After more than 14 hours of public comment and a meeting that spilled over into Friday, the Austin City Council passed Phase 2 of the HOME (Home Options for Middle-Income Empowerment) Initiative. The initiative, led by District 7 Council Member Leslie Pool, seeks to amend the city's land development code to allow more and different kinds of housing to be built.
More houses is always good! Dense urban housing is a good thing. Billions of people all over the world live in it because it is human centered and efficient.
Austin’s been trying hard! Every effort at rewriting the land development code to allow for denser development has been struck down by state courts after lawsuits or the legislature has intervened. City Council is trying to find legally bulletproof methods of allowing increased density. It’s hard to see how decreasing the buildable lot size can be undone, but I also live in Texas and know our state government doesn’t care as much about the law as they do about their feels.
Now the state is trying to stop us from building the light rail system we voted for a couple years ago, too…
Also that old pic is missing like 10 towers