Preventing Transit Developments from Displacing Residents

Since the late 1990s, Austin has seen a dramatic rise in housing costs, with affluent young professionals moving into central neighborhoods and pushing established residents to the outskirts or out of the city altogether. This displacement is most dramatic in the same neighborhoods where Black and Latinx residents were previously forced to live after being pushed out of communities due to racial and ethnic segregation. As the city prepares to launch Project Connect — a transit plan that includes such services as a new rail system, downtown transit tunnel, and an expanded bus system — there is an acknowledgment that the project must address displacement prevention as a primary tenant of its program implementation. In response, city officials budgeted $300 million for anti-displacement programming to be spent over the duration of the project and managed by the Housing and Planning Department.

To support this work, the Housing and Planning Department will partner with FUSE Executive Fellow Hala Farid for one year to disperse $300M for anti-displacement efforts, focusing on preventing Black and Hispanic residents from being priced out of their neighborhoods. Hala will engage with the community and form a broad portfolio of displacement prevention programming.

HALA FARID’s career in community development, affordable housing, and philanthropy spans nearly 30 years in both the non-profit and private sectors. She most recently worked at Citi, where she spent 19 years as Director and then Senior Vice President of the Office of Inclusive Housing (OIH). In this role, she partnered with national housing advocacy nonprofits to design and support programs that addressed community needs and addressed Citi businesses and regulatory requirements. Through her work with the OIH, Hala addressed issues of affordability, gentrification, and displacement using a holistic strategy that included supporting shared equity, repurposing surplus publicly-owned properties as affordable housing, and creating small housing stability loans that allow low-to moderate-income families avoid foreclosure or eviction. Hala grew up in Washington D.C. and Queens, NY. She graduated with a B.A. in political science, economics and education from Queens College-City University of NY.