Quote:
Originally Posted by the Genral
Sometimes you have to spend money to make money. I don't think any of the cities that were (are) willing to give huge incentives to lure Amazon were unaware of this and saw the benefits before making the offers. The winners will certainly gain from those incentives. Austin probably doesn't have pockets deep enough to afford the long term return on those incentives when we have so many other immediate issues to address, mainly transit and affordable housing. Heck, we were hoping Amazon would walk in and help fix some of our issues. Why would they? Because we are worth it? Maybe if we were the best and ONLY choice. Until we solve the transportation dilemma, homelessness, lack of affordable housing, ect... it would have been irresponsible to give up so much when the eventual payoff would be so far down the road. Look how difficult it has been getting MLS here based of giving them tax free use of city land. The short sightedness of so many people not seeing the eventual payoff even though in this case, the payoff would have been much sooner. I always thought Amazon would further exasperate some of the growth problems we are already dealing with. I'm sure some of you will enlighten me, but I never saw the benefit or need to have a headquarter here, not on this scale, or even half of it. How would it improve the lives of the average Austinite? How many more businesses and landmarks downtown would be replaced with high dollar condo towers so the highly paid transplants could have a place to live? As I said before, selfishly, I was only in it for perhaps the architectural value add to the skyline, and maybe a bit of prestige, but otherwise all I could see was skyrocketing housing prices, and more clogging to an already clogged transportation system. Those winning cities can absorb those issues much better than we could have. We dodged a bullet.
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with all due respect Genral, transportation/homeless will never be "solved". What large western cities in the world have those 2 issues under control?
We can't force people off the street, and we can never build enough homes where people want to live, irrespective of the proposed code changes. We can easily build them in places people don't want to live.....where it is less "cool" to live....but then people complain. Austin has plenty of homes that are affordable....I've got a new listing in S Austin that is amazing...only $265k. Sure it is not brand new, but it is a great starter home....problem is, that for snobby Austinites, it is not in a cool neighborhood (it's off Brodie, south of William Cannon close to Slaughter). A couple making median income can afford that house. But it's small, and it's not in Travis Heights or Holly, so it doesn't count as "affordable".
Then there are suburbs north, south, and east of Austin, with brand new homes....most well under $300k. Those are very affordable for the average couple, and that is why they are selling like crazy. Sure there is a commute, but nowhere near the commute of Houston or Dallas suburbs.
The reason to support Amazon coming to Austin is simply, more new jobs are always better than less jobs. You want to live in a vibrant city, rising tides lift all our boats. I grew up in a sleepy town with little/no work, it's the worst for everyone.
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