The City of San Antonio is slated to make a substantial public investment in a transitional home for low-income women on the city’s West Side.
City Council is expected to approve more than $2.3 million toward the first phase of YWCA San Antonio’s Live and Learn Campus, which will house about 30 women ages 17 to 25 who are unemployed and not in school, women with young children or who are aging out of foster care.
“It’s a dream come true,” YWCA CEO Francesca Rattray told the council committee Thursday, which reviewed the project and voted to send the funding agreement to the full council for approval next week.
“Young women take two steps forward and three steps back at times when they’re trying to break the cycle of poverty and we’re building that safety net to allow them to continue to take steps forward.”
The funding will come from various sources: $1.4 million from federal Community Development Block Grant funds, a $670,000 forgivable loan from the Inner City Incentive Fund and $250,000 in development and utility fee waivers.
Even with that funding, however, the first phase of the project — renovating the former St. Andrew’s Convent into dorm-style housing — will be $1 million short of its roughly $9 million cost, Rattray said.
Rattray said she is confident the nonprofit will receive more funding from private donations and public sources to complete the housing project in spring 2024. The second phase includes a new office and services building, with on-site child care.
“We’ll be looking into new market tax credits for child care and we have several asks in the pipeline for the residential,” Rattray said. “[We’re] making a lot of good progress and there is a lot of support from the philanthropic community.”
Once completely funded and built out, the campus will offer child care, job training, physical and mental health care, financial literacy resources and homeownership training.
YWCA also plans to build nine small homes on the property that could be available for campus residents to purchase.
The nonprofit faced significant neighborhood opposition last year as it sought a zoning change for the fomer convent property.
The 9-acre property at 2318 Castroville Rd. was rezoned in March, with unanimous approval from city council, from multifamily to commercial with conditional use for a human services campus.
“I’m really excited about this project,” said Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia (D4), who chairs the Planning and Community Development Committee. “The YWCA does great work. Anything that we can do, in my opinion, to help the YWCA is important.”
