This essay dovetails with my previous post highlighting Jim Breyer’s sales pitch for Austin. The Austin I knew growing up was a community place. There were deep ties and people who helped each other. My family was a beneficiary of this during the power grid failure. The worst-hit were those brand new to Austin and didn’t have deep ties.
Austin’s historic and cultural appeal will wane as it becomes unaffordable for the very people who built this city by scratch. Growth is good, but growth without financial equality, a sense of community, and diversity will turn Austin into San Francisco, where corporations & private landlords run colonies of tech workers.
It’s becoming clear where one can choose to live comfortably in Austin but will new Austin residents care about their neighbors? Let’s keep Austin hospitable to those who never left.
Hint: the critical load list is where power outages hardly occurred. The real estate prices in these zones are skyrocketing.
Connecting Good People 