As Austin continues to boom and areas where some Austin residents have lived for years are "redeveloped" into much more expensive housing or multiuse buildings with no housing at all, those residents—many elderly, low-income, and disabled—are often at a loss as to where to go.
Now, as both KXAN-TV and the Austin Monitor reported last week, City Council will consider recommendations from its Housing and Community Development Committee that could require developers to relocate the tenants they displace—including, possibly, those who live in mobile homes.
The KXAN report quotes a former resident of the Lakeview Apartments who testified before the committee; the 2015 closing of the longtime low-income complex in order to demolish it and replace it with new development, as noted by The Austin Chronicle, brought attention to the issue after several similar apartment complexes in the area had been razed to make room for luxury housing.
The committee's proposed Tenant Relocation Program, which would define different kinds of relocation and potentially require a developer or landowner, the city, or some combination to provide financial relocation assistance to qualified tenants, has a number of details to be hammered out (there are also a number of provisions for proper procedure for providing tenants with information, organization, and education regarding relocation).
The possibility of including mobile-home residents in the plan arose out of last week's committee meeting, and the City Council will, in theory, discuss the matter at its regular meeting this Thursday, both KXAN and the Monitor reported.
• City considers requiring developers to help move tenants they displace [KXAN]
• Committee considers expanding proposed tenant relocation policy [Austin Monitor]
• Lakeview Residents Not Ready to Leave [The Austin Chronicle]