CONCERNS RAISED ABOUT GENTRIFICATION Influx of well-paid workers could change affordability for existing east Wilco residents
TAYLOR — New jobs, new businesses and new amenities for east Williamson County communities are expected to create opportunities that didn’t exist in these small cities. For some, that means a manufacturing post at a great wage or college opportunities and careers without having to leave one’s hometown.
But there is another side to all that growth, including a population boom of outsiders who will come from far and wide to work at Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.’s semiconductor factory, at one of its suppliers or in other industries that have recently been flocking to the area.
Housing prices also go up with demand, land becomes more expensive, increased property values spike and higher taxes are passed on to renters.
That means longtime residents who make their living pouring cups of coffee, stocking shelves at big-box retailers or providing care for the elderly could find themselves displaced thanks to the laws of supply and demand.
The phenomenon dubbed gentrification is well known to those who once lived in marginalized communities until the places they called home became more valuable as a site for condominiums or luxury townhouses that existing residents could never afford.
“It’s something that while we’re excited about all the success, we’re very aware that with that comes challenges,” said Dave Porter, CEO of the Williamson County Economic Development Partnership. “Success drives those that weren’t part of that success further away.”
Williamson County communities such as Round Rock, Hutto and Taylor are on the receiving end of population growth in Austin and Travis County, which is forcing people to seek affordable housing further out. In turn, that has driven up housing prices in those once-rural cities.
“There’s no single solution to address it, except to be aware of it,” Porter said. “It’s something we talk about all the time. It’s concerning to all of us.”
HOUSING AFFORDABILITY
The median household income in Taylor from 2018 to 2022 was $66,626. The per person income during that time was $32,719.
That means a typical single-income household could afford a residence of about $100,000 if they were able to save up for a down payment and other living expenses were low, something difficult to achieve with children. For the median household income, particularly with high mortgage rates, SmartAsset’s Texas Mortgage Loan Calculator shows that buying a house of no more than $118,000 would be prudent.
In Austin, the median sales price of single-family homes sold in the first half of the year was $574,995, according to the statistics compiled by the Austin Board of Realtors and Unlock MLS. Williamson County median sales prices from January to June weren’t as steep at $430,000.
The problem is that almost nobody is building homes in Williamson County for what most people can afford, and it takes a household income of about $100,000 to $125,000 to land a $400,000 house.
Daniel Seguin, a communications director for Taylor, said the influx of new sales-and-use tax dollars has led the city to hold the line or decrease property-tax rates even as property values increase. Also helping residents is the homestead exemption and limits on how much property-tax bills can be increased no matter the market value of the house.
However, lower-income earners who are renters don’t see that benefit because apartment and rental property owners don’t get those tax breaks, so they pass on higher property taxes to renters, Seguin said.
The price range for a two-bedroom apartment in Taylor starts at $1,100 a month and climbs as high as $3,000, with a median rent of $1,387 a month, according to Zillow’s Rental Manager market trends report. In neighboring Hutto, the median rental on a twobedroom apartment is $1,749 with rents starting at $1,274 and going up to $4,000.
Taylor’s comprehensive plan for growth in the city is encouraging in-fill development near downtown even as large subdivisions go up on larger undeveloped properties. Those in-fill developments, which often include townhouses, duplexes or small apartment buildings, often drive rental markets in older neighborhoods even higher in larger cities.
The intent of the plan, Seguin said, is to make sure that as development continues “the new Taylor looks and feels like what the old Taylor feels like.”
So far, at the city level, there hasn’t been much talk about the possibility of gentrification, he said.
“There are not a lot of tools in the state’s tool belt” to deal with those issues, Seguin said.
PRESERVING TAYLOR
Taylor is making an effort to preserve the city’s walkability under a development plan passed by the City Council in November.
“Developers copy and paste (housing plans) throughout the country, and they do that from community to community,” Seguin said. The policy to avoid that kind of development in the city limits “is a turnoff to a few developers,” but others are willing to make the investment.
“We need to get people outside to walk to the park, to the library or for a cup of coffee downtown,” he said.
That kind of development, however, comes at a steeper cost. While it’s a lifestyle some people are willing to pay top dollar for, history has shown the practice can also drive lower-income residents to other neighborhoods without those conveniences.
One area near downtown Taylor that has a lot of open lots for development is the once-majority black neighborhood on the other side of an area previously known as The Line, south of the tracks. Most of the commercial buildings and many of the houses were demolished in the early 1990s as part of the Turn Around Taylor campaign.
The effort to curtail what was perceived by the Williamson Country district attorney at the time as a hub for drug deals saw buildings holding numerous black-owned businesses razed by bulldozers. The Black community dispersed, returning only to attend the churches still standing, and the area saw little redevelopment except for the new police station.
It is now marked by weed-strewn empty spaces with some remnants of foundations.
In 2022, then-Taylor Mayor Brandt Rydell told the East Wilco Insider he wanted to see the council and staff redevelop the area with an eye toward guarding against a wholesale gentrification that could pressure some residents out of the neighborhood.
“As a result of Turn Around Taylor, there’s a lot of empty space in South Taylor,” Rydell said in late 2022. “Those are prime areas for mixed-use developments that will return vitality and vibrancy to South Taylor.”
To date the only thing on the books for south Taylor is a 70-unit Taylor Housing Authority project near Maverick Street. Seguin said it is currently in the early proposal stage.
A major investment such as Samsung’s initial $17 billion Taylor foundry and up to $44 billion over the next two decades, and all that comes along with it, “creates an economic boon for people with little or no connection to the community,” said Loren C. Steffy, a longtime Texas business journalist and author of five books of nonfiction.
His first novel, 2022’s “The Big Empty” from Stoney Creek Publishing, is about a major semiconductor foundry moving next to a small West Texas ranching town in 1999 that creates an economic and cultural upheaval.
“When I wrote the book, I had no idea what was going to happen in Taylor with Samsung,” Steffy said of the prescient novel.
Some aspects addressed in the book are already playing out in Taylor, but not yet in confrontational ways.
Still, the issues of water, land and housing costs and an influx of strangers are common themes.
“You’re pricing out a lot of minority communities and causing them to scatter,” Steffy said. “You’re talking about really changing the fabric of the community.”
“It’s something we talk about all the time. It’s concerning to all of us.”
— DAVE PORTER
Williamson County Economic Development Partnership
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