Sandoval: San Antonio Must Up Its Game On Affordable Housing

San Antonio City Council will give its final approval Wednesday to support the somewhat controversial and much-delayed Trails at Leon Creek Apartments. A council meeting earlier this month gave insight into the goals and challenges to affordable housing in San Antonio.

Trails at Leon Creek was Council Member Ana Sandoval’s trial by fire, meeting with three neighborhoods that were excluded from the city negotiation process long before she was elected and well before the 33 acres on Bandera Road were downzoned from industrial to MF-18 in December. 

Sandoval is no shrinking violet. She is an MIT grad and a Fulbright Scholar. She spent 10 years working in local government in the Bay Area. So while Sandoval voted to approve Trails at Leon Creek Apartments as a city affordable housing project, she also had marching orders for city leaders: more inclusive public engagement for area plan changes, transparent conflict of interest forms for council members with personal ties to developers  and a commitment to a more comprehensive housing strategy.

Trails at Leon Apartments would be funded to serve families at 60% of median income. It is not a Section 8 project, but every unit would be affordable. Sandoval believes San Antonio has a dearth of this type of housing.

“I think one of the biggest lessons from today’s discussion is if someone is working a full-time job and a half, and they can’t pay their rent, then there’s something wrong with our city,” Sandoval said. “Affordable housing is one solution, but I’m also glad for our initiative in terms of wages, considering what we can do as a city to be able to make sure people who earn an honest living have a safe place to live.”

Council heard from plenty of residents about the need for affordable housing in San Antonio. Perhaps the most poignant comments came from those who helped to move the residents of Mission Trails Mobile Home Park in 2015. A recent study noted housing security issues as a significant downside to the sale of the property for the construction of luxury apartments. 

Trails at Leon Creek will be a project of developer Pedcor, which has apartment projects across Central Texas and the country. City officials said the company's longevity and portfolio (it owns and manages its own properties) made it attractive to the city. In the course of negotiations, the number of units was cut from 334 to 293, with Pedcor's promise to include a business center, a community room and a gym on-site.

Zoning, approved in December, could have put 18 units per acre, or a total of 590 units, on one of San Antonio's most congested arteries. Traffic may be the biggest challenge to Leon Creek. It is the state, not locals, that will have to improve Bandera Road, a state highway. The community can have a voice in improvements to Bandera as early as this fall, but the state has no plan to fund an addition of a lane in each direction (which is expected to cost $100M) before 2022, well after Trails at Leon Creek opens in 2019.

Neighbors were frustrated by the lack of input in a project that could impact traffic in their area. One-time council candidate Fred Rangel was the first at the microphone to express his disappointment over the project. 

"We were left holding 3,200 signatures on a petition," said Rangel, who started collecting signatures in April. "There have been several things along the way that we have considered a violation of public trust. We've not been included in the process."

But other nearby residents are on board with the project.

Phillip Manna of the Alamo Farmsteads Babcock Neighborhood was part of the original planning team for the Bandera area, a total of 17 neighborhoods. The goal when the neighborhood plan was created and reviewed was an additional 25,000 residents in the area by 2020. Trails a Leon Creek would bring it to that goal. 

After the meeting, Manna said the emphasis at City Council was too much on income and too little on making multifamily property work in the area. 

“When I saw the plan, it was not in our boundary, but it was located along our boundary,” Manna said. “We wanted to preserve single-family residences at the core, so this meets our plan.”