One week after housing affordability took center stage in San Antonio at community gatherings, discussions among leaders and critical City Council deliberations, the issue will again be considered in council chambers on Thursday afternoon.
Council is expected to vote on a zoning change that would allow for 85 subsidized, affordable apartments in the city’s more affluent North Side.
A familiar fight is brewing among developers and policymakers who want to build more affordable housing and neighbors who say they support that mission, but don’t like the location.
Vista Park would be the first affordable housing complex in the San Antonio area that features free, on-site pre-K services for residents and, if space is available, the surrounding community, according to developers.
Monthly rents would range from $310 to about $1,195, serving households whose annual income ranges from 20% to 60% of the area median income (that’s less than $12,500 and $37,200 for an individual, respectively).
The rent is set at levels that would not exceed 30% of an individual’s monthly income. More than that is considered a cost burden by housing experts.
These tenants could be teachers, restaurant workers, senior citizens, hospital workers and others who are “the lifeblood of our community, and yet cannot find places to live that are commensurate with their income levels,” Olivia Travieso, local co-founder and co-owner of OCI Group and OCI Development.
OCI Development is partnering on the project with the city-backed San Antonio Housing Trust, the local Essence Preparatory Public Schools and Florida-based Atlantic Pacific Companies.
In addition to pre-K, Vista Park will provide other supportive services for residents, including financial literacy, workforce readiness and health and wellness programming such as mental health peer support services, Travieso said.
The public-private partnership wants to build a three-story affordable housing apartment complex adjacent to the Spring Creek neighborhood off the 14000 block of Nacogdoches Road near Comanche Lookout Park.
Because this kind of housing is affordable, “I’m able to put my daughter in college,” Lorraine Diaz told the Zoning Commission in August. Diaz, who said she is disabled, lives with her daughter Vista at Interpark, one of OCI’s previous similar projects on the North Side near Wurzbach Parkway and Highway 281.
“I’m very pleased with the complex, the amenities and the staff,” Diaz’s daughter said. “I feel safe.”
That commission as well as the Planning Commission recommended approval of the project’s required changes earlier this year, but City Council is slated to make the final call Thursday during its 2 p.m. meeting.
Some Spring Creek residents and Councilman Marc Whyte (D10), whose district includes the now-vacant plot of land, have reservations about the project, which has received highly-coveted tax credits from the state to the tune of $20 million.
“This is a good project — the problem is the specific plot of land that they want to put this development on,” Whyte told the San Antonio Report earlier this week. “There’s other areas in District 10 where we would welcome a project like this or something similar to it.
“… This particular project — whether it was an affordable housing project or just a market-rate apartment complex — neither of them would be appropriate for this area.”
Because the zoning change is opposed by more than 20% of its immediate neighbors, a supermajority (three-fourths) vote is required by council to approve the change.
Whyte said his “inclination” as of Tuesday was not to support the project.
‘We do not believe in concrete walls…’
Whyte and Spring Creek neighbors cited concerns about traffic congestion along Nacogdoches, housing density and the building’s height and proximity to single-story houses.
A few other neighbors went further, suggesting that the housing designed for low-income tenants would bring crime to the area while decreasing the property value of their homes — myths that have been largely debunked.
Michael Bigley, resigned to the inevitability of the project being built and concerned about noise, requested via email to developer representatives on Aug. 28 that the wood fencing proposed around the complex be replaced with “a thick concrete fence to be built at 8 feet or above, the higher the better.”
In a summary document composed by OCI Development outlining resident concerns, mitigation strategies and responses, the firm wrote: “We do not believe concrete walls should ever be used to separate communities.”
Reached this week via phone, Bigley said, “It’s not about separating communities, it’s just about the additional noise.”
Whyte, who was copied on that email in late August, looked surprised when the Report mentioned the 8-foot-wall suggestion.
“I don’t think anybody takes that seriously,” he said.
The Vista Park project exemplifies the challenges that residents, developers, policymakers and neighborhood leaders face when attempting to address San Antonio’s — and the country’s — housing affordability crisis.
From the complex financing involved to the public messaging about such projects, San Antonio is grappling with the realities of housing costs vastly outpacing wage growth.
During a panel about housing affordability last week, Mayor Ron Nirenberg said there’s opposition to Vista Park because “people have a misperception of affordable housing and negative stigma of the people [who] are served by [it].
“… We need to take advantage of the opportunities that come to us with regard to financial resources. And this is a great example of it.”
An overhauled plan
Since talks with the neighborhood began earlier this year, the developers have made several concessions and adjustments to the plan based on neighbor feedback, Travieso said.
Neighbors said four stories was too tall, so Vista Park was reduced to three stories, she said. Neighbors didn’t want the apartments to “face the neighborhood,” so the complex was reoriented into a “U” shape.
“As few units as possible face the neighborhood,” she said. “And then we also removed many of the balconies that could potentially face the neighborhood.”
The buffer between the apartments and the property line was increased and developers pledged to add large trees and a fence.
Still, residents have concerns surrounding density and traffic — despite a professional traffic study showing that Nacogdoches Road, a five-lane secondary arterial, can handle it.
The commercial zoning currently on the property would allow for roughly three times as much traffic as the proposed apartments and pre-K facility, according to the study.
Vista Park will feature a detention pond that will capture any excess rainwater runoff — addressing neighbor concerns about drainage, Travieso said.
“We’re not against affordable housing” or people who have low incomes, Bigley, a native San Antonian whose son lives in a house Bigley owns in the neighborhood, told the Zoning Commission last month.
It wasn’t clear at the time that developers “have any intention of working with us,” he said. “We would like to work with them, but we just haven’t felt like they are being honest with us.”
Land use attorney Kevin DeAnda, who was hired by the developers, told commissioners they had essentially reached an impasse with neighbors. He did not see a point in scheduling more meetings.
“Considering the emails and the voicemails, the telephone calls that I’ve taken from those individuals requesting that we not move forward with our zoning case, it would have been akin to banging my head against a wall,” DeAnda said.
Still, developers talked with residents another time in August and could not come to an agreement.
The commission voted 9-1 in favor of the zoning change. Commissioner John Whitsett, who represents District 10, cast the lone vote against it.
Whitsett cited a lack of clear communication with the community.
“I would say that y’all didn’t handle this very well in terms of getting back to [the neighbors], and now everybody’s trying to put the pressure on and say that we’ve got to have this and if not, they’ll miss out,” he said, referencing the financing deadline tied to the state tax credit award.
A competitive tax incentive
Vista Park was one of just three proposals in the region selected this summer by the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs to receive a low-income housing tax credit known as the Competitive 9% Housing Tax Credit.
That means the project will receive about $20 million in the form of tax credits, which are sold by developers to investors who can apply the credits toward their federal tax liability each year for 10 years in exchange for their investment in the property.
The local Housing Trust’s involvement also means that the property is exempt from property and sales taxes, lowering operating costs for the developer, said Pete Alanis, executive director of the Trust.
Basically, the developer can afford to subsidize rent because of the tax credits and exemptions and the Trust’s public facilities corporation gets a portion of the developer fee to subsidize other housing projects and initiatives.
“All those together is how we’re able to provide the deeper affordability,” Alanis said.
While San Antonio is about four years into the city’s 10-year housing affordability plan and two years into a $150 million housing bond, building or preserving homes for the lowest-income population remains a challenge.
About one in four renters in District 10 spend a majority of their income on rent, according to a 2023 report from affordability advocacy organization Texas Housers. That tracks with citywide figures.
“That’s a quarter of all renters in this area, and [Vista Park] will help with that,” Alanis said. “This will provide those 85 units to help combat that.”
Of the 85 apartments, 54 are reserved for households earning 60% AMI, 22 for 50% AMI, seven for 30% AMI and 2 for 20% AMI or below, he said.
The nearest housing to Vista Park that received state tax credits is The Legacy on O’Connor Road for seniors. The cheapest public listing at the market rate apartments across Nacogdoches Road is about $1,100.
“In this case, there’s already plenty of market-rate product on the ground,” Alanis said. “People are saying that we can’t afford to live in market-rate housing where the rent is so high. … Our properties are well over 90% occupied.”
He declined to comment on the specific requests that neighbors had to visually and physically separate Vista Park residents from the rest of the neighborhood.
Generally, however, he noted that “there’s a fear of people that don’t make as much money as we do for some reason. [But] money doesn’t determine the quality of the individual. Your income does not define you as a human being and that’s true no matter where you live.”
Ultimately, we all benefit from our neighbors having stable housing, he added. “If we are not providing housing that people can afford — that is leading to homes and households that are being destabilized because they can no longer financially support themselves. … So it’s about creating stable families in stable households.”
On the dais last week, Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia (D4) — who is president of the Trust’s board — asked her colleagues to consider Whyte’s comments regarding the downtown baseball stadium deal that may displace hundreds of lower-income residents as they approach the Vista Park vote this week.
He said it was “detrimental to the future of this city” to “vilify business people because of the resources that they have,” referencing the housing advocates who called the deal “corrupt.“
“Councilman Whyte just said we will not vilify the people for the resources that they have,” Rocha Garcia, who is running for mayor, said. “Just something to consider as we think this through.”
