Home and Ownership

Today is tax day and across America we will be writing checks, filling in forms for both State and Federal taxes in which to ensure our role in the defining marker of equality and parity in American Democracy. Yeah that is working out great, right?

One of the ideas that is instilled in Americans is the dream of Home Ownership. And that has been peddled along with the idea that a College Degree is the key to success. And that is working out great, right?

Owning a home is perhaps the most daunting project one can take on. It is considered wealth building, provides economic security and builds a concept of community as one lives, builds a family, works and lives in a home for at least the term of the Mortgage (that usually 30 years) and in turn sends their Children to local schools, which are paid for through the taxes on said home. This like Meritocracy is a massive myth.

Home ownership MAY have been that at some point in the economic ladder but like Union jobs, decent wages, pension plans and other financial incentives such as supporting infrastructure that includes schools, public transportation, roads and all that align said roads, from crosswalks to street lighting, I suggest you take a trip to a Southern City and see how that fails in every stretch of the imagination. Even some larger cities that are appreciated for density fail in providing that equally across the board to all citizens as you can see in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco.

One book that deals with some of the failures of policy when it comes to issues regarding housing, especially affordable housing is a book called San Francisko. But there are other books that have covered the economic failures such as Evicted, Nickel and Dimed to name a few. The reality is that housing has always been a NIMBY issue by many regardless of their political and economic leanings. They may be for different reasons but the issue is the same when it comes to costs. And by that we mean Property Tax. This is the least transparent of tax systems and this article about how New York City demonstrates that the poorer homeowner often subsidizes the richer home owner when it comes to the way taxes are assessed.

And this is not just in New York, Colorado is facing a similar situation. And the move to remote work led many to find themselves relocating to cheaper environs in which to work and live and surprise they are not the Nirvana one imagines. As I can attest living in Nashville I experienced first hand the United States equivalent of third world country trying to navigate a city with lackluster public transportation, poor sidewalks, no crosswalks, high traffic fatalities, shitty infrastructure when it comes to weather issues and then the largest issue – the failures of the public school system. This article discusses the way these areas nickel and dime you to death when it comes to subsidizing the city when property and/or income taxes are low.

One of the major beliefs in home ownership which still mystifies me is a “starter home” that one buys and maintains to eventually leave and build up or move up. I had never heard of this until the arrival of HGTV and with that flipping also became a new moniker in which to convey they idea of buying properties that a dilapidated and in turn fixing them and turning them over to make a buck. I recall that may have been a factor in the crash of 2008 but again those were different times, right? True lower than lower mortgage rates, less down, shorter term loans and of course Realtors and Mortgage Brokers willing to find suckers, whoops I mean, clients willing to sign the contract. That worked out well, didn’t it?

I could get into a discussion about Real Estate and their MONOPOLY (the reality not the game on which irony that it is based) on selling and buying homes. The recent Missouri Case regarding the National Association of Realtors and that subject is best explained in this article from some of the actual Homeowners behind the case. It is shocking to realize how exploited and dependent we are on agents who have little to no business background, accounting or legal knowledge yet we hand over thousands of dollars to them to exchange property. A Lawyer could do it for a flat fee and so could any Agent, but that is not how it has been done. Okay then.

I have written often about how Real Estate Agents are one step above a Used Car Salesman and again Television has glorified it with varying reality shows that have them raking in the bucks and living the life. That is not the life of the “average” Real Estate Agent. This is one perspective I found that explains wages and incomes in varying markets. But like many other industries, this is industry that is not exempt from those that define corporate hierarchy, or is that Patriarchy? As the the story behind the such as this reason the NAR (irony that the acronym is so close to the NRA) head stepped down. Or this story about another Real Estate Agency, eXp, and their “issues” regarding harm. But just a review of a search in the NY Times brings article after article about the real estate industry and its many “issues.”

Aside from that industry that has contributed to housing costs, housing shortages and denting one’s savings via commissions and costs (come on do you really need to stage a home?) that ultimately come out of the seller’s pocket, there is little to no reason to believe that the equity you have built in your home for many will entitle them to a million dollar retirement. Again that is the reality of real estate, the rich stay richer, the poor stay well less poor in some cases if they have a hot house in a hot market.

But the real problems with home ownership other than maintenance which includes insurance, upkeep as those two factors with Climate problems of late are placing burdens on many, is the biggest check one will write – Property Taxes.

I have reprinted this editorial from the Times regarding this issue and it is something that we have to ask why? As I live in Jersey City the city mentioned in the article I can see firsthand what happened to this city and the aftermath of what it means for its residents, past.

It’s Time to End the Quiet Cruelty of Property Taxes

April 11, 2024 The New York Times Guest Essay

By Andrew W. Kahrl

Dr. Kahrl is a professor of history and African American studies at the University of Virginia and the author of “The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America.”

Property taxes, the lifeblood of local governments and school districts, are among the most powerful and stealthy engines of racism and wealth inequality our nation has ever produced. And while the Biden administration has offered many solutions for making the tax code fairer, it has yet to effectively tackle a problem that has resulted not only in the extraordinary overtaxation of Black and Latino homeowners but also in the worsening of disparities between wealthy and poorer communities. Fixing these problems requires nothing short of a fundamental re-examination of how taxes are distributed.

In theory, the property tax would seem to be an eminently fair one: The higher the value of your property, the more you pay. The problem with this system is that the tax is administered by local officials who enjoy a remarkable degree of autonomy and that tax rates are typically based on the collective wealth of a given community. This results in wealthy communities enjoying lower effective tax rates while generating more tax revenues; at the same time, poorer ones are forced to tax property at higher effective rates while generating less in return. As such, property assessments have been manipulated throughout our nation’s history to ensure that valuable property is taxed the least relative to its worth and that the wealthiest places will always have more resources than poorer ones.

Black people have paid the heaviest cost. Since they began acquiring property after emancipation, African Americans have been overtaxed by local governments. By the early 1900s, an acre of Black-owned land was valued, for tax purposes, higher than an acre of white-owned land in most of Virginia’s counties, according to my calculations, despite being worth about half as much. And for all the taxes Black people paid, they got little to nothing in return. Where Black neighborhoods began, paved streets, sidewalks and water and sewer lines often ended. Black taxpayers helped to pay for the better-resourced schools white children attended. Even as white supremacists treated “colored” schools as another of the white man’s burdens, the truth was that throughout the Jim Crow era, Black taxpayers subsidized white education.

Freedom from these kleptocratic regimes drove millions of African Americans to move to Northern and Midwestern states in the Great Migration from 1915 to 1970, but they were unable to escape racist assessments, which encompassed both the undervaluation of their property for sales purposes and the overvaluation of their property for taxation purposes. During those years, the nation’s real estate industry made white-owned property in white neighborhoods worth more because it was white. Since local tax revenue was tied to local real estate markets, newly formed suburbs had a fiscal incentive to exclude Black people, and cities had even more reason to keep Black people confined to urban ghettos.

As the postwar metropolis became a patchwork of local governments, each with its own tax base, the fiscal rationale for segregation intensified. Cities were fiscally incentivized to cater to the interests of white homeowners and provide better services for white neighborhoods, especially as middle-class white people began streaming into the suburbs, taking their tax dollars with them.

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One way to cater to wealthy and white homeowners’ interests is to intentionally conduct property assessments less often. The city of Boston did not conduct a citywide property reassessment between 1946 and 1977. Over that time, the values of properties in Black neighborhoods increased slowly when compared with the values in white neighborhoods or even fell, which led to property owners’ paying relatively more in taxes than their homes were worth. At the same time, owners of properties in white neighborhoods got an increasingly good tax deal as their neighborhoods increased in value.

As was the case in other American cities, Boston’s decision most likely derived from the fear that any updates would hasten the exodus of white homeowners and businesses to the suburbs. By the 1960s, assessments on residential properties in Boston’s poor neighborhoods were up to one and a half times as great as their actual values, while assessments in the city’s more affluent neighborhoods were, on average, 40 percent of market value.

Jersey City, N.J., did not conduct a citywide real estate reassessment between 1988 and 2018 as part of a larger strategy for promoting high-end real estate development. During that time, real estate prices along the city’s waterfront soared but their owners’ tax bills remained relatively steady. By 2015, a home in one of the city’s Black and Latino neighborhoods worth $175,000 received the same tax bill as a home in the city’s downtown worth $530,000.

These are hardly exceptions. Numerous studies conducted during those years found that assessments in predominantly Black neighborhoods of U.S. cities were grossly higher relative to value than those in white areas.

These problems persist. A recent report by the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy found that property assessments were regressive (meaning lower-valued properties were assessed higher relative to value than higher-valued ones) in 97.7 percent of U.S. counties. Black-owned homes and properties in Black neighborhoods continue to be devalued on the open market, making this regressive tax, in effect, a racist tax.

The overtaxation of Black homes and neighborhoods is also a symptom of a much larger problem in America’s federated fiscal structure. By design, this system produces winners and losers: localities with ample resources to provide the goods and services that we as a nation have entrusted to local governments and others that struggle to keep the lights on, the streets paved, the schools open and drinking water safe. Worse yet, it compels any fiscally disadvantaged locality seeking to improve its fortunes to do so by showering businesses and corporations with tax breaks and subsidies while cutting services and shifting tax burdens onto the poor and disadvantaged. A local tax on local real estate places Black people and cities with large Black populations at a permanent disadvantage. More than that, it gives middle-class white people strong incentives to preserve their relative advantages, fueling the zero-sum politics that keep Americans divided, accelerates the upward redistribution of wealth and impoverishes us all.

There are technical solutions. One, which requires local governments to adopt more accurate assessment models and regularly update assessment rolls, can help make property taxes fairer. But none of the proposed reforms being discussed can be applied nationally because local tax policies are the prerogative of the states and, often, local governments themselves. Given the variety and complexity of state and local property tax laws and procedures and how much local governments continue to rely on tax reductions and tax shifting to attract and retain certain people and businesses, we cannot expect them to fix these problems on their own.

The best way to make local property taxes fairer and more equitable is to make them less important. The federal government can do this by reinvesting in our cities, counties and school districts through a federal fiscal equity program, like those found in other advanced federated nations. Canada, Germany and Australia, among others, direct federal funds to lower units of government with lower capacities to raise revenue.

And what better way to pay for the program than to tap our wealthiest, who have benefited from our unjust taxation scheme for so long? President Biden is calling for a 25 percent tax on the incomes and annual increases in the values of the holdings of people claiming more than $100 million in assets, but we could accomplish far more by enacting a wealth tax on the 1 percent. Even a modest 4 percent wealth tax on people whose total assets exceed $50 million could generate upward of $400 billion in additional annual revenue, which should be more than enough to ensure that the needs of every city, county and public school system in America are met. By ensuring that localities have the resources they need, we can counteract the unequal outcomes and rank injustices that our current system generates.

Land Grab

To get settlers to move west there was a push to grab as much land as possible in which to build wealth. This often meant large stretches of dry barren land. In Texas and Oklahoma that land begat wealth when oil was discovered and a new land baron was born. Some turned to Cattle and in the West that became land dedicated to harvesting forest and wood. Farmland has never generated much wealth and that is why today most farming is Corporate or now owned by Bill Gates and in turn a new type of sharecropper is born as you know he sure isn’t out there turning the soil.

That was the early days of America and the new Barons came of out Industry, taking raw goods and producing steel, fabric and with that building a new economy from manufacturing. With that came the growth of finance to handle the money from the new marketplace and that is the story behind the Lehman Brothers bank that so famously collapsed in 2008 leading to that massive recession. The Lehman Family were Immigrants and with that opened a dry goods store in the South then in turn became distributors of cotton and then moved into banking and finance as there corporate interests grew and their wealth did alongside it. The Lehman Trilogy is a great book made into an even greater play and there is not at time I don’t go into the Metropolitan Museum to wander the Robert Lehman Gallery which houses some of the massive troves of art he collected in his lifetime. That is what we call “old money”

New money is tech and medicine. That is what remade Nashville as a med and and ed city as the area surrounding the city is loaded with colleges and universities giving it the name, “Athens of the South.” The irony is that the State itself produces few to little college graduates of its own residents and remains in the bottom five in the country with regards to Education. And then a flood came and with that the city rebuilt and became a Tourist/Convention destination that brought in a new kind of money and industry and that fuels much of the growth in that area. With the new competition for companies to relocate and build more jobs with more wages tax incentives, the lack of an income tax is the bribe and the reason many do move there and to Texas as who doesn’t love money? Well that the Bible Belt and the home of the Prosperity Pulpit, they sure don’t. But with it comes the issue of housing. In all honesty housing is just a part of it. The infrastructure which includes roads, trash, water and schools are all part of the larger picture and the ones we ignore when we are in search of a better life. Then once you move and find the cost of living absorbing whatever gains you make that better life seems further out of reach and in turn you are now a hostage as you cannot afford to stay but you cannot afford to leave.

What is also worrisome is that these same places claim to be havens for the ones who want to avoid regulations and stop freedoms, while going out of their way to do just that but on a highly personal level but even in some cases business with states forbidding the states and the municipalities within said cities to do business with banks that promote climate change, want to retain abortion rights or any other civil rights issue such as diversity training as illegal. So which is it? Again I have a neck problem from the constant turning my head to go WTF?

And with that comes the migrants, not the Immigrants as they will be bused out to blue states and a war using people as Chess pieces begins, but the poor from other communities who see the shiny keys and will relocate for better jobs. Despite the fact that the last decade the migration of the American worker has slowed and more are moving out of states that too expensive and this trend seems now focused on the rich who can afford to do so further imperiling stability in once thriving busy urban areas. So the new land barons seizing up property in Wyoming and Colorado and Idaho are doing it while also causing the residents who have lived there for decades to lose their homes and cannot find anywhere to rent or buy in which to remain. This is truly a Catch 22 in every sense of the word as the rich need those workers to serve them. So get those robots going tech geeks.

From trailer parks to multi family and single family housing much of it is being bought up by investors. The push out the current residents/tenants and in turn rent at higher prices or sell and flip at inflated prices. In LA some house flippers are now renting their own inventory as they cannot sell at a profit that you once saw on such shows as Flip or Flop which again is a part of the problem, along with the AirBnb bullshit that takes up a great deal of certain markets, such as Nashville and Austin, which are also what again? Big tourist destinations and college towns that requires housing needs for the long term but still temporary basis.

I reprint below this article about a housing issue in Austin, a city I also once lived in. Name an “it” city and I lived in it and found it awful. See I see the bigger picture and when you see what is in background and foreground of a painting you are seeing the Artist’s perspective, until you step into the frame you are not aware of what is within that creation beyond that sight frame. Texas and Tennessee are nightmares politically and with that I am glad I left them in my rear view mirror. I have also lived in both San Francisco and San Diego and again the problems facing that state are less about legislation, taxes and business, as there are real environmental problems that need to be addressed. Add to that the NIMBY bullshit is greater there then likely anywhere else in the country. It is heavily class based and not fueled by Racism as it was in Nashville, Nashville won’t expand public transport as the White rich fear Black people being able to bus in their communities. And do what? Work? No rob them. It is laughable. And much of that fear is promoted by the owner and wealthy Oligarch who owns what? Car Dealerships. Self interests and money trump race every day in the South. But politics aside, home ownership is going to become a thing of the past. And with that what that means to build wealth and have house security is largely a method that will be at risk for most Americans. And Politics will matter as the generous tax subsidies and deductions for home ownership must change (and with that again stiff the rich) and move it to those who rent, and with that be based on income with more buildings also including low income tenants; You know the ones that ride the bus.

Austin is a great place to visit, live there no. But when I read one of the Queer Eye Guy moved there I realized that bubbles apparently cannot be popped or you are so busy you don’t know the reality of where you live. Austin folks is the State Capital and a college town and there is ample ways of knowing facts if you want to, so ignorance in this case is willful. But hey we all have to live somewhere, own it, that is not going to happen anymore for many of us. Live with that.

American dream of owning a home out of reach for many in tight markets

Many middle- and lower-income Americans are left with a dwindling number of options or forced into renting while supply increases for the wealthiest buyers

Tom Perkins in Austin, Texas The Guardian Fri 19 Aug 2022

Samantha Hawkins had a clear vision for her first home: the 29-year-old from Austin, Texas, wanted a detached house surrounded by a yard for her dog, a garden and a stable space where she could put down roots.

By January, when she bid $230,000 on a tiny, yardless condo converted from a rental studio, she had “bent on a lot of the things I valued”. She found herself beaten by investors willing to pay cash far above the listing price, and buy sight unseen in gameshow-like bidding wars.

The 496-sq-ft condo was one of the very few Austin homes she could still afford as prices soared in January. Her offer put her among the finalists, but at the last minute, the seller threw a new curveball: the other bidders had signed an appraisal waiver. Hawkins needed more cash she didn’t have, so she “bowed out”.

Across the US, many have faced similar roadblocks: prices popped as a confluence of forces suppressed supply and inflated demand, leaving many middle- and lower-income buyers with a dwindling number of housing options, or forcing them into rentership.

Now, with interest rates rising and the housing market cooling, things are supposed to be different. So far they aren’t. Nationally, house prices hit an all-time high in June of $416,000, up 13.4% from a year ago.

The challenges Austin buyers are still experiencing show just how difficult the dream of owning your own home has become for a broad swath of Americans.

“I’ve worked really hard the last year or two and made the right choices financially to try to have a chance, but it seems like I can’t really win in this market,” Hawkins said.

The problems plaguing tight markets nationally have all hit Austin. Hawkins is competing with investors who now account for more than 30% of single-family home sales, Airbnb operators and any number of the about 125 people moving to Austin daily amid dizzying job growth. Meanwhile, builders haven’t kept pace with demand and zoning laws limit new multifamily housing that could provide relief.

May’s median sale prices in Austin and surrounding Travis county hit new peaks of $676,000 and $625,000, respectively – up from around $400,000 just before the pandemic. That’s put pressure on the rental market, pushing the median rent above $2,700 and fueling displacement.

And even though Austin’s June home inventory doubled over the prior year as interest rate hikes cooled demand, supply is only increasing for the wealthiest buyers.

The portion of national listings that someone earning $75,000 annually could afford dropped from 40% to 25% between January and June as home prices and mortgage rates climbed, National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) data shows.

“The higher inventory is promising, but not for middle- and lower-income groups,” said Nadia Evangelou, an economist with NAR.

There’s some evidence of that on the ground. Austin realtor Sherry LeBlanc, who focuses on finding homes for first-time buyers, recently listed a house that could have fetched $515,000 last year for $435,000 with the expectation that middle-income buyers would snap it up. Instead, showings were slow and only investors bid.

“Families are scared off by interest rates,” she said. “They say, ‘Well, shit, that’s out of my budget.’”

For those like Hawkins stuck in rentership, the crisis hits on a financial level. Homeownership is a key instrument for wealth building and security, and loss of access to it represents a “breach of the social contract”, said Austin realtor Socar Chatmon-Thomas.

“It’s pissing me off because somebody who went to school, got a degree, or otherwise did everything right and now has a job making $60,000 can’t buy a home,” she said.

Investor demand

Even with a six-figure tech salary, Courtney McKinley couldn’t buy in the city. The parks, restaurants, pools and friends that attracted her to a rental in Austin’s Zilker neighborhood were off the table as the lowest house prices had inched toward $1m.

But even as she looked around the city’s edge and suburbs, she couldn’t top the cash offers. A $350,000 bid on an over 40-year-old townhouse that “needed some help” was beaten by an investor who offered $50,000 more in cash. Weeks later, she lost on a dilapidated townhome despite including a $50,000 escalation clause. The next month, an offer $30,000 over asking price on a sun-filled, three-bedroom home that felt perfect was turned down. “That was a heartbreak moment. I cried after that one,” McKinley said.

After more dead ends, she finally won with a $400,000 bid for a two-bedroom that needed a new kitchen, patio, floors and other improvements. It’s in Pflugerville, a sprawling suburb of strip malls and big box stores that’s in a “kind of isolating” location, McKinley said. Ultimately, however, she says she feels lucky: friends have put in up to 15 offers and still don’t have a house.

“It was a rollercoaster, but no matter how difficult and frustrating it was, at least I’m building equity now,” she said.

For middle-class Austinites like McKinley being outbid by cash offers in Austin, this much feels clear: investors are part of the problem.

While some argue the percentage of investor-owned single family purchases nationally remains low, tight “sun belt” markets like metro Austin have seen it double from about 15% throughout the mid-2010s to over 30% in 2022’s first quarter. And investors often target the type of homes that middle-income earners like McKinley are seeking, as well as those in lower-income, minority neighborhoods

“Investors are not focused on the higher end of the market,” said Georgia Tech urban planning professor Elora Lee Raymond. “It’s entry-level homes that are being snapped up and are incredibly difficult to purchase at this time.”

Beyond having the resources to place higher bids and pay with cash, investors often buy homes sight unseen, and typically skip appraisals and inspections. Some companies also use algorithms to place bids within hours of homes being listed, and Wall Street-backed institutional investors are viewed as particularly problematic.

The five largest private equity buyers added 76,000 homes to their portfolio between March 2018 and September 2021, and their model has been derided by critics as “industrial housing” as they maximize profits by raising rents and skimping on maintenance.

A June US House committee investigation highlighting private equity’s role in local housing crises noted corporate landlords in Atlanta were up to 205 times more likely to evict tenants, and increased rents by an average of 37-57% within a year of purchasing properties.

However, it’s virtually impossible to quantify how much investors are pushing up home prices, and the situation is a “chicken and egg” question, said Thom Malone, an economist for real estate data analyst CoreLogic.

“Where investors go, prices go up, but to what extent is this because the prices were going up because demand increased?” Malone asked. “It’s probably a bit of both.”

Meanwhile, another breed of investor is depleting stock in tourist-friendly areas: short-term rental operators. Though the city says Airbnb owners operate about 3,000 units, housing advocate Inside Airbnb gleaned the company’s listings and found about 12,000, including 10,000 whole home units. And that accounts for one company – the true number of short-term rentals is probably much higher.

In one east Austin neighborhood, Airbnb in June controlled about 12% of the housing units, Inside Airbnb found. While about 270 units were available for long-term rent during a 2020 US census survey, more than 1,300 whole home units were available on Airbnb in June.

“Even without some economic researcher looking into it, common sense tells you that these are entire apartments that are no longer available, and people will be directly or indirectly displaced,” said Inside Airbnb founder Murray Cox.

Short supply

The signs of a construction boom are evident across Travis county, the fifth-most populous county in Texas. Along the metro region’s edges, new neighborhoods and strip malls are multiplying, while closer to the city core in south Austin, expensive new condo buildings have sprouted among the old restaurants, strip malls and pawn shops on Congress Avenue.

Though Austin has grown at an exceptional clip for decades, the recent population spike is partly driven by tech: Oracle, Tesla, Meta, HP Enterprise and many more have relocated or opened offices here. That’s coupled with demand from New York and California buyers who relocated during the pandemic, and millennials entering the market.

Monthly new construction home closures in Austin in 2021 were up by 53% from pre-pandemic highs, CoreLogic data shows, but the city is struggling to build its way out of the crisis: supply chain squeezes and labor shortages observers pin on Trump’s immigration policies have slowed the construction cycle.

“Supply is a tortoise and demand is a gazelle, so when there’s a sudden increase in demand, it takes years for new supply to come on the market, and in the meantime there’s this huge surge in prices,” said Jake Wegmann, a University of Texas regional planning professor.

A recent proposal to overhaul Austin’s zoning ordinance would have allowed for more apartment buildings, increased the number of townhomes and simplified the approval process. The changes would allow the city to build “thousands more units” annually, but Nimby-ism and anti-growth forces shut it down, Wegmann said.

“I don’t want to make it sound like this would’ve solved everything, but we’re really tying our own hand behind our back,” he added.

‘I pray every night’

Soaring home prices ultimately create pressure lower in the market, hitting the city’s most vulnerable the hardest. Six months ago, Paola Valdez and her husband made the last $500 payment on their three-bedroom trailer set in a south Austin mobile home park. The extra money was welcome as the couple raised two young kids, and they were proud to own the home outright.

But everything changed in early July. The California investor who recently purchased the Congress Mobile Home Park handed 60-day eviction notices to its residents, and leaving isn’t easy – Valdez’s trailer can’t be transported because it’s 30 years old.

A new, smaller trailer is $1,500 a month plus the lot fee, and three-bedroom apartments in her neighborhood top $3,500 a month. The family is at a loss over what it will do next, but Valdez expects her days of staying home to raise the kids are done.

“One day you’re fine, you’ve paid off your home and you’re making a nest, then all the sudden you’re bombarded with ‘You’ve got to leave in 60 days’,” Valdez said. “I’m trying to stay strong. I pray every night.”

As median rent jumped 48% year over year, state records analyzed by the Guardian data show Travis County evictions hit record monthly highs in March and April. That’s partially fueled by investors purchasing apartment buildings with affordable rents and turning them into pricey condos, said Mincho Jacob, a spokesperson with housing advocate Basta Austin.

“That’s destroying the heart of Austin because people with long roots here are evicted and forced out,” he said.

There are few tools to do anything about it in Texas where the Republican-controlled legislature largely banned rent control, and though housing advocates have had some success in warding off developer purchases of affordable housing, it hasn’t been enough. Similarly, wide-scale displacement continues even though Austin voters since 2018 have approved $550m for affordable housing and anti-displacement measures.

Another link between the higher home prices and rental pressure is those like Hawkins, who have been shut out of ownership. But with a recent salary increase in her career, she’s regrouping and saving money, and says she’s determined as ever to own.

“It’s been a goal of mine for a really long time, and since there’s been so many failed attempts, I just want to prove to myself that I can do it,” she said.