In a recent column, Robert Rivard makes the case for a “new vision” for our city, while citing the historical work of SA2020, the nonprofit that drives progress toward a shared community vision for San Antonio.
The column leaves out a critical detail: San Antonio already has a vision, one that was co-created by more than 12,300 San Antonians in 2020, complete with goals to be achieved by 2030. I know this because I helped facilitate the process and now I lead SA2020.
One of the greatest lessons learned in the first decade of driving progress toward the shared vision (2010-2020) is that we’re more likely to reach it when people in positions of power lead with it. In order to lead with it, they have to first acknowledge it exists.
To be sure, Rivard clarified his stance on Twitter: “I wrote that SA2020 transformed San Antonio. I didn’t say the initiative has ended. Nor would I agree that it remains the same galvanizing force that it was in its first decade.”
How is SA2020’s ability to galvanize people being measured?
At SA2020, we measure this, in part, by the growing number of San Antonians who co-create the community vision every 10 years.
The original community visioning process was launched with the resources of City Hall in 2010, on the heels of electing Julián Castro, San Antonio’s youngest mayor. The second visioning process was launched in 2020, seven weeks before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even so, SA2020 facilitated a yearlong process that engaged more than double the number of San Antonians a decade prior.
Rivard named Target ‘90, an initiative under Mayor Henry Cisneros, without noting how SA2020 is distinct.
After beginning as an initiative of local government, attached to the leadership of a single mayor, SA2020 became an independent nonprofit that transparently reports on San Antonio’s progress. This helped ensure the longevity of the community vision and allows SA2020 to hold public institutions accountable to shared goals defined by San Antonians. This model is something we underscore when supporting cities across the country in creating their own community visions.
Across the tenure of three mayors, SA2020 has continued to drive progress. In 2018, Mayor Ron Nirenberg’s Housing Policy Task Force, equipped with the community vision for neighborhoods, presented a 10-year plan to City Council to realize 11 affordable housing policy priorities through a $1 billion investment. In 2022, with the reaffirmed and strengthened community vision that continues to prioritize affordable housing, San Antonio saw the first-ever bond to include affordable housing with a $150 million investment. Nirenberg, while recently running for his fourth and final term, answered questions for the San Antonio Report on his commitment to public service and cited the lasting impact of participating in SA2020’s work.
The specificity of language is a key strength of the community vision. Not only does it call for affordable neighborhoods, it calls for decreasing total occupied housing units with costs more than 30% of income to 10% by the year 2030. In his comlumn, Rivard lacks this precision, conflating “vision” with “plan.”
San Antonians co-create the community vision. It’s the work of public institutions, through policies and investments, to create the plans to achieve it.
SA2020’s research and data offer critical, timely insight that can inform policies toward the needs of San Antonians and mitigate the longstanding inequities exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis. For example, SA2020’s digital data dashboard shows San Antonio’s annual housing cost burden from 2010 to 2022 and disaggregates the latest data by City Council District. This data can help voters make informed decisions, policymakers determine how investments can best serve San Antonians, and journalists tell a more complete story of inequities.
When SA2020’s work from 2021 onwards isn’t acknowledged, the erasure is two-fold. It erases the thousands of San Antonians who powerfully envisioned a better future in 2020, including people who face the city’s worst inequities every day, and it erases the leadership of people like me.
I stepped into the role of executive director in 2021, following the launch of the 2030 community vision. I am the third person to lead the organization and the first woman of color. I am also queer and an immigrant. Each of these aspects of my identity are marginalized, which is to say I am familiar with being erased and underestimated.
Reaching the community vision means everyone who calls San Antonio home truly belongs and thrives. This is exactly why I wanted to lead SA2020 — a nonprofit that’s one of its kind in the country — and champion the shared vision through another decade of progress.
