San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
» Mortgage demands.
About 40 San Antonians waving signs with messages such as, “Bail out the people, not the banks!” and “Cancela la Renta!” gathered in the parking lot outside the San Antonio Housing Authority on Saturday to demand that government leaders waive rent and mortgage payments amid skyrocketing unemployment.
The group of demonstrators — all donning face masks — started in the afternoon at the housing authority headquarters on South Flores, then split into three groups to drive through neighborhoods on the East, West and South Sides.
Some decorated their cars with signs reading, “Homes for the Homeless and Undocumented” and “Housing is a right.” Others used markers to write the phone numbers of social service agencies providing rental assistance on their car windows.
“It’s the least we can do,” said Ximena Urrutia-Rojas, 75, who came to the demonstration with her husband. “We’re retirees; we don’t have to go out and work every day. We can’t just sit home.”
The afternoon sun was high in the sky as Urrutia-Rojas and her husband wrote messages on their black Toyota Sequoia with neoncolored markers at the start of the demonstration in the SAHA parking lot. “Fear of eviction? Call 210570-6135,” read the back windshield. In pink marker on another window: “Help tenants, homeowners, small landlords.”
“To me, it’s a matter of rights — it’s not a money thing,” said Ricar
do Rojas, 75. “We have to be human.”
The San Antonio “Cancel the Rent” demonstration and subsequent car caravan was among a number of similar events across cities all over the U.S. organized by activists to draw attention to the thousands of families struggling to pay rent and mortgages after losing jobs to the pandemic. The San Antonio demonstration was organized by groups including the Tenants Union of San Antonio, Party for Socialism and Liberation, SA Stands and the Autonomous
Brown Berets de San Anto.
The groups demanded that government leaders take action before San Antonio families are forced out of their homes in the midst of the pandemic.
Even before the pandemic staggered the local economy and cost at least 100,000 Bexar County jobs, a growing number of San Antonio families struggled to make ends meet.
In 2019, landlords filed more than 21,000 eviction cases in Bexar County courts. As the coronavirus began to spread across Texas, local leaders temporarily halted most eviction proceedings. But that’s expected to expire after Monday.