Disconnected

Gabriella Pansza is taking steps to make sure her children overcome the economic disadvantages she experienced as the child of a single mother who didn’t always have stable housing. Her youngest daughter is growing up in a house with both parents who hold full-time jobs. Yet the family is among more than 380,000 people in the San Antonio metropolitan area who live below the poverty line.

In the wake of the U.S. Census Bureau report showing more than 15 percent of the metropolitan area’s residents lived in poverty, City of San Antonio officials dove deep into the data and recently produced a report containing 15 policy recommendations – some broad in scope and some specific – for tackling a problem that has plagued the city for generations.

Ema Avila, her husband, and two small children moved into their new three-bedroom home at the end of November after spending two months helping crews from Habitat for Humanity of San Antonio build it. Even though homeownership is a proven way to build wealth and economic opportunity, low-income families like Avila’s historically have been sectioned off through lending practices such as redlining and city planning rules. Consequently, they have been kept away from wealthier neighborhoods with better schools, infrastructure, food options, and health care systems.

Between white flight, historical redlining, the Federal Highway Program, exclusionary zoning, and the mortgage interest deduction, San Antonio has created such a finely gradated system of segregation and inequality of wealth-building opportunity that any longtime San Antonio resident can likely tell you how much someone makes by what neighborhood they live in. Alamo Architects’ Jim Bailey has a plan to change all that.

With a wife and four children and making less than $40,000 a year managing a restaurant, my father didn’t take sick days and rarely saw a doctor. Despite a poor diet, little exercise, and a smoking habit, he lived most of his life without serious health complications. But in 2017, at age 60, he had a massive stroke. With no insurance, this catastrophic illness created an array of problems that have irreparably affected my dad and the rest of our family. This is his story.

Most of San Antonio’s failing schools are concentrated in the poorest areas of town – the same areas that historically have had the lowest graduation rates, the highest number of dropouts, and the largest number of students deemed not ready for college. The neighborhood surrounding Laredo’s Dovalina Elementary School is also poor, with many of the same hardships, but its students defy the odds. In 2019, the U.S. Department of Education named it a National Blue Ribbon school, and it’s not the only high-achieving school in deep South Texas. Here’s what these schools are doing to help their students succeed.

A survey at Lanier High School last year revealed more than three-quarters of students lack internet access at home. One of those was senior Uriel Agundiz, who would go to McDonald’s and buy a snack off the dollar menu to use the restaurant’s free Wi-Fi network so he could keep up with schoolwork. But an initiative by San Antonio Independent School District and a Sprint-affiliated nonprofit has bridged the gap for thousands of district students on the wrong side of a digital divide – the chasm between those who have internet access and those who do not.

Anthony Longoria can’t afford a car. To get home from his job at a Southtown restaurant, he depends on VIA Metropolitan Transit, in particular the late-night bus service known as the “downtown lineup.” When he gets as far as that bus will take him, he still faces a three-mile walk to his apartment. Longoria’s two-hour nightly commute highlights the challenges of living in a city where residents without personal vehicles must rely on a bus system that often does not connect them with jobs efficiently.

The coronavirus outbreak has not only upended San Antonians’ daily lives, it has put the city’s persistent economic disparities into sharp relief. For residents like Virginia Kowalik, an unexpected crisis like a pandemic hits especially hard. In her 70s, she has little regular income – $1,000 a month from Social Security, plus another $75 from a small retirement account. But that’s not enough to cover her living expenses, plus homeowners’ insurance and property taxes. That’s why she supplements it with around $300 to $400 a month selling art and handicrafts at an antiques mall, a job she now worries will put her in danger of contracting the virus.