Time to say no to more group homes, halfway houses, sex offender housing, RV parks for hundreds of homeless people, other so-called “affordable housing” that just warehouses people with little or thought to the impact on the neighborhood, landfills, animal shelters, bus terminal storage facilities, etc. until ALL of Austin is asked to SHARE THE BURDEN for these type of facilities. Yes, they are needed. But why is every single of them targeted right on top of the East Side? They need to placed on a rotating basis in EVERY section of Austin on a fair and equitable basis.

Ask yourself why we don’t even have an Amy’s Ice Cream, a Cuilver’s, a Suzi’s, or countless other Austin businesses that have chosen every other part of Austin to expand and operate?
We are blessed with some great places such Tres Amigos, Fran’s, Amaya’s, the Dairy Queen on Manor Road, Gene’s Creole, La Boca Pizza and Eastside Pies, and Hoover’s but when you cross The Big Divide – Interstate 35 – it is as if you have entered another world. And you have.

A city employee said it best. “It’s simple. People ‘over there’ don’t vote in high numbers, they don’t participate as much in their neighborhood associations, and they won’t go to meetings. It’s simply the path of least resistance. And it will continue to be until that changes.”

This perception is having a terrible destabilizing effect on our schools. It is a major contributor to the problems at Pearce Middle School, Reagan and Johnston. Would you want to send your child to school if you knew they had to walk past a duplex filled with convicted sex offenders or a halfway house for just released parlees both to and from school? No way. This is driving our middle-class families out of East Austin and preventing others from moving into the East Side. And we all know that many of the new families that have moved into the area have no intention of sending their children to our public schools.

This is an issue of basic FAIRNESS and EQUITY. The East SIde is being played by the City of Austin and the developers and we need to STAND UP and say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

The future lies in the young people of Austin. If they can be mobilized they can turn this city around overnight and create new candidates, new vision and a new multi-racial coalition that can really make some EARTH SHAKING changes in Austin.

Obama in the White House and CHANGE in Austin! It can – AND WILL – be done.

Steve Speir
Better Austin Today
Northeast Austin Democrats
Pct. 135 Chairman, Travis County Democratic Party
(512) 451-5412