Council members voted Thursday to amend the city's land use rules, allowing developers to build up to three homes where only one or two were previously permitted.

This is one of the more misdirected things the city has done. There are literally rows of empty houses and empty apartments near me that stay permanently empty except some weekends when they are filled with bachekorettes going WOOO at 1 AM.

You can walk down Haskell and see such a row of small apartments, all empty and used strictly for STRs.

And the removal of occupation limits hamstrings one of the only tools holding the AirBNB owners accountable, not that they care much about fines anyway.

The STR issue is rapidly killing our neighborhoods, and now there will just be more.

Here is data if you don’t believe me.

http://insideairbnb.com/austin/

Also people are doing this anyway, just building sheds from scrap lumber and running an extension cord to them and renting them out. Code doesn’t seem to care, so how could this ever go wrong?

  • FigMcLargeHuge@sh.itjust.worksMEnglish
    1·
    7 months ago

    Look at all the empty land across from the Apple campus on Parmer. Or the empty land around the old Dell campus. Why aren’t neighborhoods going in there? Who owns that land?

    You task the guy about a vendetta about people who live in a nice home in a nice neighborhood and then ask this question? Sounds like a vendetta against people who lived in what used to be just cattle ranches and farmland. I have been here long enough to see these places being gobbled up by developers, so I am guessing the answer to your question is, the families that have possibly owned this land for generations isn’t ready to give it up just because a fuckton of people moved here and think they deserve it as some kind of right. Just my opinion.

    • reddig33@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      7 months ago

      Nah. They have the right to keep that land empty if that’s what they want to do. They own it. I’m just pointing out that there is empty land in Austin, owned by a variety of interests, and we don’t seem to provide any incentives to sweeten the deal for anyone who might be interested in turning it into mixed use.

      As an aside, I’d also like to see incentives for providing discounts to people who both live and work im the same development.

      • FigMcLargeHuge@sh.itjust.worksMEnglish
        2·
        7 months ago

        I see your point, but have definitely seen a cosmic shift in the way Austin looks and feels. I drive around sometimes and am just amazed at the places that have sprouted up and are full communities so I guess that’s part of my reaction here to someone saying it’s not enough. And don’t get me wrong, I am not against it, I just think that if you compare Austin now to say Austin in the 1990’s it’s crazy. Sure more can be done, and I am sure things will happen, but it does take time. Oh, and money. Lots and lots of money.