SAN ANTONIO – San Antonio has a reputation as an affordable city, but it’s hard to ignore the rising prices on everyday goods. And from the cost of a gallon of milk to a gallon of gas, people are feeling it.
“Some things you got to take away, you know, make up for the inflation,” Luis Velazquez told KSAT as he left a grocery store on the South Side, listing children’s toys as an example.
“Sometimes you got to tell them, ‘Well, can’t get that right now. We got to put it towards gas, electric, water bill,’ you know, stuff like that.”
The pinch isn’t just local. The Consumer Price Index for April 2026 released Tuesday showed a 3.8% increase over the last 12 months. Energy and fuel prices in particular have skyrocketed, with the CPI showing a 28.4% increase in gasoline across all types.
“For a year-over-year, 3.8 might not sound like a scary number, but when you compound it over the last five years of inflation we’ve been experiencing, that’s where the hit really starts to become apparent,” said professor Taylor Collins, chairman of the University of the Incarnate Word Department of Economics.
KSAT previously interviewed Collins about a 2025 report that put San Antonio as the 10th-cheapest metro area — a metric that he stressed on Tuesday does not mean the cost of living is low.
“Relative to a lot of other cities we’re doing well,” he said. “That’s still not a huge relief when people are already spending at their limit and now experiencing these additional costs on top of it.”
San Antonians also have more local, potential price increases to consider.
The City of San Antonio is mulling the first increase to its property tax rate in 33 years. The San Antonio Water System wants to raise rates. And though CPS Energy hasn’t presented a rate proposal yet, the possibility has come up.
One spot of potential relief for San Antonians is the cost of housing.
Rents at multifamily developments fell 3.4% over the past 12 months and are now at an average of $1,251, according to Apartments.com. Meanwhile, home prices have fallen 0.6% since last year with an average home price just below $310,000, according to Homes.com.
However, that comes with a caveat. Collins said housing has been the biggest stressor for the past five years or so. Prices rose “significantly” after the pandemic, he said, with rental prices rising with them.
“Even though we’re seeing a little relief there, it’s relief from a very high starting point,” he said.
And how affordable something is still depends on how much you have to spend on it. According to the same report on affordable metro areas that put San Antonio as the 10th cheapest, a single adult would need just over $90,000 to live comfortably here.
The area median income for a single person in 2025, though, was less than $68,000, and the city had the third-highest poverty rate among the 25 biggest metro areas in 2023 and 2024.
Ana Nuñez spoke with KSAT as she sold fruit cups out of the back of an SUV with her mother outside a South Side laundromat.
San Antonio is “definitely” affordable compared to other cities, she said, “but it’s also like you have to put into perspective that San Antonio doesn’t pay much.”
Nuñez said she’s job hunting at the moment, but a lot of the employment that is offered is about $15 to $18 per hour.
She studied at the University of Texas at Austin and said her friends “don’t move to San Antonio to ... get their dream job. They usually move out, unfortunately.”
Whatever your paycheck, the rise in costs likely isn’t over, Collins said.
“Something we know in economics is that people respond to future expectations,” he said. “So, in part, prices are going to today because people expect them to go up in the future, and as that cycle continues, we can expect the stretch to get harder and harder.”
For those who can afford it, Collins recommended trying to save money. For those who are already at their limit, he recommended looking at “whatever public support programs might be available to supplement for people who need that.”
“If you can prepare yourself, that is always the preferable place to go,” he said. “If you’re in an emergency situation, that’s what the programs are available for.”
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