In May the San Antonio City Council passed an ordinance that banned landlords with five or more properties from turning away veterans who were paying rent with a federal housing voucher.
Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones and veteran advocates argue the ordinance does not do enough to help expand access to housing for veterans.
“There are more restrictions to a dog being off the leash than there are to discriminating against a veteran using a voucher,” Jones said. “That’s ludicrous and unacceptable in Military City USA.”
According to a City Council ordinance, a dog owner found to not be in compliance with the city’s leash policy will be fined $100 for the first violation, $500 for the second and $750 for the third.
A landlord found to not be in compliance with the city’s voucher acceptance policy will be given a written warning on the first offense, a mandatory training on the second offense and a $500 fine on the third offense.
When the ordinance hits its six-month mark in November, Jones said she will revisit it, aiming to remove all exemptions.
A veteran of the Air Force herself and a former Pentagon official, Jones chided her fellow council members for passing the ordinance without closing the loopholes on exemptions.
“Some of my colleagues were OK with a little bit of discrimination… I, of course, advocate for no discrimination,” she said.
HUD-VASH and Section 8 vouchers
The My City is My Home chapter of the American GI Forum worked with students at UTSA’s Rowdy Corps Community Scholars program to create a report analyzing housing options across the city, and build two online tools to help renters see where vouchers are accepted.
“The central idea of this report is simple: an advertised unit is not necessarily an accessible unit,” said Wael Albakri, a masters student working on the project.
The group’s research looked at what properties in San Antonio are accepting the Section 8 housing voucher, a government program aimed at helping low-income families, veterans, seniors and people with disabilities afford rent.
The HUD-VASH voucher is a specialized type of the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program, specifically focused on veterans; a property’s response to accepting Section 8 does not necessarily establish its HUD-VASH policy, but it is often an indicator.
Nearly 70% of in-city apartments clearly indicated their response to accepting Section 8 vouchers was “no” and 92% of the MLS single-family and duplexes in the city were also marked as Section 8 “no.”
“When you look at where the places that take the HUD or even any of the federal vouchers are, they’re very far from the veteran facilities,” Jones said. “That’s exactly why the VASH vouchers exist because the VA recognizes that for our most vulnerable veterans, it’s not just an issue of housing; it’s also an issue of access to healthcare.”
The breakdown of MLS single-family and duplex acceptance of Section 8 housing vouchers by City Council district showed that areas with critical veteran resources often had the least options for housing.
District 8, home to the Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans’ Hospital, had the second-lowest acceptance rate, with five rentals marked “yes” for accepting Section 8 housing vouchers, and 99 marked “no.” According to the report, the only district with fewer options was District 9, which had zero out of 104 properties marked “yes.”
When looking at current listings with three or more bedrooms, only 6.7% of available listings reported accepting Section 8.
“That matters to veterans with children, large families, multi-generational households, people with living caregivers and households that need additional accessible space,” Albakri said.
The importance of housing
Jones said the policy as it stands hurts already vulnerable groups of veterans.
The exemption process is reliant on understanding how many units a landlord owns, which is information that is not readily available, making the enforcement of the exemption difficult. The city housing team must look into each individual landlord when a violation is reported.
“It’s a process that is very difficult to navigate. Period,” Jones said. “But certainly difficult for somebody that has PTSD.”
American GI Forum Bexar County chapter commander Pete Bernal agrees, and he says housing is one of the things that determines if a veteran survives the “Deadly Gap,” the first 12 months post-active duty when a veteran is most at risk of committing suicide.
“To put a barrier in front of people can [make] a person to go to suicide, because the first thing they say is, ‘I don’t have a place to live, so why do I want to live?’” Bernal said.
A VA study from 2025 found that veterans experiencing housing instability were three times as likely to have suicidal thoughts and twice as likely to attempt suicide compared to stably housed veterans.
Bernal, veteran who served 15 years in the U.S. Army, says advocating for housing access for veterans in need is personal to him because he could have easily been in their place.
“I put a lot of time into this. I’m achy. I’m always hurting, I feel down. I have pains and stuff. But this motivates me just to get up in the morning, just so I can make sure someone has a bed,” he said.
The group also found that for hundreds of homes, advertised rent was not the first barrier, voucher acceptance was.
Of the 1,506 single-family or duplex rentals in the city marked “no” for accepting Section 8, 924 have an advertised rent that was financially possible for people paying with a voucher.
Researchers called 105 properties of those 924 to get a sample on how many were specifically accepting the HUD-VASH voucher.
Twelve said they would accept HUD-VASH. But 93 said they would not.
Revisiting exemptions
Jones said this isn’t good enough, especially when the city of Fort Worth passed a measure without exemptions.
“Fort Worth passed this two years ago,” Jones said. “And you know what? Fort Worth is still standing.”
She also said she spoke with VA Secretary Doug Collins about the possibility of adding transitional housing options on VA properties in San Antonio so that veterans can live in close proximity to the care they need.
She said it will take an “all-of-the-above approach” to meet the housing needs of veterans in the city.
“Our job as leaders is to make sure that we are helping the most vulnerable,” Jones said. “Our veterans who need housing who are utilizing vouchers are, in fact, that group.”
The San Antonio Report’s military and veterans coverage is supported by Report for America.
