Tuesday
September 1, 2026
Today at a glance
- Weather 99° / 78°A slight chance of showers after lunch, which is new around here.
- Air quality 51 · ModerateFine for most of us. If your lungs are touchy, take it a little easy.
- Lake Travis 95.6% fullThe lake is close to full — good for boats and for the summer water supply. Down a touch from last week.
- Allergies ModerateRagweed and grasses are up. Allergy folks, take the pill before it takes you.
- Power grid NormalNormal conditions: demand near 85,700 megawatts, with 103,900 on hand.
- Sunrise 7:07 a.m.The sun is up for 12 hours and 46 minutes today, and down by 7:53 p.m.
Good morning, Austin. It is September, and for the first time in a long while the forecast has something in it besides sun. Tropical Storm Edouard is coming ashore down the coast, and the ragged western edge of it may drag a shower over us after lunch. Most of the rain falls east of Interstate 35, so do not plan around it. But the sky will do something today, and after seventeen straight afternoons of triple digits, a gray hour counts as an event. Carry the umbrella you almost certainly will not need.
The Briefing
Cheaper rent, fuller eviction court
Austin renters are paying less than they were a year ago. Realtor.com put the median asking rent at $1,371 in June, down 4.3 percent, and the Austin Apartment Association credits about 86,000 rental units added since 2023 for the slide. Eviction court has not noticed.
CBS Austin reported Monday that Travis County logged more than 15,600 eviction filings over the most recent 12 months, 35 percent above the 2023-24 average and about one case for every 20 renter households. More than a quarter of the judgments landlords ask for are under $2,000, said Building and Strengthening Tenant Action (BASTA), an Austin tenant group. "This should not be happening," said Abia Bakay, its research and policy director.
Emily Blair, who runs the Austin Apartment Association, said rent is the one line in a household budget that has come down. "Household expenses on rent are actually going down right now and have over the last few years, but every other cost has gone up," Blair said. She said rental assistance programs have shrunk since the pandemic, and that eviction is usually a last step. The rules around that step changed on Jan. 1: Senate Bill 38 limits local courts from requiring mediation or a pretrial conference before an eviction goes to trial.
What's next: The Austin City Council next meets Sept. 10, and speaker registration for that meeting opens Sept. 7 at 10 a.m.
Sources: CBS Austin (eviction filings and rents), City of Austin (council meeting schedule)
City Desk
Money & bills
Austin-area home sales rose 7 percent, and the listings are still piling up
Homes.com put the Austin metro's median home price at $439,995 in July, up 0.6 percent from a year earlier, with sales up 7 percent. There were 14,200 homes listed in July, against a pre-pandemic average of 11,700. Senior market analyst Israel Linares said builders in the outer suburbs are discounting hard to clear inventory, and that buyers are returning. KXAN
Texas hospitals start the fiscal year down $27 million a day
The state's fiscal year began Tuesday, and Texas hospitals expect to lose $27 million a day in additional Medicaid money after the Trump administration withheld approval for about $9.8 billion, most of it from the Comprehensive Hospital Increase Reimbursement Program (CHIRP). Local governments collect about $4 billion a year in taxes from hospitals, and the federal government matches that money under the program. Four million Texans are on Medicaid. The Texas Tribune
Overheard on Reddit
Follow up to post of 08/22 "Does HEB have a problem with Austin?" regarding HEB price difference for Milk in different major towns.
As some of you may recall, the post was about how we were paying a lot more for milk in Austin compared to San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas. As of today, in-store pricing for HEB and HCF 1 gallon jugs of milk are lower by $1.21 That's a big price drop. I don't know if was due to the reddit post, or other Austinites complaining to HEB Corporate, but either way, I like to think we all (collectively
Also
New Texas laws Tuesday require solar panel sellers to register with the state, open electronics parts and repair manuals to independent shops, and recognize gold and silver as legal tender. FOX 7 Austin
Sen. Ted Cruz and Michael Dell met business leaders in downtown Austin on Monday about "Trump accounts," tax-advantaged investment accounts that employers may fund up to $2,500 a year for an employee's child. CBS Austin
Public safety & courts
Six months after the Buford's shooting, Rudy Garza is home
Rodolfo "Rudy" Garza Jr. was shot in the head on March 1 at Buford's on West Sixth Street, two months short of a mechanical engineering degree at the University of Texas at Austin. He spent four months in and out of the hospital and has now returned home to rehabilitation and therapy. Three people were killed and 14 injured; police shot the gunman at the scene. KUT
Also
Worth Ross Management Company said the window that fell from The Modern Austin Residences on Friday, damaging a resident's car below, is suspected to have come from a confirmed microburst two days earlier. KXAN
Everett Driscol, 42, faces two aggravated robbery counts and a felon-in-possession charge after an Aug. 28 armed robbery at the High Octane Game Room on Research Boulevard, Austin police said Monday. KXAN
Growth & infrastructure
The city will rent evidence space while its $32.2 million warehouse sits unfinished
Austin's Public Safety Warehouse on McAngus Road, bought with about $46 million in 2024, still has a leaky roof and unresolved subsurface conditions, and the city has no completion date. With forensic evidence storage at two other sites near capacity, Council advanced a lease of up to five years and $3.35 million for 44,000 square feet on Springdale Road on Aug. 27. Community Impact
Also
City planners held a weekend open house on the East Riverside corridor, where residents asked mostly about the Project Connect rail line and the 125-acre Grove-Riverside site now used for city offices. KXAN
Overheard on Reddit
Light out on 620 and Anderson Mill AGAIN
This is the 2nd time the light was out, but this time they have police guiding traffic. If you're commuting this AM, leave early!!
The Texas Senate's water committee takes public testimony at the Capitol on Tuesday morning on how much water data center cooling uses and whether local water providers should have to disclose it. CBS Austin
Waller Creek at 23rd Street exceeded safe fecal bacteria levels on five of nine testing days in 2024 and 2025, an Aug. 20 Environment Texas study found. The Daily Texan
Gov. Greg Abbott announced Project Watershed 250 in Austin on Monday, a six-month pilot offering free cybersecurity assessments and defenses to local water utilities across Texas. KXAN
Jesse Alba, who bought one of the last two houses on Rainey Street in 1966 for $3,750 and refused every offer since, died Aug. 21; his family has not decided its fate. KXAN
City Hall & county
The Texas Tribune published the full 2026 general election ballot for the Nov. 3 election, covering statewide offices, Congress, the Legislature and the courts. The Texas Tribune
Community Impact published questionnaires from the candidates for Texas attorney general ahead of Nov. 3; early voting runs Oct. 19-30. Community Impact
Austin's Office of Climate Action and Resilience awarded $102,000 on Tuesday to 34 community projects, from clinic gardens to school Green Teams, through grants capped at $3,000 each. City of Austin
Schools
The state board finishes rewriting high school social studies this week
The State Board of Education takes final votes this week on high school history, government and geography standards, after adopting kindergarten through eighth grade standards in June. The draft teaches early Islam through "the Prophet Mohammed's brutal military campaigns"; Muslim Texans asked the board for lessons on the faith's teachings. Board member Julie Pickren said the Bible is "an accurate historical text for cultural relevancy." The Texas Tribune / FOX 7 Austin
Also
At least 14 Texas districts have a campus with a fourth straight failing rating, one year from the takeover trigger the state is already weighing at Austin Independent School District (Austin ISD). The Texas Tribune
Abbott asked the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to draw up a framework for three-year bachelor's degrees by Dec. 31, writing that every extra semester adds tuition and living costs. The Daily Texan
Operation Naloxone, a College of Pharmacy project, trained dozens of University of Texas students on Aug. 28 to recognize an opioid overdose and administer Narcan, the nasal form of naloxone. The Daily Texan
Business & street life
Roger Beasley, who founded the Roger Beasley Auto Group in 1972 with three employees and grew it to 11 dealerships and more than 600 staff, died at his Austin home Aug. 28 at 87. KXAN
KVUE reported that Taste of Ethiopia is closing its South Congress location after 12 years because the owners say the area has grown too expensive, and that the restaurant is not leaving Austin. KVUE
Overheard on Reddit
More Austin Birds in American Traditional
Featured species: red-winged blackbird, blue jay, northern cardinal, yellow-billed cuckoo (on Texas purple sage). Disclaimer: I am not a tattoo artist, just a guy who likes the style!
Chris Stapleton plays a free 7 p.m. concert on the Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) Lawn on Sept. 10, open only to University of Texas students holding the Big Ticket sports pass. Austin American-Statesman
Overheard on Reddit
To the kind stranger
I was walking the trail on lady bird lake for an hour or so and stopped by a small area to look at the water and started getting emotional. I want to say thank you to the man who gave me kind words and advice. I didn't get ur name but I'd love to buy u coffee or tea sometime if ur okay with it before I leave. Please reach out to me if ur comfortable. not a romance thing, just trying to say thank
Weather
Today: mostly sunny with a high near 99 and heat index values as high as 104, and a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms after 1 p.m. There are no active alerts for Travis County. Tonight: partly cloudy, low around 78. Wednesday and Thursday both carry a 30 to 40 percent chance of rain. National Weather Service
Tropical Storm Edouard was expected to make landfall on the Texas coast by midday Tuesday. KXAN's forecasters expect Austin's rain to start after noon and end near sundown, with most of it east of Interstate 35, and up to an inch possible in the eastern counties on Wednesday. KXAN
Gov. Greg Abbott activated state search-and-rescue, swiftwater and aviation teams ahead of the storm, and the National Weather Service issued a tropical storm warning and a flood watch for the coast. The Texas Tribune
Overheard on Reddit
This is the hardest part of summer
You can just barely see “fall“ on the horizon. The summer is always a drag, but Texas fall is the best week of the year. Hang in there.
The Back Page
4 days until Texas football · Texas State at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium (DKR), Sept. 5, 2:30 p.m.
Jason Neulander invented a genre in a rehearsal room in Austin and then took it around the world: the live-action graphic novel, where voice actors and a live sound-effects table perform in front of an enormous screen of projected comic panels. It is what entertainment might have become if radio and comic books had caught on and movies never had. He toured "The Intergalactic Nemesis" through most of the 2010s, then came off the road for a few years. What brought him back was a bike ride with an old touring friend who asked whether he had thought about a new show. He went looking for a public-domain story with a title people would recognize, made a list of fifteen, and brought it home. His daughter Scarlett, then 18, told him it had to be "Treasure Island" — he had read it aloud to her when she was nine, and they had both fallen for it. "Everything that you think of when you think of pirates comes from Treasure Island," Neulander said. "And everybody knows the title, but very few people know the story, and the story is fantastic." KUT