New downtown strategic plan calls for more affordable housing subsidies

Draft plan targets affordable and deeply affordable units

Construction on South Alamo Street near La Villita and Hemisfair in downtown San Antonio, seen in April 2024. (Gavin Nesbitt, Copyright 2024 by KSAT - All rights reserved.)

NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas – A draft of the city’s refreshed strategy for downtown came to light this week.

A group of downtown leaders presented a consulting firm’s draft of an updated downtown strategic framework plan to the San Antonio City Council’s Planning and Community Development committee this week, outlining recommendations for housing incentives, public space activation and retail development. The plan recommends incentives for projects that are in the deeply affordable and affordable categories that rent exclusively or in part below the area median income (AMI), respectively, leaving out market-rate and luxury.

The study was conducted by HR&A Advisors — who wrote the 2011 version — and led by Assistant City Manager Lori Houston, downtown steward Centro San Antonio and Visit San Antonio.

Thomas Simpson, a partner at HR&A Advisors, told the committee potential municipal incentive programs could create a balance of housing types in the urban core by focusing on projects on the lower end of the affordability spectrum, which are currently the toughest for developers to pencil.

He said that, under current market conditions and existing incentives from the city, a deeply affordable 125-unit multifamily development would see a funding gap of $125,000 per unit, or up to $32 million. A similar mixed-income example would see a gap of $70,000 per unit, or as much at $18 million. The draft recommends policy changes that would make project-based vouchers available for deeply affordable developments and designated gap funding for deeply affordable and affordable builds.

More public investment, he argued, would likely induce demand for market-rate and luxury apartment development, but the city wouldn’t need to subsidize those projects.

Read more of this story on San Antonio Business Journal’s website.

Editor’s note: This story was published through a partnership between KSAT and the San Antonio Business Journal.


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