Expensive Geography

Earlier this year, the nonprofit housing advocacy group Green Doors, in collaboration with the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, released a report titled "The Geography of Opportunity in Austin and How It Is Changing." The report builds on the work of a 2007 report that tracked the "geography of opportunity" across Austin area neighborhoods, in which "opportunity" is defined as "a situation or condition that places individuals in a position to be more likely to succeed or excel" – that is, access to excellent education, economic mobility, adequate housing, and so on. The report literally "maps" the relative geography of opportunity across the Austin area.

The 2013 report uses the baseline information established in 2007 and incorporates a "Change Index" to reflect "how demographics and different indicators of opportunity have shifted over the last decade."

While the entire report is quite complex in neighborhood detail and incorporates both static and interactive online maps for analysts to use in shaping policy decisions, it highlights "four broad issues" reflected in the regional data, including both the necessity for and the limits of affordable housing policy in addressing the "geography of opportunity."

1) The fast-growing Hispanic population (now about 31% of the metropolitan population) is primarily located in low opportunity areas. "It is imperative to improve Hispanic people's access to opportunity – especially educational opportunity."

2) Gentrification east of I-35 is steadily displacing the African-American and Hispanic populations. "Thus, even if these areas become higher opportunity, the people who need access to that opportunity the most will not benefit."

3) "Affordable housing must be expanded in higher opportunity areas. ... Affordable housing is intended to be a ladder to the middle class, but it cannot work if the upper rungs of the ladder are cut off."

4) A number of low opportunity communities are also declining. Subsidized affordable housing in high opportunity areas is necessary but not sufficient. "[T]he real solution is to bring opportunity to people ... through place-based investments in low opportunity areas."