S.A.’s future debated.

Some on the City Council push a social safety net

Throughout the coronavirus crisis, San Antonio and Bexar County leaders have repeated some variation of the line, “We don’t want to go back to the way things were before the pandemic.”

COVID-19 made the region’s already crippling poverty and economic segregation impossible to ignore as tens of thousands of residents lost their jobs, sought unemployment assistance and parked in food lines at San Antonio Food Bank distribution events.

But as Gov. Greg Abbott allows more businesses to reopen and the city begins to enter the recovery phase, some fault lines are beginning to appear over what the city and county should look like after the virus subsides.

Tired of constant reminders about the city’s poverty, several City Council members have seized on the pandemic as an opportunity to enact sweeping change and put in place a social safety net that lasts long after the crisis — including expanded housing assistance programs and protections for renters.

“We’ve got to think about the long-term recovery of our community and understanding that we need to look at these policies and see how they fit as part of our long-term recovery,” District 1 Councilman Roberto Treviño said.

But others have warned against wishful thinking. For one, the pandemic punched a $200 million hole in the city’s budget, constraining what it can do even with $270 million in federal stimulus funds on hand.

Some council members have balked at protections that would mean getting too involved in private business dealings. On Thursday, the council narrowly shot down a proposal that would have given renters 60 days to come up with back rent without getting evicted — similar to ordinances recently passed in Austin and Dallas.

“It’s a never-ending litany of things that are happening that, in my view, is taking the city in the wrong direction,” District 10

Councilman Clayton Perry said.

Early on in the pandemic, city and county leaders put a number of measures in place to help needier households as COVID-19 thrashed the local economy. The crisis has given officials who lean left in normal times plenty of opportunities to notch progressive wins.

For instance, CPS Energy and the San Antonio Water System paused the practice of disconnecting services to households that can’t pay their utility bills.

County Judge Nelson Wolff put evictions and property tax foreclosures on hold and enacted antiprice-gouging measures.

But the county protections are up in the air. Wolff’s moratorium on evictions, property tax foreclosures and price gouging expires Monday. On Tuesday, the Texas Supreme Court will allow the restart of eviction proceedings.

For some, it’s time for at least the eviction pause to end.

“Now you’ve got to start asking yourself the question, ‘At what point do you turn those off?’” County Commissioner Kevin Wolff said. “At what point does it become OK for you, the property owner, to exercise your right to get rid of somebody who’s not paying for the service you’re providing?”

Tomorrow’s decision

Depending on what changes Abbott makes to his own executive order Monday, Nelson Wolff said he may continue certain protections within the county’s emergency order. But he doesn’t think the halt in evictions can last forever.

“At some point, this has to stop,” Nelson Wolff said. “You can’t expect a landlord to continue to give up rent.”

Some of those emergency measures extend to the criminal justice system. In an attempt to minimize virus outbreaks at the county jail, Sheriff Javier Salazar released hundreds of nonviolent offenders on personal recognizance bonds that don’t require cash.

Salazar and Nelson Wolff took the position that unless an alleged criminal offender was accused of physically harming someone else, they didn’t need to be in jail — perhaps even after the pandemic is over.

The move makes sense in the short term, Kevin Wolff said, but nonviolent offenders still need some incentive not to commit more crimes.

“Of course you want violent offenders in our jail,” Kevin Wolff said. “But don’t forget that nonviolent offenders also have to pay a price for whatever crime it is that they’ve committed. And sometimes that price is spending some time in jail.”

Helping needy

Local leaders haven’t been idle in trying to come up with more ways to help the needy through the pandemic.

Last month, the City Council boosted the amount of money in the city’s primary housing assistance program — called the “risk mitigation” fund — to $25 million, nearly half of which has already been spent. The council also expanded the program’s reach beyond help on rent and mortgage payments to include covering the cost of utilities, groceries, gas and internet access.

County commissioners approved their own $4 million rental assistance program around the same time.

Council members are now eyeing $270 million in federal stimulus money already in the city’s bank account to help pay for a number of recovery causes: more housing assistance for low-income residents, closing the city’s “digital divide” by making sure needy students have internet access, aid for small businesses and workforce development.

But some efforts to provide economic relief for Bexar residents have hit a brick wall.

City and county officials pushed Abbott to freeze property values for a year. The idea was to keep yearover-year tax increases to a minimum — in many cases to be passed along to renters — and keep thousands of angry homeowners from swarming the Bexar Appraisal District offices during an already stressful pandemic.

After weeks of uncertainty, Abbott finally gave his answer, telling KSAT-12 on Tuesday that he would do no such thing. If local governments want to provide property tax relief, Abbott said, they can do it themselves.

City officials also are finding their limits. When Treviño tried to tap the city’s reserves to help pay for expanding the risk mitigation fund, city staff and some council members pushed back — saying it was necessary to maintain that amount to preserve the city’s credit rating and not jeopardize the city’s ability to provide basic services.

Those funds, last tallied at around $180 million, would pay for about two months of city operating expenses.

And the city’s high credit rating — which means the city pays lower interest rates on bonds that fund public projects such as new roads and facilities — has been a feather in the city’s cap for San Antonio business leaders.

Three weeks after that council vote, a slim majority of council members balked at the measure that would have given renters facing financial hardship two months to come up with the money before landlords could evict them. That measure, brought by Treviño, would have expired in September.

The proposal drew outcry from many of the city’s landlords who feared financial ruin if the proposal were to pass and from the

San Antonio Apartment Association, whose executive director, Teri Bilby, blasted the proposal as “unconstitutional” on its face.

Several council members were afraid that such an ordinance would bring the city another legal battle it can’t afford and put further strain on the city’s landlords.

That proposal died on a 6-5 vote.

“We are clearly divided on one of the tools that we have at our disposal to potentially protect people,” Nirenberg said just before the vote. “Let me remind us all that that’s just one tool. There is no panacea.”

Council members will soon consider a less controversial proposal — pushed by city staff and given the blessing of the apartment association and the San Antonio Board of Realtors — to fine landlords who don’t notify tenants of their rights if they’re evicted for nonpayment. That measure would last beyond the COVID-19 crisis.