooded there would be another news story about how the company miss-appropriated the money and didn't complete the study. I was and am constantly impressed at how the local government here tries to be accountable (for some things) and enact change for the better.

So for me it's a matter of perspective (which yes, is a little Pollyanna). My property taxes here are 5X what they were in CA (and no they are not offset by the lack of State Income tax) but I see them at work around me here in Austin. In CA they paid the Chargers every time they didn't sell out a game, they paid millions to retired city workers who weren't entitled to the $, they built million $ swimming pools and athletic complexes at high schools who couldn't afford teachers, classrooms or music programs and more stupid things like that.

So while Austin may not be what it used to, even in it's altered state, it has so much to offer. And somewhere in there is an attitude of willingness to advocate and change - not everything and not fast enough for everyone, but far more than I've encountered in my 52 years. I'd prefer to live here and sit in traffic knowing this then live there and sit in traffic knowing nothing will ever change.

You may think I'm crazy or naive, I'd like to think I'm impassioned and optimistic. At some point we've all got to decide what perspective we're going to use.

[orngkat]

I never read about how many are leaving Austin. Does that statistic exist somewhere?

[austin-steve]

Originally Posted by orngkat

I never read about how many are leaving Austin. Does that statistic exist somewhere?

Probably not. I think it's anecdotal. We have net population growth due to strong job growth, so it's a question of how many are electively displaced (decide to move away) by the new, higher income inbounds.

[Aquitaine]

There is still a net gain. But it is like the Wisconsin job gain statistical problem in Jordan Ellenberg's book - when a statistic includes negative numbers, it's easy to get the wrong idea.

If you moved to Austin 15 years ago because it was affordable and offered everything you wanted, chances are your needs are less met today than they were then (assuming your income has not kept pace with the rise of the COL). You have incentive to leave.

But the same is true, and in some cases even more true, of Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, New York, and elsewhere. You can't get a steal here like you could back then. But all the same incentives that have been bringing people here are still bringing people here, and all the same incentives encouraging people to leave high-cost, high-tax states are still there. And, of course, all the incentives for people to GO to those places are also still there, California being what it is!

NPR says 55,000 people leave each year (in 9/2015 anyway)

[Ronaldon]

What's with all these complaints about people moving to Austin? Internal migration always existed and will continue to exist. Complaining that people moving to Austin is the same as complaining that some is breathing your air.

People will always migrate. LA was there at one point, now there's too many people. Once Austin gets full/too expensive, it's going to be a different city, and this will continue indefinitely as it always has as long as the US population increases.

I really don't get the logic behind these complaints.

Aside from the lack of logic, there's also a fat feeling of selfishness, to be honest. "I'm here and happy, so everybody else can buzz off."