AFFORDABLE HOUSING

As San Antonio voters decide whether to approve the city’s biggest-ever bond program, they’re also considering a new way to fund affordable housing.

The city may have turned its focus to affordable housing, but the remnants of a now-defunct incentive program will provide San Antonio's tallest apartment building millions in incentives.

The Strategic Housing Implementation Plan - or SHIP - was approved unanimously with one abstention and a second councilwoman away from the dais. At its core, the SHIP is about helping 95,000 Bexar County households who are most at risk of housing instability.

When we think about the world and the problems people encounter every day, a few of the biggest hurdles would be poverty and hunger, climate change and inequality, to name a few.

Episode 2 of “Solutionaries” tackles the lack of affordable housing across America and highlights the people and organizations who are working to solve the crisis.

As part of an initiative to create more affordable housing and an increased inventory of homes, President Joe Biden recently announced his administration wants to make single-family homes less available to investors.

When you hear the term “affordable housing,” what do you think of?

It’s been a strange time, living through a global pandemic. What first might have come as a surprise, is the housing boom that followed -- and the fact that things have stayed red hot.

Just in the past few weeks, the Biden administration announced it would take steps to address a severe housing shortage in the U.S.

A group of housing advocates protested in front of City Hall to voice their concerns about affordable housing in San Antonio.

The council members on the San Antonio Housing Authority Public Facilities Corporation Board delayed a vote on financing during a Tuesday meeting that would have allowed the “Friedrich Lofts” project to move forward. The project would create 358 units of studio, single-bedroom, and two-bedroom apartments in a non-historic portion of the Friedrich Complex on East Commerce and Olive Street.

Taking city incentives like fee waivers or tax abatements could mean future housing developments in San Antonio would be required to accept housing vouchers, like Section 8, from their renters.

San Antonio voters will consider a charter change that would give city council more flexibility on the types of bonds it brings forth for approval to voters in the future.

Amazon’s new housing equity fund will invest in moderate to low income housing around Seattle, Nashville and Arlington, Virginia, where the company ultimately expects to have at least 5,000 employees each, the company said. The first investment of more than $567 million will go toward 1,300 affordable apartment units near “HQ2,” Amazon’s new Virginia headquarters, and up to 1,000 apartments near its Seattle, Washington headquarters. Amazon has been criticized in the past for gentrifying the areas where it has opened large operations and driving up the cost of housing. In addition to its $2 billion investment, the fund also includes $125 million in grants to minority-led organizations and public agencies aimed at improving the shortage of affordable housing, which disproportionately affects people of color, Amazon said. The fund will also give grants to government partners, like transit agencies and school districts, to help working families in those fields.

SAN ANTONIO – A study commissioned by the San Antonio Office of Historic Preservation and presented to the City Council on Wednesday found that older housing units are providing much of the city’s affordable housing, but they are also being lost “at a rapid pace.”The study, prepared by Donovan Rypkema at PlaceEconomics, found that 22 percent of the city’s housing units were built before 1960. At the heart of the study’s conclusion is a simple idea: when it comes to housing, older generally equals more affordable. But in large, in the aggregate, the older share of housing is more affordable housing.”Rypkema said these homes, though, have been disappearing -- three every week for the past 10 years. And in a city racing to get ahead of an affordable housing problem, that’s an issue. “Almost by definition, anytime you tear down an old unit of housing, you’ve torn down a unit of affordable housing,” Rypkema said.