Ever-growing Austin

How much will Austin’s population grow by 2020? Brace yourselves.

The city's population could grow 10 percent in only five years.

Photo courtesy of Metropia

Think Austin is jam-packed now? Well, you’d better brace yourself. By 2020, the city is expected to be home to nearly 950,000 people.

A new report from the City of Austin’s auditor predicts the city’s population will swell from an estimated 855,136 in 2015 to 943,555 in 2020. That would be a population increase of 10.3 percent in just five years. As of July 2016, the city’s population stood at 931,830, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The addition of more than 88,000 residents (roughly equivalent to the entire population of Sugar Land, a Houston suburb) during the 2015-20 time span is bound to further aggravate one of the city’s nagging challenges: affordable housing.

Brandy Guthrie, 2017 president of the Austin Board of Realtors, is one of many local leaders voicing concerns over housing affordability — an issue that has spilled from the city into the suburbs.

“Unfortunately, with housing demand at an all-time high in our region and housing inventory levels near an all-time low,” Guthrie says, “our region’s housing market is increasingly becoming more unaffordable, and its infrastructure is becoming more and more strained as homebuyers look further and further outside of Austin to find a home that’s affordable.”

The city auditor’s report shows the household of the average homeowner in Austin spent $23,960 on housing in 2015, while the household of the average renter spent $12,430. That’s a significant chunk of the 2015 median household income for Austin: $52,460.

“Austin can appear to be an attractive, lower-cost destination for homebuyers from San Francisco and Los Angeles, where home prices are significantly higher,” Guthrie says, “but in general, the median household incomes of Austin residents have grown at a markedly slower pace than the steadily rising median home prices in the region. It’s a complicated dynamic.”

Within the city, the median price of a single-family home jumped 4 percent, to $342,000, between November 2015 and November 2016, according to the Austin Board of Realtors. During the same period, the median price of a single-family home in the five-county Austin metro area climbed 7 percent, to $294,245.

Renters in Austin are feeling the same sort of financial pinch.

The Apartment List website says the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Austin sits at $1,190, while the median rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,500. In a survey, renters gave a grade of C to housing affordability in Austin, with public transit and commute times being the only factors that received lower marks.

Shortly after taking office in 2015, Austin Mayor Steve Adler highlighted the city’s affordable housing problem, pointing out that nearly 50,000 Austin families are unable to afford rent of even $500 a month.

Adler said Austin neighborhoods that offer affordable housing are gentrifying rapidly, leading to higher housing prices, which hit lower- and middle-class families especially hard. To address the “housing supply gap” for lower- and middle-income households, Austin needs to build about 100,000 more homes, apartments, and other dwellings by 2025, the mayor said, and needs to prevent 35,000 affordable dwellings from vanishing due to gentrification.

Fortunately, while demand for new homes in the Austin area shows no signs of letting up, the supply is catching up, says Vaike O’Grady, Austin regional director of Metrostudy, a supplier of data about residential construction. In 2016, the Austin area saw construction begin on about 13,400 homes, according to Metrostudy.

O'Grady says that to combat the widening local gap between income and home prices, some homebuilders in the Austin area are putting up houses with stripped-down amenities or are constructing condos, townhomes, and duplexes — which often are cheaper than traditional single-family homes — on smaller, less costly lots.

“As more and more people seek to call Austin home, it’s critical that our community’s leaders work to allow for more types and price points of housing where it’s needed most, while preserving our city’s unique culture and high quality of life,” says Guthrie.

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San Antonio leads Texas on ending horse-drawn carriage rides by 2030

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Horses will no longer pull carriages on the streets of downtown San Antonio.

San Antonio has pulled off something that the rest of Texas has yet to do, but it didn't come without some contentious conversations. City Council has unanimously voted (with one abstention) to phase out the use of horse-drawn carriages over the next five years. That means by January 1, 2030, there will be none on the streets at all; instead, there will be electric carriages.

These plans have been in the making since 2022 — if not always at the same level of intensity — when District 2 Councilmember Jalen McKee-Rodriguez and District 3 Councilmember Phyllis Viagran wrote up some concerns about the horses' wellbeing. A special session at the end of October 2024 hinted to San Antonians that the end for this practice was neigh — sorry, nigh — and the final vote was made on December 12. In addition to accepting the plan, it extended its timeframe by two years.

The initial proposal included worries about the horses' exposure to traffic and pollution, as well how their presence might exacerbate those issues for the environment at large by slowing traffic. It also raised concerns about the effects of standing or walking on hard surfaces for too long, or spending time in extreme weather.

At the December 12 meeting, San Antonians gave impassioned speeches about animal welfare — both to call attention to the need for better conditions and to defend the reputations and jobs of current horse drivers — but it wasn't the first time the council heard from the public about the issue.

In a prior city survey, 50,476 respondents weighed in. Of those respondents, 51.98 percent said they liked the idea to "Transition horse-drawn carriages to electric carriages and pedicabs and ban horse drawn carriages completely." There were alternative solutions listed, but respondents were less drawn to them.

A cultural divide emerged in the data and continued in the December meeting: some people avoided the carriages because they worried about the treatment of the horses, while others enjoyed them because of their historical echoes and living legacy. Many speakers in favor of the plan used this to form their argument, raising questions about history versus progress.

More tangible objections to the plan hinged on the businesses — specifically five companies — and jobs that would be lost, which was the main factor behind extending the adjustment period.

Discussions about the particulars of the electric vehicles are still to come, as confirmed in the discussion near the end of the meeting. Councilmember Jalen McKee-Rodriguez addressed concerns about what would happen to the horses, mentioning the Brady Hunter Foundation as a future partner in finding them rescue homes.

Some council members also brought up rhetorical questions about animal exploitation by groups like Sea World, the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo, military and police forces, and even various groups in the Fiesta parade, although these did not come with a formal motion to pick the issues up.

This decision could have a ripple effect on other Texas cities. Dallas has recently considered a similar ban, but it appears to have stalled; Austin's attempts at a ban have been unsuccessful, but according to the Austin-American Statesman, only one operator is permitted to bring horses downtown. She declines to do so because the long hours are unfair to her and the horses. Houston does have horse-drawn carriages, and there seems to be little conversation about banning them.

Cities like Chicago and Salt Lake City have led the charge in the United States with some of the most prominent successful bans. Other cities around the world with bans include Brussels and Guadalajara, which both switched to electric models. Bans that have been around for years, like Guadalajara's and Prague's, still aren't out of the woods — people are still pushing back on the decision, so it sounds like San Antonio still has much work cut out for it.

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