Pio Renteria Got Most of His Campaign Cash from the Land Developers Gentrifying His District

By The People’s PAC

The east and southeast neighborhoods of Austin represented by City Council Member Sabino “Pio” Renteria are the fastest-gentrifying areas in the city, and Renteria knows it. When he’s in public, he claims he wants to help East Austin’s working families stay in their homes, even warning his constituents that they will “get run over” by big-time land developers if they don’t do a better job of organizing themselves.

Renteria is very different behind closed doors.

A search of the City of Austin’s campaign-finance database shows that at least 58 percent of the council member’s funding over the last year has come from the same wealthy land developers who are now gentrifying his district. These real estate insiders have been snatching up land throughout the neighborhoods Renteria represents (sometimes aggressively), demolishing long-established homes and businesses, and then replacing them with luxury housing and high-end retail establishments.

The eastern and southeastern neighborhoods in Renteria’s city council district are being gentrified faster than any other area of Austin.

Austin’s campaign-finance laws limit contributions to just $350, but council members who want to solicit big corporate dollars do so by accepting multiple checks from donors who work for the same employer. When it comes to Renteria’s 2018 haul, the 10 most generous employers are all in the real estate industry or work as lobbyists for it:

Endeavor Real Estate Group
26 contributions for a total of $8,900

Armbrust & Brown
28 contributions for a total of $7,560

Slate Real Estate Partners
10 contributions for a total of $3,500

Journeyman Group/JCI Residential
7 contributions for a total of $2,450

Barton Creek Capital
6 contributions for a total of $2,100

Cielo Property Group
4 contributions for a total of $1,400

Stratus Properties
3 contributions for a total of $1,400

World Class Holdings
4 contributions for a total of $1,400

Metcalfe Wolff Stuart & Williams
10 contributions for a total of $1,300

Riverside Resources
3 contributions for a total of $1,050

Austin’s grassroots activists have been battling many of these firms for years. Here’s a closer look at a couple of them:

Renteria’s biggest corporate donor is the Endeavor Real Estate Group, the city’s most prominent commercial real estate company. Endeavor made recent headlines after it was forced to apologize for a racist advertising campaign promoting the Domain Northside shopping center, which the company owns. Endeavor also developed Plaza Saltillo, a large and controversial complex of luxury condominiums in Renteria’s East Side district that will have far fewer affordable units than initially planned. (That’s because Renteria voted to allow the developer to break an agreement it made with city officials and advocates for low-income housing.)

Renteria’s biggest corporate donor owns Domain Northside, is developing East Austin’s Plaza Saltillo, and was widely criticized for an ad campaign characterizing their properties’ patrons as “classy,” “trendy,” and either “Anglo, Jewish, or Asian.”

These days, Renteria supporter Armbrust & Brown is probably best known as the law firm that represented the out-of-state soccer-team owner who wanted to replace southeast Austin’s Guerrero Park with his stadium (without paying for the land, of course). Armbrust also helped defend Wal-Mart when the company’s plans for an Allandale “supercenter” drew massive protests, tried to demolish affordable housing in East Austin so that it could be replaced with luxury condos, and discovered a loophole allowing the city’s private charter schools to ignore environmental regulations designed to prevent flooding.

Endeavor, Armbrust, and the rest of Renteria’s real estate backers didn’t stop with contributions to his campaign coffers. Many of them have also helped the elected official with “independent expenditures,” donations that can be used to support the candidate without coordinating with his official campaign. Over the last year, contributions from big land developers and their lobby groups account for 85 percent of the “independent” money that has helped keep Pio in office:

Cozying up to the local real estate industry is a risky move for Renteria, given how worried many of his constituents are about the displacement caused by home demolitions, new luxury developments, and the rising property taxes that hit the neighborhoods where it all takes place. (A recent study by the University of Texas confirms these Austinites’ fears, finding that our city’s low-income residents and residents of color are quickly being replaced by “largely white and wealthier” newcomers.) This is also an election year: Longtime East Austin activist Susana Almanza is challenging Renteria for his seat and has already won a spot on the ballot in a December 11th runoff. She has made his district’s gentrification-and-displacement crisis the centerpiece of her campaign.

The people who are fueling that crisis aren’t supporting Renteria out of the kindness of their hearts. Big donors always expect something in return. In our next post, we’ll take a closer look at Renteria’s voting history and see how his friends in the land development industry have fared.

Paid political advertising by the People’s PAC. As of 11/27/18, the largest contributors, giving $500 or greater to the PAC, are Kirk Mitchell, Fred Lewis, and Barbara McArthur.