Editor’s note: The San Antonio Report is pleased to feature the weekly bigcitysmalltown podcast hosted by Robert Rivard, co-founder of the Report. We’ll be publishing a brief synopsis of the podcast each Tuesday.
The term “affordable housing” often conjures images of high-rises offering subsidized apartments.
Mark Carmona, the City of San Antonio’s first chief housing officer hired in 2021, wants to reframe the conversation around housing affordability to include a range of options like privately owned duplexes, mid-range condos and backyard casitas.
The city and Bexar County need to “build up our housing continuum,” from shelters and permanent housing for people experiencing homelessness all the way up to market rate homes, Carmona told host Robert Rivard and senior reporter Iris Dimmick during this week’s episode of the “bigcitysmalltown” podcast.
Carmona serves as a kind of connective tissue among various city departments — from housing to human services and transportation — to coordinate the city and its private and nonprofit partners toward a more healthy housing stock. He oversees the city’s Strategic Housing Implementation Plan (SHIP) and its $150 million housing bond approved by voters in 2022.
While affordable housing efforts are initially geared toward those most in need, Carmona said it’s important to consider broader offerings as the city’s population grows.
“Remember, we’re going to get a million more people in San Antonio by 2040. Where are we going to house these people? We need units,” he said. “How are we going to increase density? What does that look like? People get real nervous about that. But we have to have these conversations and discussions if we’re going to get to where we want to be with housing.”
People also get nervous about permanent supportive housing for some of the most vulnerable San Antonians, those who are chronically homeless and have a disabling condition.
Such projects have recently faced some neighborhood pushback, but the largest and first, Towne Twin Village on the East Side, had little to none.
“In the case of Town Twin, they literally went to every home in that neighborhood, sat in the kitchen and said: This is what we’re doing … we will answer any questions that you have,” Carmona said. “You have to engage the community from the very beginning.”
One of the SHIP strategies is to develop a public education campaign regarding the importance of housing services, he noted.
“Part of that is how do we build new frames? Because I think people are operating with old frames when they think about the unhoused.”
