Hello. My name is Leticia Sanchez and I’m the co-chairperson of the Historic Westside Residents Association which represents residents in the near westside of the city. I’m here to speak on agenda item #3, the Housing Bond. As we all know, the housing crisis that we are experiencing in our city is not only a local issue but a national issue. The residents of San Antonio voted to support bond funds to tackle the housing crisis we’re experiencing but San Antonio cannot continue to fund housing projects that don’t help to significantly alleviate the housing shortage for households earning 30% AMI or below. According to data from the SHIP report, housing for households earning 30% AMI or below is the most needed.
A concern of our Association is that the City is rushing to move the RFP process too quickly which could exclude smaller, more innovative and/or non-profit developers from the process. We are concerned that, in rushing to fund housing projects the City will once again provide gap funds to projects that are in the pipeline-typically mixed income projects that provide less than 50% of units to households at or below 30%AMI. In the past, we’ve seen that the City has funded some of these projects/developers who have a 30% profit margin. If we look at NRP’s Legacy at Alazan’s development project, the cost per unit averaged over $200,000. We know that non-profit developers can build housing at a much lower cost per unit so why does our City choose to use tax payer money to fund for-profit developers with high profit margins? The tax-paying residents of San Antonio did not vote for the housing bond to help developers line their pockets. They want to ensure that funds will help to decrease the housing crisis significantly and, ultimately, prevent our residents from becoming homeless. We ask that the Housing Commission recommend to City Council and City staff more time for the RFP process.
We’re also concerned with the proposed scoring criteria that city staff has presented which does NOT incentivize developers to construct or rehab units for the 30% AMI or below population. It gives 15 points for affordability and the exact same number of points for Gap requests. Under the affordability rental scoring, the highest number of points, which is 20, only 35% of total units are at 30% AMI or below. There is no incentive to try to build more a minimum of 50% units at 30% AMI or below.
San Antonio has the opportunity to come up with more creative housing solutions with these housing bond funds but if we take the easy road and use the same formulas or solutions and continue to fund projects that produce a minimal amount of housing for the most needed which are households earning 30% AMI or below, we will never resolve our housing crisis and the number of homeless residents will continue to grow.