The City of San Antonio is working on a plan to allow seniors to pay their property taxes through community service work.
The idea is aimed at helping seniors who are on a fixed income as well as combating social isolation that was exacerbated by the pandemic. Participation at senior centers declined sharply at the beginning of COVID-19 and has yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels.
“What we’ve been hearing from residents throughout San Antonio, seniors in particular, is that they’re struggling to keep up with their property taxes, despite the City of San Antonio having a cap for the senior [homestead] exemption,” Councilwoman Teri Castillo (D5) said in an interview Wednesday.
Castillo said her staff started researching ways to help and found that Texas law allows people 65 and up to pay city property taxes through the performance of a service if the city has a program to do so. The City of Boston has a similar program that allows seniors to work off up to $1,500 in property taxes through community service.
“San Antonio seniors and their families are looking for methods of mitigating displacement through increasing property taxes, so I think it’s important that we explore what the Texas Constitution allows,” said Castillo.
The program is the first solo policy recommendation for Castillo, a housing organizer elected to City Council in 2021.
The city estimates that for a property tax bill of $3,000, a senior could work off $600 in taxes through 42 hours of volunteer work.
The proposal does not specify which jobs seniors would do, but says it would connect them with “low-impact, safe volunteer and socialization opportunities.”
“Community engagement and housing are two of the issues that are most important to older adults here in San Antonio,” said Ismael Herrera, associate state director of outreach and advocacy at the American Association of Retired People, which helped San Antonio craft its strategic plan on aging and is working with Castillo on the proposal.
“There’s strong evidence that social isolation can increase health risks for older adults, and volunteering can really help folks connect with other people in their community,” Herrera said.
Castillo’s plan has enthusiastic support of Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who said he called her when she filed the Council Consideration Request to express his excitement.
The Governance Committee voted unanimously Wednesday to allow city staff to craft a formal proposal for a pilot program that could go into effect in the 2024 fiscal year.
But “there are a lot of things that we’d have to evaluate to put the program in place from a city standpoint,” Deputy Chief Financial Office Troy Elliott told the committee, including how much of their bills seniors could work off through volunteer hours.
He said it’s also unclear which city department would lead the program and what resources they’d need to implement it.
Elliott plans to coordinate with the Bexar County Tax Assessor-Collector on how the credits would be applied to a bill before bringing a formal proposal back to City Council.
The city estimates 3,200 seniors are currently behind on their property taxes by two or more years. While the city doesn’t foreclose on seniors for property tax delinquency, those outstanding property tax bills are passed down when a home is inherited.
Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda (D6) who signed on to the proposal, said it had received some pushback from members of the community who saw it as forcing seniors to work for tax credits.
“A lot of times seniors are already doing the work, and they’re just going to get credit for the work that they’re doing,” Cabello Havrda said.
Elliott said an estimated 600 people currently volunteer at the city’s senior centers. It’s unclear how many seniors volunteer with the city in other capacities.
“It would be an opportunity for them to earn credit against their property taxes,” he said. But “one of the things that we need to really explore is that of those seniors, how many are multifamily versus actually own a home so that we make sure that we’re not displacing some of our volunteers.”
