8 Good Things Austin Accomplished in 2020
2020 was rough, but I’m proud of what we accomplished at City Hall. Here are the top 8 things we worked on together.
8. Ended all fines and arrests for personal marijuana.
With tons of community support, my office sponsored this successful effort with co-sponsorships from MPT Garza, CM Harper Madison, and CM Flannigan. I know it’s a common sense policy, but we’re actually the first Texas city to get it done! We’re preventing thousands of Austinites from needlessly entering the criminal system. Read more about this here.
7. Permanently protecting the North Lamar Mobile Homes.
When I was first elected, North Lamar residents were illegally being evicted and pushed out of the city by a new corporate owner. Over the last 5 years, we’ve worked alongside residents and BASTA Austin to help neighbors acquire the land themselves and run it as a cooperative. With the financial support of the city, the residents successfully bought out their owner this year! This is, by far, some of my proudest work on the city council. You can read about how it all got started here, and about the final victory here.
6. Eviction and foreclosure protection.
A wave of evictions is throwing Texans out of their homes. 18,000 evictions have been filed in Houston during the pandemic. Nearly 10,000 in Fort Worth. But only 700 evictions have been filed during the pandemic in Austin, because of our strong protections against evictions and new rules against foreclosures to protect homeowners. For comparison’s sake, there’s usually about 2,500 eviction filings per year in Austin. In the wake of the 2008 Great Recession, Austin surged past 8,000 eviction filings a year. Recent studies have shown how eviction protections not only save people’s homes, but they save lives as well, by keeping people from flowing into homeless shelters or overcrowding a relative’s home. In 2021, we’ll continue to work on programs to clear back rent and make sure people are able to get back to work.
5. Project Connect passes.
Our city has failed multiple times to implement a true, citywide transit system. After years of preparation, and then a hard fought campaign, the voters approved our transformative plan. We’ll have trains and buses that connect every part of Austin, along with the creation of thousands of jobs. I’m especially proud to have led, alongside CM Kitchen, on the effort to include a record $300M investment in anti-displacement, so that we can keep working class families rooted in Austin as the city grows.
4. More for District 4.
We opened the Georgian Acres Park, finally bringing a first-class park space to our city’s most serious urban parks desert. City Council approved the community plan to turn the 20 acre Home Depot on St John into a community asset with housing for displaced residents, jobs, non profits, and recreational space. Traffic safety improvements, anti-flooding infrastructure, sidewalks, bike lanes, and trails are coming at an unprecedented clip. And new playgrounds and soccer fields have been built in partnership with the school district and philanthropic partners at Wooldridge and Reilly and on Brownie Drive.
3. COVID relief.
Our City provided over $130 million in relief to our residents and small businesses, providing direct cash payments, food pantries, rental assistance, and support just keeping the lights on. When the state and federal government excluded many immigrants from relief, we created local programs to include them. We’ve finally gotten assistance to our music venues and childcare centers who needed it, and now we need to execute a vaccination and economic recovery strategy to pull us out of the crisis.
2. Police Reform.
Austin historically has spent *more on the police department* than any of Texas’ other major cities when adjusted for population. This year, in response to the historic civil rights marches and Black Lives Matter, we finally did something different. We paused the cadet academy which independent reports have shown perpetuate racial bias and a militaristic attitude. (you can read more about that here).
We reinvested those funds — without laying off any officers — into critical programs like these to improve public safety and protect civil rights:
- Hire mental health first responders. Police are not best equipped to handle mental health 911 calls, but these new first responders will be trained to handle this challenge.
- Create new family violence shelters. Family violence is a top contributor to violent crime in our city, but Austin hasn’t added shelter capacity in years.
- Establish supportive housing to end homelessness. It’s time we address the homelessness crisis. The new budget will make it so that in 2021, we can finally tackle this issue which has lingered and worsened for decades. You can read about new City initiatives that are helping hundreds more people come off the street here and here.
- Expand substance use treatment, a new civil rights office, COVID ambulances, invest in victim services & gun violence prevention, & more.
You can read up more on the 2021 police budget here.
1. Saving lives.
Through all of our collective effort, we have kept COVID infections and deaths lower in Austin than in any of Texas’ other major cities, per capita. As infections rise rapidly this winter, we must redouble our efforts to save lives. I’ve spoken to far too many constituents and friends who have lost a loved one to the virus. We must keep taking care of one another to reduce harm as much as possible, and to get our city back on the right track. When Mayor Adler rightly canceled South By Southwest in March, it was hard to imagine all the challenges that were still to come. I am so thankful to you for all the sacrifices you have made to protect your family, your neighbors, and all the people you do not know.
Incredible acts of solidarity and love have kept us going — and we can’t stop.
