ATA issued a candidate questionnaire to all candidates running in the November 2022 general election. All questions were the same for Mayor, City Council, County Clerk and County Judge. Responses have not been edited. View all responses here.
Joah Spearman – Candidate for City Council District 9
As we head into the 4th year of Covid-19, what learnings have you taken from the pandemic and how will you apply those to your policies and community outreach moving forward?
I’ve been in the travel / tech industry for a decade now, and the last two-plus years have been quite the entrepreneurial and leadership challenge. I thought the biggest thing that would result from the pandemic would be flipping Localeur from an app-based company to an email subscription-based one, but it turns out that’s only half true.
The real pivot that took place was far more personal as I went from traveling 150 days a year, launching Localeur in new cities around the world, to spending most of my time here at home in Austin, rooting into community even more deeply, and giving the time I was saving from planes and trips back to the community through volunteering and community service.
I helped 23,000 Austinites get their COVID-19 vaccines with Travis County Judge Andy Brown. I delivered water and food to hundreds of Austinites including with Austin Justice Coalition in the aftermath of a severe winter storm in early 2021 that forced thousands of my neighbors to go days without power and safe drinking waters I continued my efforts to bring more emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion to nonprofits and businesses through my board service for Austin PBS and ZACH Theatre, and work with Peoplism. I also advised several Black women-led companies, leaders and organizations such as TNTP.
Now, I am running for Austin City Council. I know many don’t pay attention to local politics but this isn’t just about politics. This is about problem solving and being a people-first leader not only in business, but in a community I am so passionate about. I always thought being a business leader and entrepreneur was about pursuing an idea, building a culture of innovation, growing a team or revenue, getting investors and the like, but what the pandemic has really taught me is that all the skills I’ve developed aren’t just helpful in capitalistic pursuits but even more so in community ones.
How will you work with City leadership to provide a housing plan for unhoused residents?
Austin’s strategy for addressing homelessness has been a latent one. While cities like Houston and Boston have demonstrated a years-long commitment to developing a comprehensive approach to fighting chronic homelessness, the City of Austin has only recently (since pandemic) deployed the type of housing first strategy necessary. If elected, I would work to focus my efforts in 3 ways including:
- Relaxing the most stringent compatibility standards that make it difficult for nonprofits and affordable housing developers such as Foundation Communities and Habitat for Humanity to develop housing for people below 50% MFI and unhoused persons.
- Developing public-private partnerships like Project Transitions, which tap state/federal funding, city/county funding and private donors to develop housing for unhoused or housing insecure residents.
- Making long-term and sustainable investments in mental health, addiction recovery and other wraparound services from healthcare to social work that alleviates the cost and housing burdens on our community.
How will you work with City leadership to support marginalized communities in Austin?
For too long, Austin has suffered from some of the worst City Council-enacted policies with regard to marginalized communities and communities of color. My candidacy represents an effort to right these wrongs and ensure that Austin is well positioned to offer abundance to all of its residents, not just those of privilege. I will focus my efforts in 3 main ways:
- Housing affordability: Both the City Plan of 1928, which codified segregation in our city, and our current land use policies have enabled our city’s marginalized communities – especially Black and Hispanic residents – to experience forced displacement, gentrification and being burdened with housing costs. We must enact policies that ensure housing affordability is possible for all of our residents, on both sides of I-35.
- Public transit: The voter-approved investment in Project Connect is a giant and generational leap forward in how we approach mobility as a city and region, and I will work steadfastly to make certain we are implementing this project with a high emphasis on inclusion, climate equity and transparency. The anti-displacement funds attached to Project Connect offer City Council a direct responsibility to mitigate the most harmful impacts of this project on marginalized residents in our city.
- Inclusion and Representation: As a former member of two City commissions and several major nonprofit boards such as AIDS Services of Austin, Austin PBS and ZACH Theatre, I know first-hand how essential it is that people see themselves in institutions and decision-making processes. If elected, I will leverage my deep experience with City commissions and boards to ensure we have the most diverse and inclusive roster of people appointed to ensure we are lifting up the voices of people in our marginalized communities be they Black, Hispanic, disabled, LGBTQ, small business owners or students.
Homeowners and renters experienced enormous increases in Travis County Property Taxes in 2022. How will you address Austin’s ongoing housing shortage and displacement issues?
Austin is an amazing city and it’s neither a surprise nor a new reality that more people are moving to our city. Demographers have shown that our population growth has been rapid and steady dating back nearly 150 years to the founding of Huston-Tillotson University then The University of Texas in the 1880s.
What more-recent history will also reflect is that our population growth has not been met with the types of investments in housing development that our community needs. Specifically we have four types of housing that I would work to foster:
- Workplace housing for teachers, nurses, paramedics, firefighters and other essential workers in our community whom are currently being priced out to Bastrop, Kyle, Georgetown and other outer-lying communities that are outside the city limits and long commutes away from the very communities we ask them to serve. We must utilize City-owned land, including reduction to parking requirements in new developments, to recapture the necessary lands to develop this on.
- Missing middle housing such as duplexes, townhomes and fourplexes that middle class Austinites can afford. We cannot continue to force folks who cannot afford single-family homes or luxury apartments to move further and further away from the central part of the city and their places of work.
- Deeply affordable housing such as the housing our 2018 Affordable Housing bond created and the upcoming 2022 Affordable Housing bond (Prop A) should support which is intended to support people who are below the income levels that private developers are optimized to create.
- ADUs, which are not only smart housing options for renters seeking residence in single-family neighborhoods like Hyde Park, Clarksville or Travis Heights, but also an effective tool the City can offer (pre-approved development plans and no-interest loans) to seniors and homestead exemption recipients on fixed incomes to offset their property tax increases enabling them to age in place rather than being forced out of the homes and neighborhoods they’ve lived in for decades.
As our community continues to rely on virtual spaces, how should the City address the digital divide? What steps would you take to bridge that divide?
There is absolutely no reason why Austin can’t lead the nation in addressing the digital divide. We have Dell, we have several semiconductor companies, we have a thriving startup ecosystem and we have plenty of access to financial and intellectual capital.
In November 2020, Austin finally held a homelessness summit bringing together City and County government leaders with housing experts and nonprofit leaders committed to the problem. If elected, I would immediately work to hold a similar summit focused on ensuring Austin can truly move its city government into the future with technology, innovation and equity at the forefront. This would involve private companies, public institutions and other key stakeholders working collaboratively to tackle different issues with regard to our community’s infrastructure from the digital divide, which hinders the ability of many kids from learning at the same paces as those of more privilege, to streamlining the permitting review and development cycle of housing and small business development to adding more options for civic engagement during City Council meetings and other public forums that are often limited to in-person settings that favor older, wealthier, white communities that are closer to City Hall.
Leveraging the convening power of the City government is something we need to do more proactively rather than waiting for the next disaster, be it pandemic or winter storm.
What are your thoughts on the City of Austin using cryptocurrency (AustinCoin)?
We have real issues as a City government around affordability, equity, sustainability and also transparency and accountability, and I do not believe now is the time to distract ourselves from big hairy problems that current residents in our community face, from rising housing costs and homelessness to a lack of trust in policing and growing threats to our climate, to distract ourselves with AustinCoin or other cryptocurrency initiatives that the private market has not yet proven out. I believe smart contracts are one type of blockchain technology I would like to see deployed in City governance, but I currently believe DAOs such as ATXDAO should take the lead on finding unique and effective ways to leverage crypto in local governance – then bringing those ideas to Council – which will enable the City to benefit from best practices and external expertise while not adding additional learning gaps and time intensive work to an already over-burdened and under-paid City staff.
I would like to see the US Conference for Mayors form a committee to explore and test new strategies for deployment of blockchain technology at the city governance level, and this is something Austin could play a very active role in where we also benefit from learnings of other cities while not being overburdened with pulling time, funds and resources away from essential services.
How can the City better work with Austin’s tech community to bring innovative approaches to civic challenges?
The City of Austin is very much in need of a more robust approach to technology both in service delivery and in civic engagement, given our economic dependency on the industry in particular. As an entrepreneur with deep experience in the industry, I would work to lead these efforts, bringing together the Austin Tech Alliance, Chamber of Commerce, and other key stakeholders to answer three core questions within the next 3-4 years:
- How can we ensure we leverage Austin’s tech community to eradicate growing income inequality in our city? (Currently Austin is one of the worst cities in America for this key metric of disparity.)
- What types of technology are most beneficial to our city’s long-term plan and vision, and how can we work to make Austin the hub of this technology through economic development planning and workforce development? (We are the Live Music Capital of the World, but there’s no reason we can’t also be the Music-Tech Capital of the World, too, for example.)
- Where is technology being leveraged to gain efficiencies, solve problems and reduce friction in infrastructure development (building roads, houses, hospitals, etc.) and how can Austin play a role in cultivating this technology?
I believe routinely convening, iterating, testing and developing results and answers to these questions will benefit our city and strengthen the connection between tech and Austin’s government for decades to come.
Learn more at joahforaustin.com