Own to Rent, Part Duh

My husband is worried that he will look ‘stoopid,’ because he represented our family at the Travis County Appraisal District (TCAD) hearing and lost.  He raged for days about losing.  In all fairness, I sent him unprepared for battle.  I was out of town on business and could not reschedule.  So, off he went without an inkling of what to expect or the counter-arguments he would need to exercise his rights as a homeowner.  My previous successes only proves the City of Austin has caught on to homeowners, like us, who simply insist that Austin remain affordable.

Austinites throw themselves on the shores of idiosyncrasy like whales on sandy beaches: no one knows why and, ultimately, no one can convince them it’s not such a good idea.  The Save Our Springs Alliance (SOS) is a prime example: these folksy people with homes in Oak Hill and the “Hill Country” have tied up development over the Edwards Aquifer for a salamander that is rarely seen and may have already been facing extinction for reasons not due to man.  Barton Springs Pool and Deep Eddy Pool, both fed by springs coming out the aquifer, are the ‘barometer’ by which Austinites’ convictions for and commitment to their nutty-fruity ideals are measured.  If you ain’t SOS, you’re against it.  And, if you live in East Austin, it’s okay to plant a wastewater treatment facility in your backyard.  You’re SOL! [Pun intended.]  Another, more recent, example is the city’s McMansion ordinance.  It’s too early to tell what the unintended consequences of this little bit of heaven is…

Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore

When I first contemplated leaving New Orleans in 1991, I gave myself the choice of Austin or Atlanta.  I was still very young.  Atlanta seemed like a humdinger of a town in which to be a swinging single, but, alas, I wasn’t single!  Austin, on the other hand, was promoted to me as an ‘awesome’ town by a college friend who grew up in Buda.  Unbeknownst to me (or it turns out, her), the ‘awesome’ experiences she’d had in high school were in part underwritten by a complete economic downturn that left many Texans holding their proverbial hats in their hands.

Following the bust, rents were cheap.  Housing was plentiful.  Real estate was to be had for a dime.  But it all looked like a cheap strip mall to me.  Where were the wide avenues with trees arched gracefully overhead to shield pedestrians from the blazing afternoon sun?   My choices were limited to new, new or newer.  My heart cried out for the 100-year-old carriage house apartment I wanted in a city whose architecture didn’t even look a hundred years old!  I was instantly offended when the apartment locator took me to a ‘slum’ apartment near Reagan High School in order to convince me that the one she had shown me (on the edge of Hyde Park) was indeed what a nice girl like me wanted, despite its higher price.  Sigh.

If only this woman had lived on Daneel Street, or on South Broad, or Green, or St. Charles Avenue, or Carrollton.  What did she know about shooting guns over a cemetery with your neighbors on New Year’s Eve, not really stopping to ask what else they used their guns for?  What did she know about flooding so severe that you made space on the neutral ground for your neighbor, knowing they can't afford a car, even as you park yours?  What did she know about whooping it up on a Causeway turnaround with a carload of friends and a couple of bottles of cheap champagne?  Or beignets and hot coffee at Café du Monde at 3 am following rounds of drinks?  The lonely trek out of the quarter to the corner of Carondolet and Canal to catch the streetcar back uptown?

The second surprise was discovering the “Live Music Capital of the World” was really gambling on the “Live Garage Band Music Capital of the World”.  Unless you’ve been at Benny’s on a Thursday night as Charmaine Neville swung her braids and shook her hips standing face-to-face with her audience, you’re just going to have to believe that Austin’s got a ways to go to back up its claim.  I’ve often thought the moral of my move to Austin ought to be: don’t believe what a poor little rich girl has to say about rent and fun times.

Memories fade but shouldn’t be ripped away

For years, I’ve wondered what it would take to make me feel like Austin is home.  I’ve been known to jaw about how Austin is such a good place to raise kids; how the parks are wonderful and the swimming is good; how the schools are better than most in Texas; and how the city is smaller than you realize.  But, in the last 14 years, I’ve never felt like an Austinite.  As parents, our goal was for one of us to stay home and raise our own children.  It proved to be a constant strain on our finances as well as spirits.  As a result, coping with an increasingly unaffordable city left us feeling like we were working for free -- just this side of too rich to be poor.  Austin has not been very friendly to working families, as several of the city’s taskforces can well document for you.

I got a chance recently to re-evaluate what it means to be an Austinite.  Old college friends moved to Austin from Houston.  They are Katrina evacuees.  Peter and I have relatives and other friends whose lives have been changed because of the hurricane, but none who’ve restarted their lives in Austin.  After meeting at Deep Eddy pool for the last Movie Night of the summer, my friend wrote a ‘thank you’ note via email about how moving to Austin held at least one benefit: old friends.  I wrote back:

It was nice seeing y’all too last night. Going to Deep Eddy made me realize — really, for the first time — how much y’all have given up by evacuating from New Orleans — all of the memories and friendships that make a house a home and a city, one’s backyard. I have memories of my kids at Deep Eddy from over the last ten years, of the friendships that were created or sustained by hot afternoons there. Memories fade but shouldn’t be ripped away.

We’ve also spent many a gritty afternoon in the ‘free’ part of Barton Springs – the part below the dam that churns silt into a froth that requires several showers to remove from one’s skin and hair.  So, the weekend before Deep Eddy, with some determination, I dragged Peter along as I took the kids to Barton Springs Pool for some progressive potlucking.  Following a hearty vegetarian meal and small talk with the peacers, I headed into the pool at nine o’clock when the pool does not charge an entrance fee.  Peter had gone ahead with a gang of kids (I think to avoid the small talk).  Anticipating the bone-chilling coolness of the springs, I raced into the water despite Peter’s cautionary note that it had taken him 30 minutes to work his way in past his belly button.  Even at nine o’clock at night the water was crystal clear.  The faint overhead lighting was sufficient to let me conduct some ‘shark attacks’ on the kids.

It struck me that I’d managed to have two quintessential ‘Austin’ experiences in two weeks.  Was this enough to prove that Austin had become my home after 14 years of yearning for New Orleans?

Like a moth to a bug zapper

On June 25, 2006, the Austin American-Statesman ran an article in which they quote the TCAD “chief” as stating 45,600 residential and commercial property owners filed protests for their 2006 tax valuations.  Before it’s over, TCAD projected the number could reach 60,000.   Between 2005 and 2006, the number of protests doubled but had not yet overshot TCAD’s projection of 100,000 protests for 2006.  Well, for a city whose finest cinematic moment may have been “Slackers”, we’re standing up to our own reputation!

Peter shouldn’t feel so dejected: 2006 was not the summer of love for a lot of Austin homeowners.   Feeling fairly cocky after the Legislature threw Texas homeowners a bone, many came away from their hearings howling in outrage and disbelief.  But TCAD only represents taxing bodies like the Austin ISD, which recently released a proposed 13-cent reduction in its property tax rate.  For the median-price homeowner, that’s about $20 in savings over last year.  [Governor Perry: your much-touted ‘savings’ amount to less than half a tank of gas a year. Indeed, Congress had a better deal for me when they offered a $100 gasoline rebate.  It’s worth at least two fill-ups!]

What I later pieced together from talking to Peter is that TCAD flimflammed him in the worst way.  TCAD uses comparative sales or ‘comps’ within the last year for determining the appraisal value of real estate.  TCAD determined there was one comp for our property that sold in 2005 for approximately $115K.  That is close to the valuation to which TCAD and I agreed for 2004.  For 2005, TCAD gouged Peter by using the LISTING for the same property.  It turns out that Austin has a highly speculative real estate market, so some Californian shmuck with too much money on his hands bought the comp for $115K and turned around to list it for $176K. 

Well, isn’t that logic just dandy!  IF the comp had sold for $176K, I am certainly willing to concede that my reasons for challenging an increase in value for 2005 have to be based on strong evidence that my house will not list nor sell for $176K.  Unfortunately, it’s not the case for 2005.  They used a LISTING.  A LISTING.  One more time… A LISTING.

TCAD also blind-sided Peter by telling him that $90K of the current value of our property is based on a garage apartment we added in 2004.  They weren’t ‘sure’ if it had ever been added into the value of the property.  This is the point at which I experienced a lot of pity for Peter.  If he had known how to read through the statement they sent us, he would have clearly seen that the apartment was calculated as part of the overall square footage for the 2005 appraised value.  Their subterfuge went deeper: sitting in front of their computerized history of our appraisal values, they told Peter they weren’t certain it was included in 2004!  If Peter had had my files with him, he would have been able to prove it was corrected as part of my appeal of the 2004 valuation since they had grossly overstated the number of square feet by counting the open carport as an enclosed structure.   So now my sister lives in an 850-sqft apartment that is worth more than my 1350-sqft house.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice…

TCAD cheated.  I could appeal through the Comptroller of Public Accounts.  I have to file a fee in excess of the increase in taxes but the ruling is not binding on either party.  So, in the end, TCAD gets to have their cake and eat it too.  But 2006 is a new year...

On the way to Barton Springs Pool, Peter turned left at the corner of 6th and Lamar.  I said, rather startled, “Well, hello, Seattle!”  We laughed.  Austin will continue to amble towards its destiny of being a second-rate Seattle or San Francisco.  And I am forced to conclude that Austin is simply a place to hang my hat, raise my children, and dodge the taxman until I can leave.  Or we’re priced out. 

After all, if I’m paying San Francisco housing prices, shouldn’t we just shut up and move there? Wouldn’t you?