Important piece on the topic of gentrification and how this particularly impacts Latina women. Check out this statement by UT Professor Dr. Alberto Martinez who is quoted within:

Martinez said the data also show that for every $1 a white man makes, Latinas make about 58 cents, which he said is also less than what Black women make (66 cents), white women make (80 cents) or Asian women make (97 cents).

A deeper issue, as referenced by Bertha Rendon Delgado whose family is from East Austin, the cultural erasure that accompanies gentrification is unconscionable, tearing into the soul of the community. This is very sad and tragic. Not only are the wealthy well positioned for this land grab, but as Dr. Martinez indicates, this dynamic is tied to the 58 cents to every dollar earned by Latina women relative to white men. 

We desperately need more education, better jobs, and salary equity in society.

-Angela Valenzuela

Hispanic flight from Austin tied to affordability, gentrification, experts say

Bertha Rendon Delgado said the East Austin neighborhood she grew up in isn’t what it used to be. The neighbors she once knew and houses that made up the area have slowly started to disappear.

Rising property taxes and the redevelopment of the neighborhood has pushed many families out, completely changing the face of the once thriving Chicano community, she said.

“Our culture has been struggling for centuries,” Delgado said, “And people don’t understand what has happened to my community.”

The East Town Lake neighborhood, which makes up part of Austin’s District 3, has faced an increase in property taxes and the cost of living — what many residents are seeing as gentrification — pushing many Hispanic families out.

The trend is happening all over the city, as more and more Hispanic families seek affordability outside of the Austin city limits.

Carlos A. Martinez, a spokesperson for the League of United Latin American Citizens, said Austin is a desirable city for people to live and work, and the more people move in, the higher the demand becomes for jobs and real estate.

But that is not good news for everyone.

“Austin is one of the most expensive places to live in Texas,” Martinez said. “And as more and more people move in, it becomes less and less attainable for working-class people.”

Hispanic families, which he said make up a good portion of the working class, move to places they can afford, but because they still work in Austin, their destinations tend to be neighboring Travis County communities such as Del Valle or Manor, or places adjacent to the county, such as Buda in Hays County or areas near the Williamson County line.

Priced out

According to the latest U.S. Census Bureau information, while Austin’s overall population has grown about 23% over the last decade, its Hispanic population growth has become sluggish, growing only 10% since 2010. That is outpaced by both its Black and Asian populations, which grew 20% and 70%, respectively.

But what has become even more alarming, some say, is that Austin’s Hispanic population not only grew at a slower pace in the last decade, but since 2016 that population has started to shrink, dropping from 329,484 in 2016 to 318,016 in 2019, which is about 32.5% of the total Austin population. In 2010, Hispanics were about 36% of the city’s population.

Meanwhile, Austin’s neighboring cities and counties are seeing large increases in their Hispanic population. Cedar Park, Manor and Buda have seen more than 150% growth, far outpacing Hispanic population growth in Austin.

Statewide, the Hispanic population grew about 21%.

Alberto Martinez, a University of Texas history professor, said gentrification, property prices and the fact that Hispanics are lower wage earners contribute to this demographic shift.

He said Hispanics nationwide are making far less money annually than most other groups.

Data from the Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey show a widening gap in median annual incomes. For white households, the median income sat at about $90,000 a year, and for Asian households it averaged about $95,000 a year, but the median income for Hispanic households was about $55,000 in 2020.

Martinez said the data also show that for every $1 a white man makes, Latinas make about 58 cents, which he said is also less than what Black women make (66 cents), white women make (80 cents) or Asian women make (97 cents).

As rising property prices and taxes strain the finances of working-class families, Austin-area home sales continue to soar even amid the coronavirus pandemic.

October data from the Austin Board of Realtors show the median price of a home in the five-county metro area was $365,000, and within Austin’s city limits, the median sales price was $441,250. That is more than a 13% increase compared with the same time last year.

“So this affects Latinas nationwide,” Martinez said. “Because when they receive their paychecks, on the whole, Latinas are making almost half as much. So for a single Latina mother, this means she can’t live in Austin. She’ll live in (Buda or Cedar Park) and then drive in to work every day.”

Finding a resolution

Enacting local policy changes could help solve this issue, Martinez said.

“It is not an accident that Latinos are being squeezed out of Austin” because they are in the low-income categories, he said. “But I think this can be solved if the City Council pays attention to working wages, property taxes and rental prices. Many Hispanics work in Austin but don’t live here, and that is because the city is pricing them out by not enacting policies that look after low-income workers.”

Council Member Sabino “Pio” Renteria, who represents Austin’s east and south central neighborhoods, said the council has been crafting a new process leading to new development rules for the city.

“Part of the problem is the way we appraise our land value here in Austin,” Renteria said. “What happens is that people have been paying huge amounts of money for land. So developers will come in and buy a house and tear down and build two houses on it and sell them for half a million dollars each.”

He said that then drives up property values, and therefore property taxes. For families who are already struggling to keep up with raising taxes, and people older than 65 and on a fixed income, affording their homes becomes more challenging. He said many longtime families of the area are renters, so when their landlord sells out, they get displaced.

That is why, he said, he has shifted his focus to high-density affordable housing, which he hopes to make available for not only low-income and working-class families, but for older residents as well. The goal is to recreate a Mueller-style area where 25% of homes are low-income housing.

“It breaks my heart to see people sell their homes; it’s very sad,” Renteria said. “And it’s been really hard to get the code changed, because we have gotten a lot of pushback from the community. But a new code could allow us to build more units on a (single) lot to support working-class and low-income families.”

After watching the community she loves slowly disappear, Delgado is now on a mission to preserve the original culture of thriving Hispanic families and businesses.Preserving Chicano culture

Delgado, who has lived on Haskell Street for nearly her entire life, said the only traces of the Latino culture that defined the neighborhood are the few murals on the walls of the defunct Holly Street Power Plant that tell stories about the strength of the Chicano people.

She has joined other local artists in spearheading community art projects through Arte Texas, a group dedicated to restoring and preserving street art and graffiti murals.

But even that effort has been a challenge, she said, as more people move into the area, pushing out and erasing the original families who made up the neighborhood.

“Our neighborhood is being gentrified more every day, and it has become increasingly more difficult to keep and restore our art,” Delgado said. “When new people move in, they want to see what they want to see, so they start to erase our murals and us.”

But nothing will stop her from finding ways and resources to preserve the area’s original culture, she said. Delgado continues to work with the city and local artists to preserve the art.

She also is working on obtaining a real estate license, so she can help families invest in their homes while trying to unite the community and bridge the divide between the new and legacy families.

“The character of our neighborhood has slowly vanished, and the division here has never been more real,” Delgado said. “But we don’t want to be erased and our history to be lost. I want the music, food and residents to still remain, and I want tranquility and peace for us all, so that we can all enjoy what we all worked so hard for.”