Zimmerman Talks Housing

Council Member Don Zimmerman (Photo by Jana Birchum)

Council Member Don Zimmerman thought his constituents would use the dismal Saturday weather as an excuse to skip his Feb. 28 town hall meeting. Instead, he found himself in a packed Fire Station No. 38, facing a mostly agreeable, but occasionally prickly, group of District 6 residents – each armed with his own laundry list of neighborhood gripes. The meeting began on a confrontational note, with questions about both the recent accusations of campaign finance violations and the child abuse allegations that have dogged Zimmerman since his campaign. The engineer insisted his ex-wife, who stated the claims of abuse in court documents, "is a pathological liar," and said his staff is currently working to get the Austin American-Statesman to pen an exposé. If all else fails, "I've got a lot of experience fighting in court," he said.

With a perfect sense of timing, Zim­mer­man's current wife Jennifer chose that moment to lead Shelby, the shelter pit bull who made an appearance at Zimmerman's previous town hall, through the assembled crowd, the dog's cheery green raincoat reflecting the fluorescent lighting.

After the meeting adjourned, Zimmerman sat down with the Chron­icle to discuss his fight against six subsidized housing projects, a pet issue he's agitated against for years – most notably blowing a rape whistle on local news in 2013 to protest housing bonds. Zimmerman called colleague Ellen Troxclair's abstention from Council's vote to approve the projects last month "a step in the right direction," but said there are more Council members to educate on the issue.

"Now that we have committees, it is my hope they'll look at this finance mechanism and try to follow the money, and understand why these subsidized housing projects are doing the opposite of what they intend to do," he said. "They do the opposite. Because what happens is it's a tax shelter for the very wealthy – the rich people get richer. We have more people dependent on government subsidies to afford a roof, and in the middle class people get squeezed [because] their tax bills are unaffordable."

However, Zim­mer­man admitted he hadn't been able to convince enough of his colleagues to move much further on the dais, and would have to begin working on other neighborhood problems – at the request of his constituents, some of whom urged him during the town hall to focus on traffic congestion over housing. "I worked on the subsidized housing issue, and I tried to educate my colleagues. We had the vote, and now I've got 99 more things in front of me to look at," Zimmer­man said. "So I'm not giving up on the issue, ... but my attention will have to move to something else; namely it will have to move to traffic and wildfire protection and the BCCP [Balcones Canyonlands Con­ser­va­tion Plan]."

That hasn't stopped the Council member from trying to reach sympathetic ears at the Legislature; last week he circulated a bill that would alter the scoring process for subsidized housing, taking state reps out of the equation and reallocating power to the city. The proposed D6 apartment complex Car­din­al Point, the flash point for Zimmer­man and his supporters, earned a letter of support from state Rep. Donna Howard last month.

During the same period, Austin-Round Rock was designated by the University of Toronto as the most economically segregated metro area in the country. When pressed on whether it's an inherently bad goal to have people of different stripes in the same areas of town, Zimmerman balked.

"To me it's not a stripe issue," he said, "it's an economics issue."

"Can you ignore race?" I asked him. "Can you take race and economics and all those issues totally apart?"

"But let me ask you this, since we're on the record. The University of Texas football team. I could take the same person making these racial arguments and say, 'I want you to look at the University of Texas football team,'" he growled. "Because ethnically, the color of the football team doesn't match the student body. I don't care. Because I want excellence. I want excellence on the football team."

"I think that's more a symptom of the fact that UT didn't accept black students until maybe 50 years ago," I replied.

"They are the best people. It has to do with performance, not ethnicity," Zimmer­man insisted. "To me it looks like economics."

"Let's not talk about UT football," I inserted.

"I need to," he replied. "Because it's the principle. The principle is, we don't look at the UT football team, and pick people based on the color of their skin."

I attempted again to redirect him. "All I'm asking is, demographically, is it a good idea to try to bring diversity to the suburbs?"

"I'd be happy to answer that, if only somebody were able to answer the football team question. Should we bring diversity of ethnicity or color to the football team? I want to bring excellence to the football team."

Zimmerman acknowledged not all of his constituents are on board with his battle on subsidized housing, but "I can't be all things to all people." He did, however, offer his alternatives to affordable housing: "We're going to propose something this year – it's called having the city of Austin either repeal or relax their ordinances that contribute to the high cost of housing and development in this city. I'm talking about zoning, environmental restrictions like the tree ordinance, ordinances like disability or wheelchair access to properties. Some of the watershed regulations are unreasonable. There's a list of stuff. It's called market affordable housing; write that down."