NPR Member Station Sets Up East Austin 'Neighborhood Bureau' To Record Gentrification Stories

EAST AUSTIN, TX --KUT-FM -- the NPR member station for Central Texas -- has opened a bureau in East Austin to collect the stories of residents there facing a changing, gentrification-fueled landscape.

For years now, the now-trendy East Austin has supplanted established neighborhoods as commercial developers descend on the area to accommodate a higher-income bracket. The upshot: Virtually everything east of Interstate 35 has changed from the longtime characteristics of what used to be a working-class enclave largely comprising a minority population.

But with soaring property values, changing demographics, luxury housing development displacing longtime residents, the people who still call East Austin home are dealing with challenges that couldn't have been predicted just a few years ago.

KUT hopes to collect residents' stories for posterity in light of the changing landscape in what is, arguably, ground zero of the gentrification wave. The "neighborhood bureau" the station is poised to open in East Austin is the first of its kind for the radio station.

"This fall, KUT News is setting out to tell the stories of people who are on the front lines of these changes – and tell the story of what happens when a place becomes valuable to a new group of people," KUT officials announced on their website. "Specifically, we’re going to focus on the neighborhood around the intersection of 12th and Chicon Streets."

Decades ago, East Austin was the center of black life in East Austin -- a tight-knit community and a hub for black-owned businesses, KUT officials noted. By the 1990s, the are began to see a steady decline. The radio station aims to explore the positive changes occurring through East Austin redevelopment along with its more corrosive effects dealing with longtime residents' displacement.

The series resulting from the radio interviews will be titled: On My Block: Voices from 12th & Chicon.

>>> Read the full story at KUT-FM

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