A new study shows that black residents in Austin have been leaving the city for the surrounding suburbs. Is this racism? Or does this come with the higher cost of living and real estate because of the tech boom and is it affecting families across all races?
A new study of African-American residents leaving Austin for the suburbs shows that communities of color are being displaced not just in coastal cities such asPortland and Washington, D.C. but in Texas too. And in too many cases, this can mean a lower quality of life, with less access to amenities such as supermarkets and green spaces.
As Austin’s tech economy has boomed and the music scene has turned it into a hipster mecca, the city’s real estate has grown more expensive. Historically black East Austin has experienced particularly rapid gentrification. Median home sale prices in the area increased more than 50 percent over just the two years between 2013 and 2015.
“Austin’s African American population has been in steady decline for nearly two decades,” notes the study from the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis at the University of Texas at Austin. “From 2000 to 2010 African Americans were the only racial group in Austin to experience an absolute numerical decline during a decade of otherwise remarkable growth in the city’s general population.” Over those 10 years, Austin grew 20 percent and was the third-fastest-growing large city in the U.S., but its African-American population declined by 5.4 percent.
The majority said they were priced out of the city: 56 percent identified “unaffordable housing” as a reason for leaving, by far the most common reason given. That’s not because all of them are poor. The average income among respondents was a solidly middle-class $58,540. Like other hot cities, Austin is becoming unaffordable even to many middle-class families.
The second most common reason for leaving, cited by 24 percent, was schools. East Austin’s schools are highly racially segregated, and the people interviewed believed their children had been getting a poor education in their old Austin neighborhoods.
So did the survey participants have better access to good schools and other amenities after they moved? That depends on whether they moved to a wealthy suburb or a less wealthy one, Tang and his coauthors found.
Ninety-eight percent of those who relocated to relatively affluent suburbs north of Austin said they now have access to quality public schools, compared to 69 percent of those who relocated to Austin’s lower-income eastern suburbs. In both cases, that’s greater than the 60 percent who said they had had access to good schools in Austin itself.
Read more: Grist