How the Hell Are We Doing This?

City of Yes, And… #4

This is the “City of Yes, And…,” an occasional (currently monthly) newsletter for paid subscribers. Your subscription makes this work possible—thank you so much for your support!

Within a year of my moving to Austin, City Council began working on a slate of housing reforms that would make the city a leader on the national reform stage. I’m not confusing correlation with causation, of course, but it’s been immensely gratifying to have helped with these efforts and to see them come to fruition. People across the country are looking to Austin for inspiration, and one reason I write this newsletter is to provide it.

Mayor Kirk Watson shared a similar sentiment at HousingWorks Austin’s annual affordable housing summit, where I spent most of last Friday. The mayor said:

[Austin] is in the vanguard of the national housing discussion and cities all over this country right now have been looking to us for ideas about how they address their own affordability challenges. Boston, Philadelphia, Dallas, San Antonio have all reached out asking in one form of this question or another, “how the hell are you doing this?”

It’s a great question to ask just a few days after Austin passed its landmark single-stair building reform.