Meet Mike
Michael Nahas moved to Austin while in high school. Allentown, Pennsylvania had been dirty and rundown. While Michael had succeeded in school — even being tied for 6th in the entire state in mathematics — his classmates weren't accepting of his quirks and nerds weren't cool yet. In Austin, he found a clean growing city and its people were welcoming and accepting of weirdness. He made fast friends and had his best year yet.
After graduating high school, he lived all over the country and even overseas, but always came home to Austin for Christmas. In that time, he got an advanced degree in Computer Science, taught at the University of Virginia, designed a file format used by millions, wrote software to protect military secrets, and was employee #7 in a successful start-up. In the finance industry, he wrote software that traded stocks and made $18,000 per day.
With new-found wealth, he returned to Austin to help his brother recover from a hip injury. He knew economics underlies everything and got an advanced degree in Economics from UT-Austin. He applied that knowledge by volunteering with a local YIMBY group and, eventually, they lowered the rent in Austin. He served as Chair of the Economic Prosperity Commission and exposed how the City is borrowing billions from its pension funds without a credible plan to pay it back. He also served on the board of Community Housing Expansion of Austin, a non-profit that runs 2 low-income housing cooperatives in Austin.
Michael is running for City Council. He lives in District 1 near his church, his second-home coffeeshop, and the restaurant where he celebrated his 50th birthday. He wants to preserve Austin as that clean, vibrant, welcoming city that he fell in love with long ago.