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Comment by goldmouth | Hacker News Reader

As a native austinite and engineer I completely disagree. The eastSide was a terrible place before. Going into pan am park was a no go at any time of the day. Comunities and infrastructure were dying in eat Austin. Also, It had extremely low home ownership rates so the lower class didn’t even own homes in these areas but made money for westside landlords.

South congress was full of crackheads and prostitutes as early as the 90’s. We had real urban decay. Now we are growing like crazy and if you’re willing to work hard any immigrant can get a construction job and make a great living for themselves.

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>Also, It had extremely low home ownership rates so the lower class didn’t even own homes in these areas but made money for westside landlords.

How will increasing rents (and property values) across the city help solve this lack of ownership? Is it possible the problem gets worse by adding more "rich" workers?

>South congress was full of crackheads and prostitutes as early as the 90’s.

Isn't it likely that there were also working class people struggling to get by who appreciated low rents?

>any immigrant can get a construction job and make a great living for themselves.

And what will they do when construction slows due to recession or other factors?

You might want to re-asses this comment from the perspective of the people who actually lived in these "terrible places" that were a "no go at any time of the day". They might have a different view than you.

See parent. I was here intermittently in the late 90s and have an aunt with a midcentury house off SoCo bought in the early 90s. You may not have seen those communities as having intrinsic value but the people that live there did. And now most of them can't afford to live there anymore because "the market" has decided to make room for gentrification.

Those communities had economic problems, sure. But you're kidding yourself if you don't think the replacements for them have a different sort of economic problem. And just because they're whiter and richer now doesn't make them a better set of problems.

So much for Keep Austin Weird ...

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