Council Is More Housing Density-Friendly. Will the New D10 Member Follow?

Candidates Ashika Ganguly (l) and Marc Duchen (image by Zeke barbaro / Getty Images (Photos courtesy of the Candidates’ Campaigns))

Over the past four election cycles, Austin’s City Council has steadily taken steps to address the city’s housing shortage by making it easier to build all kinds of housing.

For most of Austin’s political history, that approach has been widely disfavored. Even as Council has moved in a more pro-density direction, it’s been resisted by District 10 – which encompasses parts of Central and West Austin, and is whiter, wealthier, and older than in other districts.

That could change in November. Alison Alter, D10’s Council member since 2017, is not running for reelection. Two opponents are racing for her seat: Ashika Ganguly, a young South Asian woman who aligns with the shift Council has undergone on housing policy, and Marc Duchen, a middle-aged white man more aligned with Alter and the resistance to that shift.

The shift began in 2018 with the elections of Paige Ellis (D8) and Natasha Harper-Madison (D1) and the reelections of Pio Renteria (D3) and Mayor Steve Adler, all four of whom generally voted in favor of more housing. Kathie Tovo (D9), one of the city’s most stalwart supporters of a slower, more restrictive approach to housing growth was reelected. Ann Kitchen (D5), a Tovo ally, ran unopposed.

The trend appeared to slow in the 2020 election: Vanessa Fuentes (D2) won and has been solidly in favor of expanding market solutions to Austin’s housing problem. But Alter and Leslie Pool (D7) were reelected. Tovo, Kitchen, Pool, and Alter maintained a strong alliance that successfully blocked or slowed many of the more aggressive housing policies favored by the Council majority.

But the trend accelerated again in 2022. José Velásquez (D3), Ryan Alter (D5), and Zo Qadri (D9) each defeated more restrictionist candidates. Mayor Kirk Watson – whose positions on housing, as a candidate, were not totally clear – won narrowly in a runoff against a more openly expansionist candidate.

As 2023 began and the Watson Council got to work, it quickly became clear that one of the two surviving members of the restrictionist alliance – Leslie Pool – had a change of heart. She would become one of the leading champions on the dais of market-based policy solutions.

A growing body of research shows this approach can be effective and a Pew survey shows that much of the American public had shifted perspectives on housing policy, with strong majorities favoring solutions that enabled more housing production.

All of that change left Alison Alter on an island throughout 2023 and into 2024. She was the last Council member calling for a slower, more cautious approach to housing growth.

The race to replace her offers D10 voters a distinct choice on how the city should approach housing. How each candidate responded to a question about recent data reported by KUT’s Audrey McGlinchy, which shows that as more housing units in Austin have come online, rents have fallen, clearly illustrates how Ganguly and Duchen diverge on housing policy.

“I think there’s other contextual things happening within the city that have changed and influenced that trend,” Duchen said. People leaving the city, a period of much lower interest rates which made it easier to build housing, and a boom in apartment construction are all factors he pointed to. “But again,” Duchen added, “it’s partly macroeconomic trends as well as other factors.”

Alison Alter is vacating the seat (image by Zeke barbaro / Getty Images (Photo by John Anderson))

Ganguly, on the other hand, offered a more straightforward answer. “I believe in supply and demand in the housing market,” she told us. “I think we’ve seen rents fall because there’s more units on the market right now.”

These answers also reflect in the housing policies preferred by each candidate. Duchen thinks Council should take a second look at its signature housing reform of 2023 – the suite of reforms known as Home Options for Mobility and Equity (HOME) – by inserting “guardrails” that he thinks were overlooked by council.

For example: direction to city staff to study HOME’s effects on property taxes and provisions that might make the ordinance more onerous, but would ensure better compliance with the city’s heritage tree ordinance and setback requirements. Exempting certain properties or parts of town from HOME policies, perhaps. He also wants Council to take a stab at regulating short-term rentals again, which, he points out, could open up new housing units by preventing the use of dwelling units as short-term rentals and improve the quality of life of people living near STRs who feel terrorized by partygoers.

“Council’s job is to serve and protect people,” Duchen said. “That includes their family and their home.” The kind of change permitted in HOME, Duchen said, is concerning to D10 residents because it could potentially change “aspects of their home and lifestyle.”

Ganguly does not doubt the sincerity of these concerns, but she does feel they may be misplaced. Deed restrictions, homeowners association rules, and topographical features in the district are all factors constraining housing development in West Austin, Ganguly said – and HOME is not capable of changing any one of them. She wants to let the suite of reforms play out, as written, but notes that she views policy as a “living process.”

“I want to see if HOME is positive and will help with our housing crisis,” Ganguly said. “And I want to collaborate with neighbors and stakeholders on any changes if they are needed.” In the near future, Ganguly would like Council to refocus its efforts on providing “deeply affordable housing” in Austin.

The two candidates have much less distance between them on public safety. Both say D10 residents are very concerned about the prevalence of property crime in the district. They also both agree that while the Austin Police Department is understaffed and the city should offer officers raises to boost recruitment efforts, that might not be the quickest or most effective way to address the problem.

Both agree that the city and APD should increase efforts with community partners to offload certain urgent but non-threatening calls to non-sworn officers – calls like those concerning people experiencing homelessness or people dealing with a mental health crisis. Sending trained, professional first responders to those types of calls would allow APD to focus on the kind of calls that police officers are better trained and equipped to handle.

One solution Duchen offered would be creating a public-facing dashboard that residents could use to track progress on a police report they filed. Often, Duchen said, voters he’s talked to feel like APD is not addressing their concerns when really the problem is a lack of communication. Giving people a way to monitor progress on public safety concerns might alleviate that concern, Duchen said, as well as improve their trust in government more generally.

Ganguly connected the city’s affordability woes to its officer retention and recruitment problems. “We have to create a culture of policing and trust between APD and the community that makes officers feel valued,” Ganguly said. “But we also have to make the city more affordable for essential workers.”

She also supports establishing workforce training programs with area high schools and Austin Community College to get young Austinites started in law enforcement careers. This, she said, could help foster trust between APD and the community by increasing the number of Austin police officers who grew up and live in the city.