SAHA upending more lives than it helps
My former home, the Alazán Courts, has been named one of the 11 “most endangered historic places” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
What an honor. How did we get here?
My mom and I got here by Greyhound. We were fleeing domestic violence and chronic homelessness, landing briefly at the SAMMinistries shelter. You couldn’t see your toes through the film of dirt in the showers. When a social worker found us an apartment at Victoria Courts in 1998, she also found my future.
We had no air conditioning and little furniture. We made our bed on the laminate floor. But we had safety, and we had a chance.
My mom and I were one of 660 families the San Antonio Housing Authority displaced when it flattened Victoria Courts. The federal courthouse and the tourists couldn’t stand seeing the poor. Years after the demolition, a SAHA executive described Victoria Courts as “one of the city’s most notorious, crimeriddled housing projects.” That was never my experience.
Like Alazán, where we relocated, Victoria Courts was a vibrant and vital support network for families, elderly and disabled. Since then, Southtown has replaced Victoria Courts and the surrounding neighborhood. The poor got priced out.
This is a long con. Time and again, SAHA bulldozes multiple housing projects — including Victoria Courts, Wheatley Courts and Mirasol Homes — and then replaces them with minimal to no public housing units. Instead of pushing truly affordable housing, SAHA then negotiates sweetheart deals with developers touting “urban revitalization” — which leads to displacing the poor.
See Mirasol Homes, where SAHA replaced 500 public housing units with brand-new rickety homes. Fifteen years later, SAHA has displaced homeowners and blown outrageous sums on repairs, demolition and legal bills.
Since 1993, SAHA has performed a magic trick: making nearly 2,000 public housing units vanish. With the demolition of Alazán Courts, SAHA will ax 501 additional units.
What SAHA won’t tell you is that 45,000-plus people on its public waiting list dream of housing security that may never come; SAHA’s Section 8 program has a yearslong waitlist; and SAHA has shrunk Alazán Courts, once home to more than 2,500 units.
Using a bait and switch, SAHA overpromises but rarely delivers on helping low-income San Antonians. For example, three years ago, SAHA sold the city on its plans to raze Alazán Courts by promising that it would replace every Alazán unit demolished. In time, that number dropped. The current plan lists 33 public housing units for families making less than 30 percent of the area median income — about $21,600 for a family of four — in its first phase.
An average Alazán Courts family earns $8,796 per year. Roughly three-quarters of the apartments house children, and roughly a quarter house the elderly and disabled. Where does SAHA expect these people to live?
SAHA would say that every displaced Alazán household will receive a golden ticket: a Section 8 voucher. What SAHA won’t tell you is that public housing units — not vouchers — boast the strongest tenant rights, including constitutional protections.
As an attorney, I have defended numerous tenants from evictions filed by Section 8 slumlords who routinely flout the laws, taking advantage of tenants and jeopardizing their vouchers. Nor are vouchers usable everywhere in the city. Section 8 units exist mostly in poorer neighborhoods.
The old story persists: Developers gain a windfall, the poor lose.
But let’s remember the Alazán Courts’ origins. Tuberculosis ravaged San Antonio just before World War II, and the Alazán Courts helped eliminate substandard housing, which fueled the TB pandemic. Amid another pandemic — and a recession — SAHA now proposes slashing affordable housing.
I owe my life to the San Antonio Housing Authority. I’m sad to see it become the San Antonio UnHousing Authority.
SAHA provided a safe place to sleep and a home without the threat of eviction when my mom lost a job every two to three months due to her schizophrenia, and we couldn’t afford the rent.
The Alazán Courts worked with my family. When a caseworker saw that my mom couldn’t hold down a job, she froze our rent at $84.50 a month. I remember that number.
Before Victoria and Alazán, what did my life look like?
A trailer with a hole in the floor. A shack infested with rats that ate my pet parakeets. A drunk who on most weekends slammed his body against our apartment door trying to get in.
Today, those families, seniors and disabled individuals who are arriving on the Greyhound or facing homelessness or subsisting on fixed incomes — where are they going to go?