San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Home prices booming on the East Side
Residents worry about taxes, change as demand builds
When John David and Barbara Smith moved into their Preston Avenue house on the East Side in 1970, they were the only Black residents on the block.
A neighbor started a petition to try to keep them from purchasing the house, which cost about $17,000, their son David Smith said. The day they got the keys, the couple and their three children slept on the floor in the living room.
“We were all in awe of the house. We kept walking through it, and all of us kids kept saying, ‘This is going to be my bedroom,’ ” David Smith, 62, recalled. “We thought it was magical.”
They’ve since filled all the rooms with memories.
Grandchildren and greatgrandchildren have stayed there, and relatives often stop by on the weekends for Barbara’s cooking. For family reunions, they’ll have six or seven barbecue pits going in the backyard.
“It just kind of ended up being the family house,” David Smith said.
They loved the neighborhood, too.
Holy Redeemer Catholic Church is a few blocks away, there’s an H-E-B nearby, and hopping on a bus to downtown is easy. Every weekend after church, they visit John David Smith’s grave at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, where Barbara updates her late husband on the goings-on.
Over 51 years, the family has watched the area morph — racially, economically and socially.
White residents left, families of color moved in, and now more white families are moving in. As more schools have opened, the St. Gerard Catholic School the Smith children attended has struggled.
Amid all that, land values and home prices have skyrocketed, with the assessed value of the Smith’s home jumping to $195,000 this year. Empty lots are being replaced with modern homes, restaurants are opening, and arts venues have improved.
“At least once a day somebody’s calling to see if my house is up for sale,” said Barbara
Smith, 83.
An East Side trend
Similar stories are playing out in neighborhoods across the East Side, where increases in home prices are outpacing those seen elsewhere in Bexar County.
An Express-News analysis of data from the San Antonio Board of Realtors found five of the top 10 ZIP code areas with the biggest median home price increases from 2015 to 2020 are on the East Side. It’s an area peppered with older homes, close to major highways and near the center city.
For those wanting to be close to downtown, Southtown and the Pearl, it’s more affordable than those locales. Investors are refurbishing homes, entrepreneurs are opening businesses, and dilapidated industrial hulks are being redeveloped.
But longtime residents are concerned about soaring property taxes, particularly for families with limited incomes, and losing their neighborhood’s culture.
Cities across the U.S. have been pushing for more redevelopment in their urban cores and creating incentive programs or partnerships to stimulate investment from the private sector, said Monica Cruz, who conducted research on the topic as a doctoral student.
More analysis on those incentives and who benefits from them is needed, said Cruz, now a senior research associate at the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Institute for Demographic and Socioeconomic Research.
“Everyone is certainly for economic development, but I think the big question that we have to keep asking is, is this equitable development,” particularly for low-income populations? she said.
Passing down a home from generation to generation used to be more common, but rising taxes make it difficult, David Smith said. When an elderly
relative dies and the over-65 tax exemption is gone, the bill could be too hefty for younger family members to afford.
Some newer residents may have different expectations about police presence, yard maintenance and cars parked on front lawns, he said. They could be quicker to call code enforcement than to talk to their neighbor about what’s bothering them.
“You move into a neighborhood without having any roots in the neighborhood. You are going to demand change,” David Smith said. “And it might be the right thing. But all of a sudden it’s just a different feel.”
The Smith family said they’ve seen benefits and costs with the neighborhood’s evolution.
“(When) gentrification comes in, you have to pay for it some way. We just wish there was a way to make it even and fair,” David Smith said. “We understand the change, but at the same time, you
just hate seeing so many family and friends being affected by it and moving.”
Dissecting the boom
San Antonio’s swelling population and economy are fueling its growing housing market.
Strong demand and a tight supply of available homes have been driving up prices for years — a trend that accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic. Inventory of homes for sale plummeted to record lows this spring, and the median home price surpassed
$300,000 for the first time in October, to $305,400.
Residents in the center city often receive letters, calls and texts about selling their property. But finding another home to move into can be difficult, especially if they want to remain in the area and not relocate to suburbs on Bexar County’s fringes.
The biggest increase in the median price of a home occurred in the 78203 ZIP code, a swath east of the Alamodome and around St. Philip’s College, jumping 250.8 percent to $177,500
between 2015 and 2020.
During the same period, the price surged 217.3 percent to $211,000 in 78202, which includes the Dignowity Hill, Harvard Place and Eastlawn neighborhoods. It spiked 153.7 percent to $212,500 in Government Hill near the Pearl.
In Barbara Smith’s ZIP code of 78210 — which stretches from
King William east to South Side Lions Park, and from Denver Heights south to Mission Concepción — the median price jumped 120.2 percent to $185,000.
The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey five-year estimates provide a glimpse of how the East Side’s population has changed.
The estimates include 60 months of data; data was collected between 2015 and 2019 for the 2019 survey. The Express-News looked at estimates from the 2011 and 2019 surveys for the five ZIP codes on the East Side.
More white non-Hispanic residents have moved in, and in four of those ZIP codes, more Black non-Hispanic residents have moved out, the data indicates.
The Hispanic or Latino population has risen in some of the ZIP codes and fallen in others. Median household income rose across the board.
Redevelopment
As prices rise, more industrial buildings in the area are revitalized. East Side examples include the Merchants Ice complex at East Houston Street being converted to a bioscience hub and plans to turn a former Handy Andy warehouse at Coca-Cola Place into live-work units and space for businesses.
Apartments have been built in St. Paul Square, and investors want to turn an outdated Best Western there into a boutique hotel. The Sunset Station depot was recently transformed into a nightclub, the centerpiece of an entertainment district that will include an amphitheater for live performances and outdoor space.
Drawn by the proximity to a customer base downtown and more affordable rent compared with other areas, business owners have opened an array of restaurants and bars on the near East Side. That includes Dignowity Meats, the Dakota East Side Ice House, Tony G’s Soul Food, Cherrity Bar and the mix at Hackberry Market.
Mrs. Kitchen departed the area earlier this year, to some regular customers’ lament. The popular soul food restaurant relocated from a cottage to a bigger space in Windcrest.
“Some things have moved out, some things have moved in. I think it speaks to a changing neighborhood,” said Father Kevin Fausz, pastor of several East Side parishes. “There has to be a market for the pizza and cakes and butcher and brewery.”
“It’s so yuppie, so millennial, but that’s OK,” he said, laughing.
“On the one hand (it’s) so difficult to think about the difficulties that gentrification and