Gentrification, Displacement & Buying Responsibly

There's a bitter symmetry to East Austin. The same neighborhood that Black residents were forced into a century ago is now a neighborhood many have been forced out of. If I'm going to write honestly about loving this place — and selling homes in it — I have to sit with that.

This piece is the hard part of the series I started in my personal story. The 1928 plan and redlining created East Austin's racial line. Gentrification is the chapter being written now — and it's displacing the very community that history concentrated here.

The Data Is Stark

Austin holds a grim distinction: it was the only fast-growing major U.S. city to show a declining African American population between 2000 and 2010, according to researchers at UT's Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis. The displacement was concentrated precisely where Jim Crow had concentrated Black residents in the first place — East Austin.

Twenty years ago, homes in parts of East Austin could be bought for around $60,000. As the tech economy boomed and the area became, in the words of one outlet, a "hipster mecca," prices and property taxes climbed relentlessly. Median household income in East Austin rose more than 70% between 2010 and 2020 — not because longtime residents got richer, but because wealthier residents replaced them.

Where did people go? North to Pflugerville and Round Rock, east to Del Valle and Manor — often to places with fewer parks, fewer grocery stores, and longer commutes. Displacement didn't just move people; in many cases it moved them somewhere worse-served.

The Tension I Can't Resolve

Here's where I have to be honest about my own position. I'm a Black man who chose to buy in East Austin. I love it here. And I also know that demand from buyers like me is part of what's pushed prices up. I won't pretend those two things don't sit in tension.

What I've landed on is this: the answer to a neighborhood's painful history isn't for people who care about that history to stay away. It's to show up with awareness — to be a neighbor, not a colonizer of the block. That distinction is everything.

What Buying Responsibly Actually Looks Like

If you're going to buy in East Austin — and people will — here's how I'd encourage you to do it with respect for what came before:

• Learn the history before you fall in love with the patio. Know whose neighborhood this was and why.
• Support the institutions that held the line — the churches, Huston-Tillotson, the longtime Black- and Latino-owned businesses still operating.
• Be a long-term neighbor, not a flipper. Communities are damaged by churn, not just by newcomers.
• Understand the city's preference policy, which aims to give families with generational ties the chance to return.
• Don't paper over the past. The brunch spots are great; they're also built on top of something. Hold both.

An Honest Place to Start

I'd rather lose a sale than sell someone East Austin as a blank-slate "up-and-coming" neighborhood. It isn't blank, and it isn't a slate. It's a living community with a hard history and a lot of soul still in it. If that resonates with you — if you want to belong here rather than just buy here — that's exactly the kind of client I want to work with.

When you're ready, our East Austin neighborhood guides and featured properties are a good place to start, and the buyer's guide to 78702 covers the practical mechanics.