Grimes Promotes Texas Affordable Housing Petition, Gets Mixed Response

Grimes on Monday made a public plea for her Twitter followers to support an online petition that calls on Texas politicians to sign housing affordability legislation. Her request was met with both support and ridicule.

"My fellow Texans! Petitions can feel useless but I guarantee local politicians are taking these seriously," the Canadian musician, who reportedly now resides in Austin, wrote on Twitter.

She added, "Plz sign to reduce housing costs in Austin. There's effective legislation on the table here but we need public support."

Grimes, who shares two children with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, is a popular presence on Twitter, where she has more than 1.3 million followers. Prior to her call for support of affordable housing in Texas, Grimes has posted in recent days about possibly getting a white face tattoo, praising HBO's House of the Dragon and claiming (perhaps jokingly) that "[d]inosaurs were planted by god to confuse us."

Her message about affordable housing drew an immediate response.

"This should be everywhere. People can't even afford rent anymore," Twitter user @kate13402974 said of Grimes' post.

Another person who used the Twitter handle @bluerazzblowpop said, "Thank for using your Platform to help us with this very serious issue."

Other people on Twitter were less than enthusiastic about the tweet from Grimes.

Brittanie Shey, a freelance journalist based in Houston, posted several messages directed at Grimes. She wrote that the star isn't fully knowledgable on housing issue in Texas and said "it is sooooooo weiiiiiiird that the org grimes is pushing here follows a whole lot of republican accounts."

"Also don't 'my fellow texans' me b**ch, you've lived here for a year," Shey added.

Another Twitter user, who listed her name as Rebecca E. Hamilton on the platform, wrote, "Born/raised in Austin w/ a background of local gov development services & this is a terrible proposition. I understand affordable housing but to not taken to account our immediate resources, zoning concerns, drainage .... This is dangerous. We need to discourage development!"

Grimes later followed up on Monday with more tweets on the subject.

"Btw for those saying housing bills don't work, Houston is a great case study. We MUST avoid austin becoming like SF [San Francisco], where the original population can't afford to live there anymore due to the tech boom," she wrote.

Grimes added, "The over-regulation in Cali is anti innovation. Tx is pro innovation, (they let u blow up rockets for example haha). but if we want to move our most innovative companies to Tx we owe it to the citizens to protect their living Standards."

The singer also referenced Musk in one message. Grimes said, "First of all I couldn't afford to buy a house that fits my kids in Austin atm without help from their dad which is INSANE cuz I'm a p successful artist. Secondly, these aren't my opinions, I've just agreed to help out some actual experts/ policy makers."

While most responses on Twitter came out on one side or the other regarding Grimes' opinions, some people were simply confused.

"Why is grimes doing housing tweets," read one such message.

Newsweek reached out to Grimes for comment.