SAN ANTONIO – A new transitional supportive housing community for LGBTQ+ youth is coming to the West Side of San Antonio and will be the first of its kind in the state.
The Thrive Youth Center and the San Antonio Housing Trust Foundation announced their agreement during Pride Month.
Advocates said this is a crucial missing piece for LGBTQ+ youth who experience homelessness 120% more often than their non-LGBTQ+ peers.
“Forty percent of our local homeless youth identify as LGBTQ+,” Thrive Executive Director Justin Holley said. “They’re running away, they’re not being in affirming spaces, they’re being rejected from their families, and they don’t know where to go, so they end up on the streets.”
Thrive Youth Center already runs the LGBTQ+ youth emergency shelter at Haven for Hope, but soon they will be able to offer a full housing community.
It will be called Thrive Vecindad, or neighborhood, and will house 25 youth.
The property on Buena Vista on the West Side currently consists of two historic homes that will be fixed up, and then Thrive will build two more structures. One of the structures will be a community center building.
“Three of the homes will be transitional supportive housing, so they’ll be individual bedrooms with shared living rooms and bathrooms,” Holley said. “Then one community space for services like a community kitchen, a community library where they can come down and be in community and learn from each other, and then those services that they might need.”
The youth will be able to stay for two to three years and receive counseling, case work, and support with education, work, and permanent housing.
Mariana Lara Lozada, 21, who is currently living at the Thrive shelter at Haven for Hope, said the biggest piece of this new project will be the sense of community.
“We will feel more comfortable living in that part of the community and being able to use the amenities and have more chance of freedom that we don’t experience as much in the shelter,” Lara Lozada said. ”Just give us the opportunity to be able to say like, ‘Yeah, we’re not homeless anymore because we’re not in the shelter. We finally have our own space where we can still feel like family, and we can all support each other.’”
Once Thrive and its partners raise the approximately $10 million needed for the project, they plan to break ground in late 2027 and complete it by late 2028 or early 2029.
“The special housing task force that the mayor asked us as a community to build out, it’s looking for 100 units for LGBTQ youth,” Holley said. “This’ll take 25% of that off of the table, which is an amazing opportunity for us to offer those services to youth.”
This is also opening up opportunities for youth outside Bexar County, which is the only population the Thrive shelter can serve at Haven for Hope.
Once the transitional housing opens, Holley said it will be available to teens from across Texas.
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