I really think it has to do with the changing requirements of families and the condition/price of older home stock in Austin. Kev, the wave is headed your way. Just wait...granted in may take 10 years. When you grew up, those houses were pretty new, and Austin was a more modest town. A lot of people age in place. I'd say there are 10 people on my street alone who have lived on Hether since at least the 80's. The house I bought in 2015 and moved out to Bertram, housed the original owner since the 50's.
Zilker Elem was a school scheduled to be closed just a few years ago, due to the fact that the neighborhood kids all graduated high school and moved on. The houses they lived in, were VERY modest 800-1200 sqft homes ripe to be torn down. On my street alone, within 4 blocks from Bluebonnet to Lamar, there are 18 new homes...every single one of them replaced an older run down house that was beyond repair, and every single one of them has small children.
The interesting thing is, most of the newcomers are Austinites....not West Coast Techies (though there are a few). Because Zilker is primarily white (though it used be the home of at least one Freedman Town -The Goodrich Freedman Town), you don't hear gentrification cries, though the NIMBY's are out in force. I predict all of the urban core in Austin will go the route of Zilker.....nice old homes will be renovated and sold for a ton, shitty old homes will be torn down and new homes will replace them (most will be more family friendly) and sold for a ton x 2. These homes are primarily bought by families. I see it happen all around me. Zilker and Barton Hills Elem are closed to transfers for the first time in a long while, and my street is bursting with kids.
Halloween this year, I passed out candy to more than 300 kids in the rain. I just applied to the city to close our street to auto traffic for 4 hours during Halloween next year.
What is happening in Zilker is what will happen in all these older stock neighborhoods, at one point or another. It's what is supposed to happen, it a natural order. Kids grow up and move. Older homes get dealt with, and newer families will move back when it makes sense to them. I don't see this process as sad, I see it as tilling the fields for the new crop. Its beautiful, its obvious, and its life.
On the other subject of black home owner discrimination. My industry along with complicit Fed/State/Local Governments is completely 100% to blame for holding back the black community (and probably other races/ethnicity's). And I WOULD support some sort of reparations to the black community. After reading the "The Color of Law" by Richard Rothstein, I am convinced there is no other way to right our collective wrong.
https://www.npr.org/2017/05/17/52882...ed-segregation
That being said, to combat gentrification, we cannot just section off neighborhood and say only these types of people can live there. That has never worked out. Homeowners are not "pushed" out, renters are. But then, I rented in this town for 20 years before I saved enough and purchased a POS on Riverside and fixed it up. It can be done, it just takes time, risk, a ton of work and sacrifice. Most urban core homeowners sell for a ton of money. Don't feel bad for them....not one bit. The renters will have to start in cheaper neighborhoods and make it work. I don't get to live in Rollingwood cuz I want to, I have to figure it out... I first bought in Riverside in 2001. People thought I was nuts. Then I bought off Cameron Rd, then Rosedale, each time fixing them up...with lots of my own efforts, time and money. In 2011, at the bottom of the market, I bought a tear down for $218k in Zilker. Everyone I know thought I lost my mind. It was risky...yes. But after living in this town since '83, I knew it would come back stronger than ever. I've seen Austin comeback the late 90's, the mid aughts, and again now. I did however lose my ass on my 360 Condo and sold my Milago at break even.
I grew up poorer than anyone I've ever met...on hippie communes (one with no running water.....so we had an outhouse). My middle is Che as in Che Guevara. I paid my way through UT, living on Riverside working 3 jobs, one of them for $3.50/hr. I don't pity poor or hate the rich. The only reason I can afford the home I live in, is because I built it, and I don't owe a lot on it (due to the fact I rolled the profit from the last several homes into it)
We need to learn to live together...not apart.