Top: Kat Teutsch for The New York Times. Above: Dan Winters for The New York Times. 43
been among the city’s hottest des-
tinations. It began with a couple of
fun dive bars and an excellent Japa-
nese fried chicken truck and explod-
ed into the site of award-winning
restaurants, a hipster honky-tonk,
a Whole Foods and, now, some of
the highest-price-per-square-foot
real estate in Austin. Gut-renovated
bungalows and new homes in
moody shades of midnight blue,
hunter green or white were rapid-
ly multiplying, squeezing out the
weathered old houses with pit bulls
and barbacoa pits, the piñata shop,
the tire-repair place.
In the spring, Douglass, Smith
and Douglass’s uncle, Moose Mau,
took out a hard-money loan to buy
their fi fth property together (and
Douglass’s eighth property in East
Austin), a run-down 1,614-square-
foot home on the fl oodplain, along
with a vacant lot next door. The
cost for both was $550,000. As usual
with Douglass, one project spawned
another: The empty lot came with a
shipping container fi lled with junk,
and she decided to turn it into an
Airbnb. For $20,000 she was going
to carve out some windows, add
a kitchen and bathroom and insu-
late it from the inside. For another
$78,000, she ordered a tiny house
to put in back. (During one drive,
I saw three such miniature homes
traveling the Texas highways.)
The Latino family that sold the
two lots was using the profi ts to pur-
chase a larger parcel of land outside
the city, a move common among
people of color selling their homes
on the east side. Gentrifi cation has
diff erent eff ects in diff erent geogra-
phies, as research by Virginia Tech’s
Hyojung Lee and Georgetown’s
Kristin L. Perkins has shown. In
New York, where the cost of living
is high for miles and miles, it tends
to lead to densifi cation — doubling
and tripling up. But in Texas, where
the sprawl is decidedly more aff ord-
able, it spurs suburban migration.
The proportion of the Austin popu-
lation that isRidgehaven Drive, Windsor Park Marymount Drive, East Austin
On their 16th bid, Drew Mena and Amena
Sengal (photographed here with their
daughter, Edie) fi nally landed a home in
the Windsor Park neighborhood.15
bidsListing price
$475,000Listing price
$455,000Sold
$535,000Sold
$562,900Offer
$515,000Offer
$550,000Listing price
$525,000Sold
$575,000Offer
$575,000(Continued on Page57)14 15The New York Times Magazine