Austin's city council is implementing a program that allows residents with ties to gentrifying areas a chance to secure affordable housing in their old — or their families' old — neighborhoods.  As in so many cities, many neighborhoods in Austin have been quickly gentrifying — a process through which higher-income households move into a neighborhood and housing costs rise, changing the character of the neighborhood.

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Kathie Tovo, an Austin council member, put it this way:  "We've seen housing costs increasing, and many longtime residents have been forced farther away from the central city, and in many cases outside the city limits.  The goal here really is to provide opportunities for individuals with generational ties to the community to stay in the city of Austin, and potentially to return to the city of Austin if they've been displaced."

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According to Uprooted, a report commissioned from the University of Texas, "Since the late 1990s, Austin has seen a dramatic rise in housing costs, shifting the city from among the most affordable in the country to one where a growing share of residents can no longer afford to live.  As in many cities around the county, there has been an inversion of previous demographic trends, as affluent residents increasingly move into central neighborhoods and low-income residents are pushed to the outskirts or out of the city altogether.  The impacts of Austin’s rising housing costs have been particularly dramatic in the city’s 'eastern crescent,' where historically low housing costs, produced in part through the city’s history of publicly-supported racial and ethnic segregation, now combine with broader social and economic trends to make these neighborhoods more desirable to higher-income households."  Read the entire report here. 

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Evidence:

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Heather Way, Elizabeth Mueller, and Jake Wegmann.  "Uprooted:  Residential Displacement in Austin’s Gentrifying Neighborhoods and What Can Be Done
   About It."  The University of Texas.  2018