Student Apartments – The San Marxist

Hours 2:55 – 3:36, 10/2/23

October 8, 2023October 8, 2023 by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 13: Special Events Permitting

Right now, if you’re wanting to hold a special event, you have to go to a bunch of different departments to figure out what permitting you need.

Potentially any of these:

Now they’re going to put together a single front-end, tacked onto MyPermitNow and walks you through getting the permits you need.

Everyone is stoked about this.

….

Item 17: Lindsay Street apartments. Ooooh, this one is interesting.

So, Shannon Mattingly was the director of the San Marcos planning department from 2015 to 2022. Then she went to work for the Drenner Group, which are some Austin developers.

Tuesday’s item is just informational. It turns out that developers are allowed to do this – request an informational item at a council meeting. Who knew? (Shannon Mattingly would know!) So you can come in and give a presentation about your exciting new venture.

Here’s where they want to do iti:

And here’s what they want to do:

That is, make it student housing.

I think they said that they want it to be 7 stories and rent-by-the-bedroom student housing.

There are a couple problems, and a couple things that are fine with it. It’s not actually entirely bad.

The left hand part, in the red dotted area, has some historic houses that people think are cute, like this one:

I think it’s pretty cute! Maybe it can be saved.

Jude Prather speaks up about maybe finding a way to put commercial in a little historic house like this. Maybe it can be made into a restaurant or something. (I think we all miss Cool Mint Cafe.)

Three people from the newly-formed Tenants Advocacy Group came to speak against it. Their argument went “Rent-by-the-bedroom apartments are predatory and there is plenty of student housing. We don’t want this at all.”

I am so thrilled that they’ve formed this group. This is outstanding.

Their argument against rent-by-the-bedroom is that these leases are more exploitative than regular leases:

You can get stuck with someone awful and have no recourse.
Making students rent “as is” without having seen their actual unit, and then units have broken furniture, mold, etc.
Not having a clause allowing for a way to break the lease

The only thing that I’d quibble is that plenty of regular leases are also exploitative. But a Tenant’s Advocacy Group is exactly the right place to start! Next I’d like to see the city fund a lawyer who will send letters to landlords and argue for fairer leases.

Side note: Rent-by-the-bedroom itself is very weird, and I can’t decide how I feel about it. Without it, you get an apartment with your friends, and if one friend falls behind on their rent or moves out abruptly, the rest of the group is financially liable for the whole rent. So there really is a sense in which students are protected by signing individual leases.

The usual argument against them is they allow rents to skyrocket. But I can’t see how it’s the lease structure that does that. Landlords are always going to charge the maximum that they think people will pay, and if you have insufficient housing, then people are forced to pay it.

Rental companies definitely act in predatory ways. Tenants need protection. It’s just not obvious to me that this one detail of the lease structure is the heart of the problem.

The students in TAG were against the entire complex, full stop. They argued that we have enough student housing and we don’t need any more.

I don’t buy this part of their argument. Housing is like musical chairs: if you add more student housing, students who like fancy new complexes will move into it, and free up their old housing, and whoever moves into that frees up their old housing, and so on. There is not a bright firewall between student housing and non-student housing when complexes get old enough.

Is 7 stories too high? Jane Hughson thinks so, especially for the portion in red. She’d like to see it be a transition area, so maybe 3 stories?

Honestly, I think 3 stories is fine as well. This town does not like high-rises, and I don’t see any need to antagonize people.

So what are the good parts? Well, it’s housing, and it’s not sprawl. Those are good things!

But again, this was just informational. It will come back.

Item 18: Tightening up the rules of city council meetings.

Most of these are codifying the way we currently do things. There’s one change that’s mentioned explicitly: changing “Citizen Comment” to “Community Perspectives”.

This is a good change! I’ve definitely felt weird writing this blog, trying to avoid the word “citizen” when I don’t actually care about someone’s immigration status.

To Any City Staff Who Read This: I have two suggestions!

Sometimes letters from the public are included in the packet, other times not. I want to know what people care about! It is helpful to me to see what the community is mad about! I’d like a consistent practice of including letters to council in the packet.

Often when someone goes up for Q&A, the answer is, “Staff will get back to you.” I’d like to know these answers, too! They should get posted to the message board, please!

….

Item 20: Top Secret Executive Session

Two interesting items:

“receive advice of legal counsel regarding pending litigation concerning the title to an alleyway located near the intersection of University Drive and CM Allen Parkway”

I wouldn’t have noticed this if it hadn’t been brought up during Citizen Comment. The speaker (Kama Davis) said that the company is called SM Block 21, and that they had renderings online. So I looked it up.

Lo and behold, they are!

The lot:

The rendering:

The alley in question:

At least, that’s the only alley I see.

What makes this an EXTREMELY hot potato is the backdrop of last week’s P&Z meeting. So, remember the Comp Plan? It has splinter parts, and in particular there is a Downtown Area Plan.

This hasn’t passed yet, but it’s cooking. It involves this part of town:

Here’s the part that everyone’s worked up about:

They call this part the CM Allen District.

It’s pretty big. And notice that the one in the back is the same thing we were talking about above!

The Downtown Plan Committee said:

We want people walking back and forth between downtown and the park
Right now, it’s all parking lots. Those are the worst: smelly, hot, dangerous. Parking lots shut down walking. (This is borne out by data.)
Businesses can’t survive there (clearly)
So what’s remaining? We should put some housing there.

Staff provided a visual of what it might look like if giant buildings were made out of sliced bread:

Pretty unappealing! They called this option 1.

Jane Hughson and the P&Z subcommittee kinda lost their minds looking at that photo. It’s pretty atrocious! Here’s what they counter-proposed:

The city staff cringed and squirmed and said, “There’s no way in hell you can afford that. That land is super expensive and you’d lose especially valuable tax base.” They proposed option 3:

Those photos are apparently from El Paso. It does look appealing!

But there’s also the “smaller loaves of bread” visual for Option 3:

A ton of people heard about this, and the community came out heavily for Option 2. P&Z recommended option 2 for the Downtown area plan, on the premise that you might as well swing for the fences, even if it’s a long shot.

My two cents:

I’m mostly neutral. A park sounds super lovely, I see the appeal of it. At the same time, those lots are never going to be used very heavily. They’re kidding themselves. The river gets used very heavily, but the parts of the river parks that aren’t close to the river do not. Like, the land along CM Allen between the tennis courts and the railroad tracks – people don’t want to be that far away from the river. And here, you’re on the far side of CM Allen. Are you going to lay down a picnic blanket with a busy street blocking your kids from the river?

Maybe this is a good place for targeted park space – move the baseball fields, or tennis courts, put pick-up soccer fields there. Free up the land that is actually close to the river.

But again, it’s wildly expensive, there’s no obvious way to acquire it, and we’d lose a high-revenue tax base right now. So given the hand-wringing over property taxes last time, it seems kinda counterproductive to take this on.

At the same time, you never get a second chance to grow your parks. I love the river parks so much, I can’t bring myself to be mad about the idea of growing them. Maybe in 50 years, the grandkids will be really glad if we set that land aside.

Bottom line:

Clearly these two things are incompatible:

So when Council debates what to do with the alley that the developer wants, they’re inevitably also saying something about the green fields on the right.

The second interesting item is this:

“[T]o receive advice of legal counsel regarding pending litigation regarding Eric Cervini, et al. vs. Chase Stapp, Brandon Winkenwerder, Matthew Danzer, and City of San Marcos; Civil Action No. 1:21-CV-00568-RP; In the United States District Court, Western District of Texas; Austin Division.”

That would be your Biden Bus incident. It is still simmering along, making its way through the court system. The San Marcos lawsuit is mentioned at the end of this article, but mostly I can’t find anything current about it.

July 6th City Council Meeting, (Part 3)

July 13, 2021August 8, 2022 by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

Anything else of note?

Citizen Comment

Several citizens showed up to talk about Jennifer Miller again. This issue is gaining momentum, but I’m not exactly clear what the end game is. Mano Amiga has taken it up as a political issue, as evidence of police corruption. Recently there was an attempt to connect the resignation of a city clerk, Kristy Stark, with this case, and it seemed far-fetched to me and possibly slanderous.

If the larger activist goal is to have the police officer Ryan Hartman removed from his position, then I’m comfortable with that. But right now the goal seems to be to drum up as much smoke and obfuscation as possible, and I’m a little worried that Miller’s loved ones are being used as pawns.

Consent Agenda

Item 20, the Elsik tract: SMRF needs the endorsement of City Council to apply for funds from the county to purchase the tract in the name of conservation. SMRF, the San Marcos River Foundation, is an amazing organization that is largely responsible for us having a clear, blue river instead of a murky brown river. One of their major functions is to identify sensitive areas and buy them up, then donate them as parkland. The Elsik tract is located adjacent to Purgatory Creek, and would help create a continuous greenbelt from Purgatory Creek up to Spring Lake, which is part of the Parks Master Plan.

This Purgatory-Elsik area is particularly sensitive because it’s all porous limestone. It’s just a straight sieve down to the water recharge zone for the river. This is how your river turns brown – you dump pollution in the recharge zone. Ok, fine.

There was a sentence in the application to City Council: ““City supports the possible transfer of the land to the city, including development, management, and maintenance.”

Mayor Hughson took issue with this sentence in a way that I found contrary and ornery. She doesn’t want the city to be on the hook for the development of the park without further discussion. Fine – she thinks it merits discussion. That’s reasonable. But it says possible transfer – doesn’t that only imply that there will be a discussion?

Hughson moves that that sentence be struck.

In favor: Hughson, Gleason, Scott, and Garza.
Opposed: Derrick, Gonzalez, Baker

So that amendment passes, which consequently weakens the SMRF application to the county for the money. Way to go, Mayor.

Once that passes, Commissioner Scott talks a bit of shit about SMRF and how he just doesn’t trust them. This is why he’s an ass.

(The basic resolution passes 6-1.)

Observation: Garza is hard to pigeon-hole. Mostly presents herself as extremely progressive, but then votes to strike this line, and to delay the ethics vote. But any time she advocates for an issue, she is thoughtful and thinking about vulnerable community members with the fewest resources.

Maybe that’s the common thread: she’s progressive about seeing the world through the lens of vulnerable community members and overly heavy policing. But she’s less progressive about the environment?

Public Hearings:

Item 26: Land Development Code updates: a bit of discussion on storing inoperable vehicles. If they’re vintage, why not have all the fluids drained so that they can be stored without risk of pollution? This is Councilmember Scott’s amendment, and it passes.

Non-Consent Agenda:

Item 30: Spearguns Surprise! State law pre-empts us from requiring a permit for any hand-powered device! What an obnoxious twist. We can’t even make a clause about portions of the river which are heavily used for swimming. You can spearfish any goddamn place you want, at any time you want, as long as your spear is not motor-propelled.

There’s a short discussion about whether to repeal the current ordinance today, or wait to revise it into compliance with State Law.

Repeal fails, 4-3.

Pro-repeal: Scott, Gleason, Garza
Anti-repeal: Hughson, Baker, Derrick, Gonzalez

(See! Another – albeit mild – example of Garza siding unpredictably!)

Item 43: Council will be back in person starting in August. (Surprise twist! Texas recently ended the suspension of TOMA to allow for zoom meetings, and so everyone would have to return in September anyway.)

Some councilmembers are very freaked out by the Delta variant, in ways that are highly sympathetic but probably out of proportion to the science.

Staff will continue to zoom in for presentations. Two reasons: First, to reduce crowdedness in the chambers and allow for more community members to show up instead. Second, so that the poor city staff and presenters don’t have to hang out at City Hall until 11 pm or 1 am in order to deliver a 20 minute presentation. Seems eminently reasonable.

Community members will be allowed to zoom in for Citizen Comment.

Note: During these meetings, they use the word “citizen” interchangeably with “the public”. I’m trying to avoid using the word “citizen”, in favor of “community member”, because I DGAF whether you’re documented or not.

Sometimes I slip up. “Citizens” rolls off the tongue. But I’m always intending to say “community members”.

Item 44: Authorize a study on the actual occupancy rates of student housing – both purpose-built and older complexes that are marketed to students.

YES YES YES! This would be incredibly helpful information to have.

There is a widespread belief that we’re incredibly overbuilt on student housing. The idea is that developers are motivated to build the latest, newest, shiny apartment complex. Students move in because it’s new. Developers sell it off after three years to some chump who then can’t rent it out very well.

Here’s where it gets very murky: The story goes that this drives rents up across the city. Apartment complexes that market to students employ rent-by-the-bedroom, so a four bedroom unit goes for $3k, allegedly. This allows other landlords to peg rents to that, even in regular family apartments and rental housing. We have insufficient stock of family housing and it’s overpriced.

In other words we are simultaneously claiming:

Student apartment complexes charge $3k/month for a 4 bedroom rent-by-the-room apartment
Student apartment complexes are wildly underfilled and run huge promotional campaigns for multiple months of free rent, free food, and all sorts of perks because we’re so overbuilt.
Non-student housing piggybacks on the inflated rents, but lacks the glut of extra supply. Thus families can’t find affordable housing.

I am highly skeptical that (3) is piggybacking on (1) and (2). If we lack family housing stock, then landlords will charge as much as they can get away with. Period.

The murkiness continues: If we get developers to stop building student housing, then everyone will win. Somehow this will affect rents coming down.

The only way rents will come down is if we build a lot more family housing stock. And in fact, massive tracts to the east have recently been zoned for multi-family and workforce housing sorts of plans. But it will take a long time for these things to be built.

Here is the proper way to understand the council’s reasoning:

This study will reveal that we’re massively overbuilt on student housing.
Therefore we will be justified in finding new ways to prevent more student housing from being built.
Then developers will preferentially choose to build family housing instead.
Then rents for families will come down.

I am hugely in favor of conducting this study, but skeptical that this is an efficient route to build up family housing. My opinion is that this is what’s actually going on:

We hate student housing because it’s obnoxious.
Rents on families are too high.
We also hate it when students live outside of student housing, in regular neighborhoods.
We really just don’t like students!

The problem of partying students is half-real and half-imaginary bugaboo. The solution is to:

fully fund code enforcement,
hold landlords accountable, and
regulate the scale of apartment complexes so that families don’t have to live next to sprawling acreage of apartments. A 4-plex or 8-plex is very different from a 5000-plex.

Unfortunately, no one listens to me. I should start a blog!

And that’s a wrap for the July 6th meeting!