Nonprofit houses S.A.’s most vulnerable

Most housing developers would balk at the idea of building on land that lacks utilities or may be contaminated, rehabbing homes they can’t resell at a high price and cobbling together enough parcels from different owners to do projects. But the nonprofit San Antonio Alternative Housing Corp. sees opportunities in such challenges.

“We don’t shy away from something … because the important thing is to provide affordable housing,” said John Shaver, a former banker who’s now the housing corporation’s director of real estate development. “We’ve always taken on the more difficult projects.”

For 30 years, the nonprofit has quietly worked to provide rental and ownership housing, as well as support services, to lowincome families in Bexar and Travis counties. It has renovated or built thousands of single-family homes and apartments, primarily for families earning up to 60% of the area median income. Its current portfolio encompasses 786 units.

The leaders of Inner City Development, a nonprofit that offers activities for children and emergency food clothing, created the housing corporation as a standalone entity in 1993 on the organization’s 25th anniversary.

For years, the housing organization offered a program for first-time buyers struggling to afford homes.

It loaned funds at low interest rates to help cover down payments, fees and closing costs for homes often priced from $85,000 to $110,000. Buyers received homeownership counseling.

But it ended that program because the costs of buying, rehabilitating and reselling homes at affordable prices were becoming too high without getting more subsidies, said Rod Radle, who chairs the housing corporation’s board and has served as

executive director in the past.

The nonprofit shifted its focus to rental housing, renovating and leasing out existing homes and complexes,

and building apartments.

Its board also decided to focus primarily on the near West Side, an area long plagued by poverty

and where its office is located. A surge of development downtown has pushed up home prices and rents in neighborhoods ringing the urban

core, where investors are buying and flipping more homes.

“If that’s the most vulnerable, that’s where we

Robin Jerstad/Staff photographer Maria Hernandez rents a home on the near West Side from the San Antonio Alternative Housing Corp.

Madison Islzer STAFF WRITER