Preserving the Weird

Texas has always had some quirks in its land-use planning schemes. However, in recent years, Austin has been faced with community groups opposing gentrification and -- what they see as a tool thereof -- historic preservation.

"PODER's Exhibit A was the wholesale rehabilitation of historic residences, which not only allowed whites and 'well-heeled professionals' to play with bargain-priced attractive homes, but led to a rise in property values that 'mess[ed] with everyone's tax base as much as a mile around,' said PODER founder Susana Almanza, in an interview in a Ford Foundation newsletter. This drove out the very working-class population that built East Austin's neighborhoods. According to PODER, new owners of historic properties also received huge, permanent, historic property tax exemptions, while poor folk surrounding the upgraded homes not only had to pay more for the enhanced value of their own, less attractive, houses, but then had to make up the missing tax revenue lost to the exemption."

"Many of PODER's alarms seemed real at first. East Austin's African-American population had dropped by over 25 percent since 1980, while the white population in at least one neighborhood near downtown increased by 30 percent. Property values-and property taxes-doubled in East Austin between 1990 and 2003, with the values of historic homes in East Austin increasing even more. Over the next several years, however, as the city staff studies analyzed the meaning of these numbers and their relationship to gentrification, a different picture began to emerge."