Are Silicon Valley Tech Workers Now Swarming 'a Reluctant Austin'?

Austin, Texas is America's fastest-growing major metro area, reports Bloomberg Businessweek, growing 30% from 2010 to 2019. But today a minimum wage worker hoping to afford a one-bedroom rental 'would now need to work a 125-hour week.'

And meanwhile, homeowner Matthew Congrove says he's now getting a half-dozen all-cash offers on his house every week. 'In the boldest attempt, a stranger simply showed up at his home unannounced and asked to buy it...'

Even Congrove — a software engineer who moved from Florida seven years ago — is most concerned about how the new wave of tech workers is affecting his adopted city's culture. Lately, he's seen more T-shirts bearing startup logos than band names. New condos have sprouted up where quirky bungalows once stood. And the commute time to his downtown office has tripled. 'They just keep coming,' Congrove says. 'The fleece vests, the tech bros — that's definitely imported from California.'

During the pandemic, Austin has welcomed more new residents from the Bay Area than from any other region outside Texas, according to records provided to Bloomberg by the U.S. Postal Service... Oracle late last year said it was moving its headquarters to Austin, and a stream of tech elites including prominent investor Jim Breyer and the chief executive officers of Dropbox and Splunk made plans to relocate. Elon Musk, the second-richest man in the world, is now a resident of Texas — though he hasn't said where — and Tesla Inc. is building a factory in Austin's outskirts, where Musk has said the company will need 10,000 people by 2022. He's also expanding the Austin area operations for Boring Co. and SpaceX, and has moved his personal foundation to the city's downtown.

For all his boosterism, even Musk recognizes the potential hazards of the influx he's helping spark. In a tweet on April 4, he called out the 'urgent need to build more housing in greater Austin area!'

The region is facing the same boomtown dynamics that have plagued San Francisco for decades.... 'There is a fairly broad-based concern that some of the things that aren't working in other areas are going to be brought here,' says Dax Williamson, a managing director for Silicon Valley Bank who leads its technology banking practice for Central Texas. 'If we price out the musicians we're going to find ourselves in a bad place.' In a sign that may already be happening, Tesla recently selected a warehouse in southern Austin that served as music rehearsal space, with plans to transform it into a $2.5 million Tesla showroom this summer.

Hating California is a tradition in Texas, but Austin's growing pains aren't all California's fault. According to the Austin Chamber, more than half of newcomers from 2014 to 2018 came from other parts of the state, followed by just 8% from California and 3% from New York... Still, out-of-state arrivals from affluent cities tend to be richer than average existing residents and, as a consequence, have a greater impact on the local economy. 'Probably 5 out of 10 of my clients are Californians, and others could say the same thing,' says Susan Horton, president of the Austin Board of Realtors. 'The majority are all tech people, and the last wave were all coming to work at Tesla.'

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