Request for Housing Tax Credit

[Colleen Pate]

Colleagues---

My office, along with Councilmembers Velasquez and Fuentes, have spoken to city staff related to a multi-family project that has applied for a 4% affordable housing tax credit currently located in the Airport Overlay on Airport Commerce Drive. Staff is preparing a memo for council regarding this potential item.

I have serious concerns about the council supporting this type of project in the Airport Overlay. This development would be in the flight path of aircraft, including the international flights, which tend to use even larger aircraft. The impact of noise and other pollution on people concerns me. Placing an affordable housing project in an area that would have a detrimental environmental impact for future residents is not a precedent we want to start.

In fact, we shouldn’t repeat bad history. We all know that property near land uses like an airport tends to be cheaper because, frankly, it’s harder to sell land that is in a flight path with the sound and air emissions nearby. That can lead to a concentration of people with less resources living in undesirable conditions. We actually saw this with the old Mueller airport.
So, when we opened AUS, we purposefully created an overlay to avoid it happening in the future. We were attempting to prevent relegating lower income people to living in flight paths and we were attempting to not create situations that might restrict our multi-billion-dollar investment in the airport.

Unfortunately, the Affordability Unlocked bonus program inadvertently created an exception—an exception that can result in lower income people carrying the burden of living in an undesirable place. I see this as an unintentional back door to recreating a policy that is an environmental injustice. We should not put such a policy into practice, and we should fix the policy. Councilmember Fuentes and I will be coming to the council with an IFC in the future to address this issue.

I am asking the council to not move forward with the applicants request to support the Resolution of No Objection (RONO) for this project. I hope there is no need for staff to bring a RONO forward on this project and hope to have your support.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Kirk
On Behalf of Mayor Watson