Austin Mayor Steve Adler wants the Texas city to borrow as much as half-a-billion dollars to help create more affordable housing as soaring real-estate prices threaten to push out the middle class, Bloomberg News reported. That’s our existential challenge right now,” Adler said in an interview outside his downtown condo Monday. “Austin is building more homes per capita than any other city in the country, and it’s still not enough.” Adler, in his eighth and final year as mayor, plans to push for a bond sale of $300 million to $500 million to provide relief from median home prices that jumped almost 20% over the past year to $568,000. He doesn’t want to curb the city’s rapid growth — it posted the fastest population increase among large U.S. cities during the decade through 2020 — but says cheaper housing is needed for the creative types who inspired the unofficial motto of “Keep Austin Weird.” The mayor’s goal is to seek voter approval for the bond during the November election, though he cautioned that it’s “very early” in the planning stage. He said there hasn’t been any review of what the city’s bonding capacity may be without additional taxes.
