Making over Alazán right call, but what will follow?

In a wise move, although one fraught with uncertainty, the San Antonio Housing Authority, or SAHA, will rebuild and not replace Alazán Courts, the city’s oldest and largest public housing complex. For years, SAHA had plans to work with a private developer to tear down existing apartment units and build mixed-income apartments.

The decision of Ed Hinojosa Jr., SAHA’s interim president and CEO, to change course lowers the heat of discord between the agency, residents and community activists while easing growing fears of displacement. And in a time when the need for it far exceeds public housing, it’s a commitment to not reducing availability, a key issue with the recent Alazán project.

SAHA hoped to duplicate on the West Side what it did on the East Side when it was awarded a $30 million grant from the Obama administration as part of its Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, which was designed to transform areas with concentrated poverty levels into accessible and attractive mixed-income neighborhoods.

Toward that end, in 2014, the Wheatley Courts public housing project was torn down and replaced with more than 400 new mixed-income apartments.

After SAHA’s request for the grant was declined, the agency and then-CEO David Nisivoccia partnered with a private developer, the NRP Group. Under their plan, Alazán’s 501 public housing apartments would be razed to make room for 648 units, of which 582 would be mixed-income and only 66 would have been public housing.

SAHA said the demolition would be done in phases, that it wouldn’t repeat the mistake with Wheatley Courts in tearing down all the buildings at the same time, displacing residents all at once.

But it was the potential displacement of residents, the uncertainty of where they’d go and whether they’d be able to afford to return to the new development that created fear and controversy.

Even the 66 units reserved for families making less than the 30 percent of area median income, or close to $26,200 for a family of four, would have been too expensive for many Alazán households, whose average income is less than $9,000 a year. The Section 8 housing vouchers that SAHA said it would give can often lead to greater instability since landlords in Texas can discriminate against Section 8 tenants.

Alazán Courts’ first units opened in 1940 and, next to it, Apache Courts opened in 1942 after Father Carmelo Tranchese of Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church asked first lady Eleanor Roosevelt for affordable housing for San Antonio’s predominantly Mexican American and culturally vibrant West Side. Often linked together as Alazán-Apache Courts, their centrality to the community and proximity to a cultural incubator and landmark like the Guadalupe Theater give it an importance beyond affordable housing.

The fear that people would be uprooted from their neighborhood and unable to return is as undeniable as the state of deterioration into which these apartments have fallen, apartments that have never had central air conditioning. One point that SAHA, residents and neighborhood activists all agree on is that rebuilding the units so they are modernized, safe and comfortable is long overdue.

Last year, the National Trust for Historic Preservation listed Alazán-Apache Courts as one of “America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.” In choosing to do the rebuilding itself to preserve public housing, Hinojosa and SAHA are now, in their own words, “committed to the redevelopment in a method that will not displace our residents.”

The uncertainty of how SAHA will pay for this redevelopment is tempered by the confidence in the Biden administration, which is pledging to spend more money on affordable housing.

SAHA’s change of course allows Alazán-Apache Courts’ place in San Antonio’s history to be secured while allowing the homes they provide to continue to help families secure their future. But the homes must be updated, and the greater issue of a lack of affordable housing in San Antonio must be addressed.