Affordable Housing Wins at the Ballot Box in 2018

November 8, 2018                        By: Jared Brey

Gregorio Casar spent Election Day trying to calm his nerves. Casar, a second-term city councilman in Austin, wasn’t up for election on Tuesday, but voters were slated to decide on a $250 million affordable housing bond measure that he helped craft. He got to his polling place at 6 a.m., an hour before it opened, and says he “wasn’t even close to being the first in line.” It was a high-energy election. Texas Democrats were fired up by the prospect that the Congressman Beto O’Rourke of El Paso might pull off an upset and unseat Republican Senator Ted Cruz. And outside the state, it seemed like the whole country was at stake.

A city hall rally held by the Keep Austin Affordable coalition in June 2018.

When the votes were counted, O’Rourke had narrowly lost, but Austin’s Proposition A had passed with flying colors, earning more than 73 percent of the vote.

“When we were first putting this package together, there were a lot of people who I really respect who said that a $250 million housing bond was a failure out of the gate,” Casar says. “Last night, all across Texas, but in Central Texas especially, our communities showed that the world of the possible is much broader than people might have imagined when people show up and fight and are inspired, and when people show up and vote.”....................Read More