 Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. All right. My name is Charlie Cottrell. I'm the director of the Institute of Public Administration, Public Policy and Public Service at St. Mary's University. And I want to welcome all of you here this evening. I especially want to welcome those guests from the community and especially welcome all of the students who are here tonight. We really appreciate you being here. This is what Community Conversations is about and what it's for. The Institute that sponsors this event, Community Conversations, has specific purposes. Education is the first one. But also research in the community, research statewide and nationally is also what we're about. And Community Conversations was designed to have an informal, civil, interactive conversation on issues that are specific issues for our city, for our region, and for our state. Far too often, we only hear the 30-second soundbite, or we hear talking heads who are talking beyond each other. While there's no assured agreement in any of our Community Conversations, it is a living room, as it were, for St. Mary's University. And if things go well, we'll have an interactive session as well with questions and answers. Thank you very much. Thank you, Charlie, who is one of my great mentors, even though my grades at St. Mary's would not have reflected that. It's a great teaching of him and Henry Flores, just two men who I truly respect. And it's an honor to be here on campus and to be part of this great program dealing with such an important issue. One thing I wanted to say is that this program has been a planner for a long time. I think that Charlie first approached me maybe June or early July, asked me to be the moderator, and mentioned one of the folks he wanted to be on the panel was Councilwoman Ivy Taylor. And so we agreed to do it in early July when she was Councilwoman Ivy Taylor, and I was still working for Congressman Joaquin Castro. So after things kind of changed in our jobs, I didn't know if this would change also, but it didn't, and nothing would change except I'm going to make sure the mayor is very comfortable tonight if she needs anything. She will get to speak longer than anyone else this evening. And at some point tonight we'll sing Happy Birthday to her, even though her birthday is in June, just to... But it's an honor to be here for just a great event, and it doesn't surprise me that St. Mary's University would be part of a conversation because guided by this philosophy that there's no issue too large and too divisive that with reason and conversation and civility that it can't be solved. So with that, that's about most of the talking. I'm going to do this either because we have three great and vital voices who are going to take on this issue. The fact that we haven't even said its name yet is interesting. Gentrification. And so first I'm going to introduce them each as they give their presentation. They're each going to speak. After they are finished, the three of them are finished, is when we will open it up to questions and answers. And with that we'll get started with our first presenter. Maria Berrizaba was born in Laredo, Texas. Mrs. Berrizaba has been involved in the San Antonio politics and environmental protection for a number of years. She was the first elected Latina Mexican American on the San Antonio City Council, serving from 1981 through 1990, and has also worked in appointed capacities such as the Mayor's Citizens Water Committee. During her tenure, she has expressed opposition to a number of local and regional projects including the annexation of SeaWorld, tax abatements for Fiesta, Texas, sales taxes for the Alamo Dome, subsidies for PGA Village, construction of Alper Right and Reservoir, and investment in the South Texas Nuclear Project. Her opposition has been rooted in environmental concerns, particularly protection of the Edwards-Opera Reach Arts Zone and in concerns over the inequity of using tax dollars to underwrite private developments. Ms. Berrizaba founded the Hispania Unidas Conference. She has also carried her interest in municipal politics to the national level, serving as a board member and past president of the National League of Cities. What's not on the resume is that in 1989, she ran a great, nearly historic race for Mayor of the City, and I know because I voted for you. She was a presidential appointee to the OAS Inter-American Commission on Women and participated in United Nations Fourth International Women's Conference held in Beijing. I'm a BA in Political Science at the University of Texas, San Antonio in 1979. Maria Berrizaba. Thank you. So, can you hear me? Oh, okay. I don't trust this little thing here. First of all, Dr. Catrell, your students and staff at St. Mary's University, Mary and this community, thank you so much for hosting this event on such an important subject and also for inviting me. I'm going to go ahead and get home at St. Mary's. Gentrification exists in San Antonio today. Because of current predictions for growth in Texas and in San Antonio, this is a critical conversation in which our community needs to engage. It is a subject for the entire city. We need to try and come to a community consensus on how we are going to deal with this growth, housing is at the heart of growth. Who will benefit and who will pay? Now, I need to put a slide here. So, how am I going to do this? The red one? Nothing happened. There. I brought a picture and that's because it's my first house and it inspires me so I'll look at it a little bit as I'm reading. A discussion of the places where we live is profoundly personal. When we discuss gentrification, not only are we talking about the places where we live, but because the process of gentrification involves economics combined with race, ethnicity, class and political clout, it is much more difficult. And some people shy away from it, but we should discuss it. As we do however, no matter how much we differ in our opinions, we must be very respectful of people when they are talking about their homes and their neighborhoods. It's their greatest investment. Gentrification can be defined in various ways. Since I go first, I'm going to read a couple of definitions. One of them I got from Webster's online and it's very simple. It says the process of renewal and rebuilding, accompanying the influx of middle class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displace poor residents. There was another definition that I found. It was put together by a group in the Bay Area of California who are having to deal with gentrification displacement because of the huge success of the Silicon Valley. It's a much longer definition, essentially saying the same thing but with more detail and I'll just read the last part of it. Gentrification is driven by private developers, landlords, businesses and corporations and supported by the government through policies that facilitate the process of displacement often in the form of public subsidies. When hearing these definitions, we can see why the topic is controversial. In San Antonio since the 1950s when we created the council manager form of government our goals have been not only growth but also expansion. And these slides reflect that reality. The first one is annexation up to 1998 and you can see how beginning in 1971 the growth was mostly to the northwest and north and that's how it continued for many years. This is another slide of 2010 where again the growth is beyond 1604 north and now we were to see one today we would see a lot of growth past 1604 into 81 creating a lot of problems. It's important also to note that this growth, there's a whole story that I have on how this growth occurred and a lot of it was public policy that placed economic generators like the medical center, like UTSA, like Fiesta Texas that drove the development north. Around 2008 on or about city leaders supported by the business community started looking for revitalization of the inner city and it makes sense. Among the benefits of redevelopment in an area where public infrastructure exists they felt they wanted to concentrate here and also it would be good for the Edwards Aquifer perhaps reduce the stress and we had been having this problem for so many years. But some major policy decisions were made on or about 2008 which have made a huge difference. City leaders instead of just wishing that revitalization and redevelopment would occur inside Lou 410 actually put its resources into the effort. Incentives make all the difference. An example of this new commitment is the inner city reinvestment infill policy or ACRIP and it's the policy of the city of San Antonio to promote growth and development in the heart of the city specifically in areas that are currently served by infrastructure and transit but underserved by residential and commercial real estate and to accomplish the objectives of this ACRIP the entire range of public incentives is provided under this policy including regulatory which is zoning board of adjustment and so on procedural and the staffing of it and financial incentives even outright grants. Many of us did not realize that some of what was being made available like ACRIP could also be used in our neighborhoods. I thought it was the decade of downtown and I assumed it was just downtown but it wasn't. It was touching our neighborhoods. In my opinion problems that have arisen in recent months are due to the fact that while the areas of concentration for these programs or insight Lou 410 little attention has been given to the situation of the people who have been living in these areas for decades. As part of the development process the question of how certain development will affect established neighborhoods and the people who have been living there for decades is not asked. The ACRIP service area is inside Lou 410. You can see that circle that's inside Lou 410. The dark areas are the service areas. This map is a map of by pure research on the low income areas of San Antonio. They are in the areas where these incentives are being provided. And Mayor I do have to give you credit for all the work you did and have done as councilwoman in your district with a lot of work. I wish we could extend that all over the city. So I thank you. But there are huge areas in the west side that are in danger of disappearing because the housing is so old. There is development, economic development. There are businesses that are being set in corridors like Culebra and the neighborhoods next to them are in danger. They're small, they're vulnerable and there's no plan to what is going to be done for example with West End at the corner of Sarasamora and Culebra. I'm very worried about that. The mission trail zoning case has been the most glaring example of how the construction of high end apartments meant the displacement of long time residents. This would never have occurred if we had proper policies to address the needs of long time intercity residents and their neighborhoods. In this case about 300 people lost their homes, most owned their homes. Today some of those families are living, doubled up in other people's homes and they have been rendered homeless. We need to do something about that. People are being displaced, our city is growing, it will continue to grow and I am very proud that Mayor Castro appointed a committee, a task force to deal with these issues. I was appointed to it, so was Dr. Drennan and of course we're going to be giving a report to Mayor Taylor so you've got three people here. And I look forward to doing some serious work and I invite particularly the students here if you want to give me your name so I will put you on an email to report to you what you're doing and the day that we have a hearing to hear what you have to say that you come and you report to the task force. With this I'll close and I look forward to your questions. Thank you very much Mayor. Dr. Christine Drennan has been doing some incredible work on neighborhoods and young people and poverty education. She is the director of the Urban Studies program at Trinity University. Dr. Drennan served as the research partner on the Promise neighborhood planning effort and is currently the research director of the Choice neighborhood initiative and the burn criminal justice initiative. Three federally funded projects geared to revitalize in San Antonio's east side neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods have the highest poverty rates, lowest educational attainment rates and highest citizen rates in the city. In that capacity she is responsible for community engagement, data collection and analysis and project impact assessment ensuring that resident voices are represented in these neighborhood revitalization efforts. Recently her work revealed the strong correlation between pre-K attendance and later success in school and led to the creation of additional pre-K sites. Her findings on the lack of social services and amenities in the area resulted in a designation of local middle school as a community school by the school district. Additional engagement in the neighborhood with youth information revealed that issues as simple as transportation caused many to miss their appointments with probation officials thus violating probation and often having it revoked. Presentation of these findings to the probation department, police department, housing authority and city officials resulted in proposed strategies to place probation officers in the community's access. Dr. Drenner received an MA in geography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a PhD in geography at the University of Texas-Austin. She serves on the board of the Ella Austin Community Center and the Adelmo Community Group, an affordable housing provider. She has served as an expert witness for Maldev and finally she has published most recently in Geographical Review and Journal of Geography in Higher Education. Dr. Christine Drenner. Thank you. I'm honored to be here from, you know, welcome from, be welcome to here from Trinity. It's nice to be here. The lights are very disorienting. And I tend to walk, well, I tend to walk a lot. So I may be up and down. What I'm presenting tonight, yeah, I think they're here. Okay, now I'm on. What I'm going to present tonight is some work that I have, some research that I've been doing with us with some students of mine at Trinity on gentrification, but more largely on the housing situation in San Antonio. It started as a gentrification question and quickly became something else. I am going to, I know I can feel it already slide into teaching mode and I'm sorry about that. It's just kind of, it's just how I kind of work. The purpose of the study that I'm going to present to you was really to look critically at that word for one thing. And to be very careful with the vocabulary because we toss around the word a lot even in the newspaper tosses around the word a lot and we get very upset about the word. So to consider the word, look at a couple of the definitions like we heard from the councilwoman and then to test them out a little bit because even the definitions are a little bit problematic. So here we go. The word itself, right, what is this? Is that this definition of gentrification has evolved since really the 1960s, 1970s when it was identified as a process actually in London. Over time it's come to incorporate more and more characteristics and indicators. Early definitions often refer to it as restoration just of deteriorating 18th, 19th century often manufacturing or industrial buildings, conversion of factories and warehouses to logs, seeing a lot of that conversion which was maybe have started by some what we would today called urban pioneers a highly problematic term. We can talk about it if you want to. So artists might have moved in, young business people might have moved in which gave the signal to others that it was okay to move in followed by the middle and upper classes and with that these new cultural amenities, designer shops, yoga studios, coffee shops, restaurants and then with that the entire transformation of the neighborhood and through the process prices go up significantly. The definition actually that's really accepted today is kind of the standard comes out of the Brookings Institute and I want to look at it because it is the definition, the working definition most people use, right. So it's the process by which and the italics are important is that they become households displaced lower income residents of a neighborhood changing essential character and flavor of that neighborhood so blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right. This is the standard definition. Brookings Institute the displacement to me marks it as a very conservative definition meaning this is, you know that's the extreme once we get to displacement and people are actually losing homes like we heard about that's an extreme, you know and so just to be aware that can we and to question can we have gentrification even in those steps prior to that without actual displacement do we have to only get alarmed when we get all the way to the end of the process. So this is some of the questions that we were asking when we began this study is that really do we have to get that far just a couple, you know some of the cities around the country actually just sent this this place do I have a pointer no no, I don't so this place this place that actually right here just was listed this is in New Orleans where the gentrification and displacement are absolutely scary this place right here was just listed for $500,000 $500,000 and around the corner this little house right here and kind of personal but my son bought the house last year for $70,000 gentrification in New Orleans is a scary thing and so just watching the process here in San Antonio and for us to try to get ahead of it a little bit is really important when you do see you know evidence of it like that in other cities so what we've what we're trying to do here is to look at the process itself before we get to that displacement step of it because that's alarming and if we can understand the process and who's involved and why it's happening then policy can follow that because only if we understand process can we try to create policy that gets it in some of those earlier stages so what we need to do first is really to try to understand it here comes the school part ready neighborhoods change neighborhoods change that fact of life we change neighborhoods change there's regular neighborhood changes this has been theorized since really the 1940s, 50s and 60s it's all over the economics literature neighborhoods change there's even a little curve houses are developed they're populated by families but then new houses are often developed a little further out from the center from the center of town the next neighborhood out gets built families that are a little bit wealthier may hop from that original neighborhood to the next neighborhood out and their old house is often then bought by a younger family possibly often making relatively less money and so through that process we say that that house filters down and there's a succession of families that move through it it has a lifespan of 75 to 80 years without significant rehab it goes through this process so we have that development stage new housing kind of at the edge of town new families move in that stability stage new families are there, children are raised in that filtering stage those families often by now financially successful and stable may move out may move out a little bit further to a newer and more expensive house an American dream and then their old house filters and just kind of the academic literature filters down to a younger family which is maybe making less money ultimately through that process again theorized in the literature and pretty much in daily life the older houses with time and with inheritance may pass into rentership and then they're not maintained as well finally at the end of the stage we get into what we call that abandonment stage or where that curve starts to shoot up with rehab that's highly theorized in the literature and actually we can see that almost in daily life so if we look if we kind of accept that model what we're going to do when we think about things like gentrification is look for anomalies in this is something odd happening in what we expect in terms of the neighborhood neighborhood life cycle so this is what our study was was asking some of these questions and could something be happening with our housing market in San Antonio and if it is can we identify it can we measure it and then if we're alarmed by it what do we do about it so here we go so this study that we conducted at Trinity really only looked at the inner city for a lot of different reasons for students you know what I'm talking about for statistical reasons I have to hold a lot of things constant school districts distance from the center of town all of those kinds of things so we're really only looking inside 410 we looked at 138 census tracks which are our best abbreviation for a neighborhood we looked only the years are a little bit problematic and I'll put this right out there we looked at between 2003 and 2006 for data purposes for statistical purposes we needed a wide range because in some neighborhoods you only get a couple of houses for sale in a year and that's going to skew your results also 2008 is highly problematic in the housing market and we're still recovering from it so we had to go before or after it after it there's not enough data so we had to go before so just put that out there that this is a little bit dated but still I think interesting so first of all so if we just look at housing price and housing sales are there areas in our city inside 410 where the housing prices are going up at a higher rate than what we would expect that's our first question and what we found is that there's 35 35 of those 138 census tracks that are experiencing housing prices in the top 15% of the county's rate of increase they're colored here 35 census tracks in some of these areas it's actually even faster and there's a couple of areas sorry about the difficulty in seeing that but I will talk about it in some of these areas it's really interesting and this is the areas we focused on two of these neighborhoods or census tracks they had prices over those years one of them was around Lovako and one of them is the area just south of Lovako three of these census tracks had home sales prices that moved from the lower half of the county average from the below the county mean to above it in that time range that's really quick that's Tobin Hill, Beacon Hill in the area north of the quarry so those are the areas that we really focus on in here so we do see first question was we do see some anomalies in housing in some of those areas so what else do we see that's the price thing but are there other things so some of the findings here in all of these census tracks where the house prices increasing faster than that of the county because in the perfect world everything would go up at the same rate that's what it's about but we see some that are going up higher so do we see socioeconomic changes do we see changes in the people not just in the housing but in the people in the population so in those 35 neighborhoods a couple of changes that we see educational attainment is higher and it's going up at a rate that's higher for example the number of people who have a bachelor's degree or the number of people who have some kind of advanced degree is going up higher than in the county itself the median income hasn't changed statistically it's not statistically significant it's not higher in a significant way interesting point that we can talk about percentage homeowner has actually gone down probably due to the number of new condominiums downtown because they're folded into some of that data if we look just at those census checks that was at the big 35 if we look just at the census checks that I pulled out it's being really interesting educational attainment is way high it's much higher than that in the county and it's much higher it's increasing at a much higher rate than in the rest of the loop 410 inside 410 median household income is also going up but it's going up at the rate of the entire county it's going up higher than the inner city but at about the same rate as the entire county percent homeowner again in some of these areas is a little lower but because we've got a lot of building right now in condominiums so we got some socioeconomic changes right so we got some home price changes we also got some socioeconomic changes but what else another interesting thing is investment is investment being made in these neighborhoods and how is it being made in multiple periods and these actually these graphs are reversed there's increases in home sales price like I talked about that's the one on this side I know my left from my right not the farther one percentage there's increases in home sale price right but there's decreases in mortgage investment that's weird right so I've got higher prices but I do have a decrease in mortgage investment this may suggest cash sales prices cash sales prices could be problematic because that's it could be a real sign of speculation you know folks or small front or small groups or whatever you want to call them buying buying up houses you've seen the signs we buy ugly house or like all of those could be some of that going on it's just something it's an interesting finding and something to watch is it speculators with organized funds making multiple home purchases in some areas so this investment data is very interesting and could be really telling so really it asks the question about who are the folks that are buying some of these houses and and actually are they even people or are they just like funds somewhere so this is another you know following up on that question well what kind of mortgages if people are getting mortgages we already know okay we got a lot of cash we got a lot of cash sales no mortgages on file but if somebody is taking a mortgage what kind of mortgage is it right is it a conventional mortgage or an FHA mortgage FHA mortgages some of you know some of you don't interesting interesting thing FHA mortgages tend to be first time home buyers right they're conservative mortgages that it's when you know the banks are really taking a little bit of a risk they're a first time home buyer what we find here is that the number of FHA loans has increased significantly since 2008 before then we had more conventional loans that's people like me buying a house second or your second or third house but what we're seeing now since 2008 is more and more FHA mortgages signaling those young families young families highly educated what we saw in that previous data this is kind of corresponding to that to tell us okay yeah we may have an influx here of younger families not necessarily making more money but highly educated that are moving into some of our inner city neighborhoods so we got two different groups probably at work here we got some cash stuff going on and something to really watch out for but we also got younger families moving into our inner city neighborhoods so different things let's see so I want to return to this idea of this model the model in the neighborhood in the neighborhood of life cycle and right now actually the time I'm talking about is right at the very end land use succession are we in abandonment and the gentrification thing is this land use succession where the curve may be going up again and the cycle starts again and if so housing is actually getting pulled out of that housing life cycle it had filtered down it had probably housed people as renters of a lower income value just through this process and because housing neighborhoods change but the thing is we pulled that housing out now and we're starting the process again what that means though is that housing that had become affordable now starts the processing now starts the process again so when we know that from this study 35 of our inner city neighborhoods something like that is happening the big question though to me and that I think comes out of that is that it was 35 neighborhoods out of 138 I started with 138 I said housing prices are going way up in 35 that leaves what 103 right and 103 of our inner city neighborhoods that's not happening in those neighborhoods this housing life cycle we're still on the curve meaning that that housing is still in the deterioration phase so we're actually losing affordable housing for that income bracket in two ways through deterioration but also possibly through this kind of revitalization that might be happening that is really to me that's the big question here is that is the loss really of affordable housing in a couple of different ways we could be losing this working class housing stock through deterioration and deferred maintenance we may be losing some to gentrification yes but we're losing it also to this deterioration so just in closing these 35 tracks we have identified as potentially gentrifying and pulling some working class housing out of that kind of housing stock into a non-working class bracket and that's the potential loss of housing but what about all the rest of it is the big question here right and in those census tracts we do have they're highly occupied by renters a very vulnerable population with a low educational attainment and a higher poverty rate than other places so the question is if we lose some of that affordable housing and we're allowing the rest of it to further deteriorate where do those folks go and the bigger question then is it just a question of losing some to gentrification or are we allowing the entire housing stock to actually deteriorate without maintenance so far I think some of the some of the loss to gentrification may be minimal it's hard to it is a hard thing to measure but we've got to consider the larger picture of the inventory of affordable housing and that inventory we come at in a couple of different ways we have some affordable housing developers who actually build this stuff but we also have this housing that filters down that first time families are often living in but that's what's deteriorating right now and are we at risk of losing a lot of it so this is the work that we've been involved in over across town it's kind of the academic side of the stories that we heard from the councilwoman but trying to understand the process so that we can figure out like do we have a problem can we describe the problem can we measure the problem and then if we agree as a community what do we do about it and that's when we pass to city government my hand off Christine thank you very much now for the boss born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens I've already told you there's a lecture at UTSA in the public administration department she received a bachelor's degree in American studies from Yale University in 1992 and master's degree in city and regional planning from the University of North Carolina in 1998 she began her career working for the city of San Antonio in the housing and community development department in the neighborhood action department while at the city she worked with a variety of neighborhood associations, developers and non-profit organizations in order to facilitate inner city redevelopment she also planned several of the city's housing summits which provided an opportunity for community partners to exchange practical ideas on how to address how city's housing needs after six years she left employment with the city of San Antonio to become vice president at Merced Housing, Texas at Merced she worked to create and implement programs focused on children education, health and financial literacy for apartment community residents in 2009 she was elected to the San Antonio city council representing district two and re-elected in 2011 and 2013 this past summer on July 22 she was appointed mayor by city council colleagues to complete the unexplored term of Julian Castro becoming San Antonio's first African-American mayor its second female mayor and I believe Henry Cisnellas was the first one to point this out the first female African-American mayor of an American city with more than one million people ladies and gentlemen, Mayor Taylor thank you, Carrie and good evening everyone can y'all hear me, I'm on well I'm so excited to have the opportunity to participate in this panel as Carrie mentioned we talked about it a few months back and so I think it's great timing because we have continued to talk about and face these issues here in San Antonio and as Miss Berrio Sabo pointed out we are working through a committee structure to determine how we can outline some policies that would help us to deal with these changes in a more consistent fashion so I have a few slides here today I'm also going to try not to be too professorial as Carrie mentioned I'm a lecturer at UTSA so actually we didn't coordinate but a couple of my slides correlate to some of the things that Dr. Drennan had already mentioned so let's go ahead and get started here okay so first I have this slide up here with just a few photos to tell you a little bit about me which Carrie talked about but I think it's important because I think a person's background where they grew up the key institutions that kind of shape their thinking influence how they approach issues like inner city redevelopment where they want to live and how they want to live and public policy issues like dealing with gentrification so these are some of the key points about me that helped shape where I am today so here we go this is a part of a little professorial but I wanted to take a step back kind of a little bit in contrast to the other presentations and put it in a larger context that's not just focused on San Antonio but where I think San Antonio mirrors what we see throughout the nation which is really about our housing history here and housing policy with the key fact being that it's a market-based system that drives us so housing availability here is really market-based and housing production and consumption fuels a large part of our economy I was meeting with some folks in the real estate industry today and all they could talk about was housing starts, housing starts, housing starts and how that impacts job growth and other things here in our city so housing is definitely big business and so even though shelter we're talking about shelter is a common human need in a market-based system it's going to be less desirable sub-standard or located near nuisances or in many instances over crowded and so looking back a little bit on our history as a nation as our urban centers throughout the U.S. expanded older neighborhoods became less desirable due to market forces which were also aided by federal policies let's not forget about redlining and other things that help to aid that decline and so we had some reform minded folks that came in and also some profit-minded developers that pushed for slum clearance and resettlement so thus we had programs like urban renewal and hope six and some others and throughout that time period of the past hundred years the American dream that's we've all come to believe in has been a central strategy related to building wealth and dream of home ownership so it was seen as a central component for community development and necessary for community stability because homeowners would thought to be invested in a community in a way that renters were not now I've always had a little bit of difficulty with that concept as someone who grew up in New York City and there were a lot of people who were renters my grandmother rented her apartment for about thirty years and so she was very vested in what was happening in that neighborhood but these ideas about the American dream are really embodied in policy in many ways for example the single largest housing subsidy in the US is the home mortgage deduction so I think a lot of times we don't frame the home mortgage deduction as a subsidy and often times we point the finger at people who are receiving other types of housing subsidies but that is a subsidy so this issue of gentrification is a result of conflict between the forces of the housing market and our public policy so as the other speakers have done as well I wanted to take a moment to define gentrification sometimes I just say the G word I don't like to say gentrification because depending on who you're talking to it means one thing or the other some people think refer to it as positive oh that area is really gentrifying it like meaning it's improving and then for other people oh gentrification means 300 people lost their homes but these are some these are some of the things that I think of when I think about gentrification the first is rapid a rapid increase in neighborhood desirability and real estate values due to market or policy impact so whatever is happening is happening pretty quickly a little bit outside of the norm second escalating prices taxes and rents displace residential and commercial let's not forget about the commercial side as well tenants and owners and then going back to that commercial side there could be a change in the business mix in commercial districts because some of those neighborhood based people that have been there forever they can no longer afford the rents in the area so then you'll see a different mix of vendors and products in the commercial districts so okay following up with where Dr. Drennan left off here's a nice chart for you on the life cycle of a neighborhood which what she talked about as well from suburb to D gentrification so as Dr. Drennan mentioned almost every American neighborhood started out as a suburb and have periodic cycles of rise and decline just like other types of investments think about the stock market this slide illustrates what happens during a period of decline or de gentrification which literally refers to people leaving when prices fall and families are locked into mortgages often owing more than a home is worth we saw a lot of that here recently not here in San Antonio but in other places and so a great deal of the housing stock just ends up being abandoned and so many American cities and states have faced this kind of situation during the past 10 years but there were previous housing bubbles as well besides this most recent one so the overall policy goal has been for housing prices to have a steady gradual increase so that families can build wealth and neighborhoods are stable but obviously this doesn't always happen prices can increase rapidly and they can also decrease rapidly or otherwise and that often leads to periods of displacement and so worth noting integration of neighborhoods had a similar impact on neighborhoods although the mechanism was different minority families moving in depressed property values although much of this impact was due to the illegal practices of block busting but we still end up with the same result which is a loss of property value and the loss of the investment by those families so how do we get to the point where we can have neighborhoods for all well there have been some interventions in housing markets and they have a mixed record we've attempted first let me speak on the positive side some of the regulatory standards that we put in place have drastically increased the safety and comfort of people throughout the United States because think about it in the early 20th century many people lived in homes that didn't have running water that didn't have connection to water and sewage in fact when I worked at Merced Housing Texas and I went to that job in 2004 Merced was actually working on connecting some homes down by the mission to sewer in the 21st century so we have had dramatic increases in safety and quality as a result of some of our regulatory standards so now people have indoor plumbing and electricity but that doesn't help us increase supply in some other cities like my hometown where I was born of New York we had rent control there and that's been criticized from the right and the left for reducing investment in housing and causing more inflation and I've got some stories of some units that I've seen go through and I knew oh we're saving for a house so we're just going to move into Auntie So-and-So had this rent control unit we'll live there for five years and then we'll let the next family member live there I don't think that was really the original intention of the program so rent control has reduced the total number of units on the market it does provide some affordable units but not like more access it can reduce access to affordable units and then of course large scale housing is the other major investment that's been made throughout our nation but there have been notable failures and but there have also been notable successes in relation to public housing we talked about the other day when I was at the ceremony where we were celebrating that we were tearing down Wheatley courts over on the east side I reminded people that at a certain point in history Wheatley courts represented progress because they were moving from substandard housing to places that were a lot more safe and secure of course over the years that changed and public housing tends to well by design it focuses on those that are at the very lowest end of the spectrum and so it doesn't capture some of those other folks that are vulnerable but let's get to one of the real issues that we're talking about talk briefly about what some of the local solutions can be for this kind of mismatch I think that's the word I'm trying to say between the market and our policies one of the real issues is income inequality that's one of the structural issues that's underlying all these tensions related to neighborhood change, neighborhood decline whether or not people should look at homeownership as the single most biggest investment for their families we've had a surge in income inequality and what that means is that middle and low income families are increasingly priced out of the housing market or have to invest a much larger portion of their income in housing and so when the downturns come like the recent one that we just experienced is very vulnerable and have no cushion so the chart on the right shows that since 1980 annual after-tax income has flatlined for low and middle income families and as the chart on the left shows incomes have been going down while costs are going up this is of course not news to many of you and it's the focus of a lot of activism right now but this is to some extent a global issue but the United States is in in comparison to some other economies on this measure as well I know in some of the periodicals that I read I get Essence and Ebony in some of those magazines and I've read a lot about how those magazines focus on African Americans and there's been a lot of articles about how African Americans lost so much wealth during the recent downturn in the economy because they tend to be more middle range that's more vulnerable and then as their homes lost value it really was a significant decrease in overall wealth of that particular ethnic group but I'm sure that would apply to other groups as well but in general the issue is the people that are in the middle and lower spectrum on the economic ladder are of course more vulnerable to these bubbles in the housing market when we continue to promote the fact that they should put all their eggs in the home ownership basket now I'm not going to sit here and try and debate that home ownership is bad because there have been numerous studies that prove the positive effects of home ownership I'm just putting this data out here for you for us to all think about in relation to trying to minimize the impact of these neighborhood life cycles and bubbles that can occur in the housing market well I'm a community development planner so I think community development works and so that refers to approaches that support residents and stabilize deteriorating neighborhoods so instead of just focusing on the housing let's also talk about the people right so let's figure out how can we create ladders of opportunity for people who are already in neighborhoods that are vulnerable so that they can improve their educational attainment so that they can improve their job status and develop more financial stability so that they can earn they can obtain jobs where they can earn enough money to then be able to invest in the homes that they live in so that those homes won't have to continue to deteriorate and decline in value and so I think this is a best practice this is a strategy that we've been employing on the east side in the area that we refer to as east point as was mentioned we have done a lot of work to garner a large number of investments into east San Antonio but we're not just focused on housing so the housing authority has one component and yes they are going to tear down and rebuild weekly courts and we'll have some really nice new apartments there that will be mixed income they'll also be working on improving the housing the single family housing stock that's nearby but we're also working on education for the area so that the kids that are going to school in that area will have better outcomes we're also working on trying to get residents who are already in jobs and increase their skills we're also working on improving the commercial corridors nearby so that people who have a little more disposable income won't feel like they have to leave the area because I want to live someplace where I can have access easier access to retail and the kind of amenities that people in the suburbs enjoy so also my work at Merced Housing Texas was focused in this area so we provided affordable apartment units for low income residents but we didn't just stop there we worked on bringing in community partners that could assist the residents with increasing their educational attainment with achieving financial stability with improving their health with all the things that could help them to live more stable lives so I think that was was a great example and was a great example of approach here for our city citywide we're taking that approach with the Pre-K for SA program we're focused on making investments early on in our smallest most vulnerable citizens so that they can enter kindergarten prepared to learn and then go through the educational system here in a successful fashion so that they will be assets to the neighborhoods where they live and then finally at the same time we're also working on a comprehensive planning process for our city so that we can have a master plan that articulates our vision for our city where all parts of San Antonio would grow and thrive so it's not just about consistently annexing and growing in certain areas and leaving those other areas behind to just be vulnerable to that neighborhood decline process but instead so that we can have the data that's necessary for us to create policies that would facilitate investment in those parts of town that are vulnerable and that some of the data that would help us to do that is kind of having a good sense of where much of the potential is for investments to take off where are some of the employment centers already where we could create areas of town where it's not just okay this isn't just where people go to work but this is also an area where we have neighborhoods and we have commercial and that creates a stronger quality of life and if you have a mixed income community there then that makes it better for everyone one of the challenges we had on the east side was that a lot of people complained well there's no place there are very few employment options as far as large employers outside of town and people had problems related to transportation as far as them getting to some of the major employment centers in town so we think an approach that recognizes we have assets spread throughout town combined with sensitive housing plans that would allow people to live near those places is the way to go so that we can have balanced growth throughout the city so that is all I have for you today but I hope that that helped to add to the conversation and pose some questions about some of the assumptions that we all make related to where and how people live and can push us in the direction of developing policies at least here on the local level that can minimize the conflicts that we are seeing played out as some areas you know are being invested in but really at the end of the day we can't just invest in real estate we also have to invest in people. Thank you. Thank you all for your great presentations at this point we have some time for for questions we have the graduate students in the red church I believe the ones who are going to go around with the wireless microphone and just ask you to keep your questions succinct and there's a person right here You want me to talk into it? My name is Cher Gonzalez Menchaca I'm a 12th generation Roman Catholic Tecana I'm also a I spent my junior year here in St. Mary's University I came back in the mid 80s to be a part of their and as an aunt of five beautiful grandnephews you bet your bottom dollar I have a vested interest in the city of San Antonio especially in development Mayor Taylor if you go down to the plaque in the back of the city hall you'll see some Menchaca people listed there I noticed that we at St. Mary's University is a Catholic I can guarantee you that when I left St. Mary's here returned to Loyola, Chicago for my degree finalization plan I was already very much exposed to the Catholic Church's social justice teaching beginning with Pope Leo XIII in sickle calvary novarum gentrification is just one aspect of that none of you mentioned is how to protect the residents of those areas which are being taken over by either investors or even if they're younger families if there can be some sort of either financial backing to guarantee that those residents are able to remain in their neighborhoods I think that really is a matter of justice a matter of fairness from a very human interest human side that we are to treat our brothers and sisters who are here to care for them we are our community members keepers now we should either if any one of you could address that concern of mine thank you well I guess I would say that we are right now through this committee I think we're going to be examining what are the options for us as far as providing assistance or having some kind of consistent framework for dealing with those types of situations but I also have to say that I am supportive of growth and investment in the inner city and I was supportive of the project in the in District 3 that unfortunately displaced that were living there because I feel like certain parts of town get characterized as well you know that area is not going to have a nice new apartment complex where if younger people think about some of the younger people who grew up in stable homes and went to St. Mary's and then they want to live in their neighborhood they're not ready to buy a house that apartment complex could provide an opportunity for them for nice housing so I definitely think we have to have a balance I want to find that balance because I do believe in obviously treating people with dignity and respect but we have to also to a certain extent embrace some of those changes I think there are some things that we already do you know as far as tax exemptions for the elderly and also in our historic districts we also have some tax exemption program but it's only for city taxes I'd love to get some of the other taxing entities to sign on to that where if you invest in a home your property taxes are frozen so those are some of the things that I think maybe we could do more of you know Sherry and I know your history speaking of social justice I don't know how many of you know Father Bill Davis Ablate he told me a story when I had first gotten to City Council and we were working on some issues and he said we can do our work of justice in two ways one of them is to you know help people with the needs that they have immediate needs and that's their shelter and their housing and their food health issues but we can also do systemic things and that's to change the system and what I have chosen to do with my life all my life is to work at changing the system and that is really hard where San Antonio is right now if we see the history for the past 50 years for sure is that I see visions of changing the course of this ship that has been going one way getting direction from the very wealthy in this city and if it's good for them it's done and if it's not good for them it doesn't get done and I'm very tired of that but I see like we're beginning to actually talk about things like that and that's important somebody sent me I'm getting so much stuff since I started talking about gentrification one of them is this study that was done in the Bay Area I think I mentioned it and it says resisting gentrification in the Bay Area at the end they have some recommendations of things that can be done one of them is inclusionary zoning mayor something that if we had which is systemic we would have changed the issue of mission trails a bit because what you do is you make sure that when the city is investing a lot of money millions of dollars in these new developments we insist we exact promises that they are going to provide a certain level of housing for the people what if we were so creative in the city that we could do what other people do create land banks where some of the people who lived there who could have actually stayed there is that so difficult another thing that they really want we should have been doing a long time ago and that is investing and rehabilitation helping people keep up their homes another one is master planning making sure we have a plan the last time we tried it was in the 1970s and we got mayor to the very end and then the big forces came in and they didn't want us to be telling them what to do so master planning really celebrate what you're talking about that another thing is to invest in long time residence in communities what Charlie president Dr. Cattrall we talked about the suggestion that you had when I spoke to your class about gentrification and that is having some kind of tax structure so when the taxes are going up in a certain community we help the people who have been the longest there's a lot of things that can be done and I think it's the will the political will to do it and the help of the community to say enough is enough San Antonio has to be a different city we can fix entire neighborhoods I have that hope and that's what I'm hoping in this task force that we have and again I plead all of you to be involved as much as you can just really quickly so that we can move on I think housing is the only commodity that we purchase that actually at some point in our lives we probably can't afford anymore like my clothes deteriorate, my car deteriorates my stuff deteriorates my house appreciates and it just seems like a fundamental right that if I bought it at one point it can't be a game and if I'm employed and I work I can't get priced out of something I bought and that to me is fundamental and is there a way for some of these policies especially policy as far as low interest low interest loans so that we can just keep up with infrastructure and things like that but that's my name is Mark I'm a graduate student and I live in the 7-8-2-5-4 area code which is not yet been annexed by the city one of the things just an observation one of the things that I see that set San Antonio apart from a lot of basically from every other major metropolitan area in the country is that San Antonio does not have any surrounding municipalities that can support basically the issue of sprawling so you see especially on the northwest side since I live there I'll speak on that there's a major influx of people buying homes in that area because it's more appealing to be able to buy a brand new home in an area where you don't have to pay city taxes and at the same time if a married couple has kids they have the luxury of brand new schools being built elementary schools, high schools in that area so I guess if you compare it to say like Houston or Dallas you have other municipalities that are surrounding these cities that can address that issue but I guess you mentioned incentives earlier so what type of incentives can balance that out in terms of making the city more appealing or living within the city limits to where people can say yes I'm paying city taxes but I'm actually I'm getting something in return for it as opposed to living outside the city limits and not having to pay a city tax are there, I mean well I was going to try not to jump on that too hard because you kind of hitting a hot button issue for me here I was just telling my students the other day I teach a class on urban management and policy and I was giving the scenario just that you explained because we were talking about our topic actually yesterday was on services that local municipal governments provide and I said a lot of people get sold on oh I'm not getting I'm not paying city taxes but guess what you're also not getting city services so when you move out into those areas you may have a shiny new box that you live in a new school that your kids go to but there's no shiny new library there's probably no park nearby there's probably not a community center unless it's within your your subdivision so I would say that living in the city is appealing because I live in the city so I've got a young child at home we live in a 103 year old house on the near east side and I think there are a lot of people who would find inner city living appealing if we could address some of the issues that are a result of neighborhood decline so I think that's a lot of times where people are fleeing from not just the ability to not have to pay city taxes but if we could address some of the some of the issues that are a result of neighborhood decline like crime graffiti decreasing the quality of what's happening at the school which is correlated to the property tax revenue that the schools get which goes back again to the decline if we could find ways to address that and then also have some better marketing and some realtors who would actually take people to inner city instead of Stone Oak and Sea World which we love Stone Oak and Sea World they're part of San Antonio too but San Antonio is a city that offers a wide range of options for people for living and I think all that range should be presented to people so that they can then make the best decision for their family and they won't have to feel like the only option is to move you know kind of to the the outer edge or even outside of the city limits you know I have Elk Hoffman sitting right in front of me and I think it would be not good to mention the issue that he has been about most of his life and that is equality, equal funding in public education because one of the reasons that people move away from the central city is because of the public school system we had a woman who a family that rehabilitated a house across the street from us here in Beacon Hill and when her little girl turned the age of school she left and she said they left, they went to Bernie because of the school and she loved the neighborhood but that's something that we can do and that is work really hard to improve our educational system the courts have already told us how many times that we need to do it and it's beyond me how our legislature is still not able to do it well actually I was going to say the exact same thing is that our school districts act like northern suburbs assorting of the population so we have the suburban phenomenon but it's actually the political geography of the school districts rather than suburbs there's going to be an order, the gentleman right there is going to be you and there's three over here so I'll see you in five minutes good evening, my name is brother Ralph Newman I'm a Marianist brother I live here on campus and the Marianist residents and we've got some good Marianist friends here who come over to see us and we appreciate having the students here very much I think the panelists an excellent topic and very necessary your presentations it's a people issue very much so five years ago a former mayor of San Antonio Hartberger together I think Mr. Riehe conceived of a need for housing for people who live under the bridges and the people who are homeless and indigent in the very center of town they can't go out to either north, south, east or west they are living there because that's where they are and at the Haven of Hope they are able to make a progress and overcome their defections and their addictions and do a lot of beginning your life I guess my question is how is that related to the rest of the inner city how is the Haven of Hope helping hindering because it's a touchy issue I'm sorry well I might be best prepared to answer that since the city has been a key partner in Haven for Hope so Haven for Hope definitely is a bright spot and a bright light for those folks who have managed to enter the program and go through the transitional the transformational aspect through the help of a wide variety of wraparound services and then many of them are then able to re-enter the workforce and get back into stable housing and one of the things that Haven for Hope has been doing has been also to be part of that housing continuum so they have built some housing for people that are leaving Haven for Hope but I would say while I think they've been incredibly helpful for those folks that there are still a lot of people that are vulnerable for a number of reasons they may not be able to actually go through the transition process due to you know severe mental health issues or other issues so I mean there are still some folks out there that are struggling and also I guess kind of looking at it on the flip side if you think about the lack of affordable housing that's what leads many families to end up being homeless and then needing to kind of restart and go through the Haven for Hope to begin with a larger supply of affordable housing that for some percentage of the population they might never need to go through Haven to begin with. Thank you for speaking today I did not intend on asking a question but I can lend some advice because my family is a part of the gentrification it is happening in District 1 and I don't say what area or what but my grandmother who lived in this house and excuse me if I get emotional for 40 years I was raised in that house there was a gentleman that privately bought cash the houses in the neighborhood and when he initially bought them we rented the house from him at a reasonable price but as the years went by for a three year period the rent went up to over what a mortgage for a brand new house was so I eventually had to move my grandmother with me in a two bedroom house with my husband, myself and my son so with the private investors he literally this gentleman literally bought up the entire street how do you limit that or how do you help that or lend help to that because I'm all for growth that neighborhood that particular neighborhood was ready for growth however how do you regulate that because the revenue generated by that rent and he actually turned that house into a duplex so it was just my rent was half my grandmother's rent was half of it how do you bring that revenue back to the neighborhood because it was just going into his privately funded pocket and he didn't even live in the neighborhood his business was in the neighborhood but he did not live in the neighborhood itself you have a very real issue and that is something that I have been very worried about particularly in the neighborhood where I was raised and that's what I call the Christ the King neighborhood and but it's not the only one what happens is that there are people and we don't know who that is buying entire blocks it's off west martin street 24th around there they're buying huge blocks and I don't know what's going to happen there my my cynical mind says that what has to happen is eventually we're going to need the Walmart and the Target right in the inner city and what they're doing is amassing all this land so that they can sell it for good money to developers so the only thing I can think of is that we need to ask the question again because we're not asking the question we say economic development and we don't even have a city consensus on what that is you know what is economic development in san antonio is there something there and say that's economic development is that going to help everybody no it may drive people away so I think the first thing that's not going to help your grandmother is for us as a community just to ask the question what are we doing to the people who have been in these neighborhoods the longest just asking the question because it may be we don't care okay well at least we answered it right but then we may say well why don't we put our heads together madam mayor and say okay what will we do but the thing is we can't forget the people that are right now losing their homes another example and I'll keep talking about the corner of sarsamo den culebra where there's going to be a McDonald's and something else and there's already a Walgreen they tore down 15 residences 15 families and it was one man that bought the whole block and then he sold it to McDonald's so what's going to happen to the next block okay we've got three more questions we've got about four minutes and about four questions Hi speaking you mentioned growing up in Queens and how you don't really buy into the idea that renters aren't invested and I'm of the millennial generation I'm very passionate about the idea that you can buy into your community and you might not economically benefit from buying a home even if you're raising kids and you're young and I also don't want to live in a condo frankly but I do want to live in a nice community on the west side it's mixed income and I feel as a young person that I could start a family and rent and I'm thinking in San Antonio what are some ways that we can make that part of the culture because I'm always hearing that we want more people to start buying houses more young families and I don't think it's necessary or even economically sound for a lot of families to do that so this is mostly directed at the mayor but anyone else well I think one of the practical ways we can address that is by being more flexible and what we allow as far as development and it's not anything new but a hundred years ago it was pretty common and popular in many of our San Antonio neighborhoods to have granny flats which is a smaller unit that's behind the main unit and that can provide opportunities for a young single person or a small family to live and rent in a neighborhood so I think looking at some of those options as well as thinking more creatively about if we're doing infill development to allow for different types of housing to be built as opposed to just single family housing over in my neighborhood in Dignity Hill we had a developer come in now they're not for rent but just as an example he bought Attractive Land and he built 12 their townhomes but they're not attached and so that provides a different housing option for people in that area so I think it's being kind of creative but we have to provide we have to talk more about what it means to have something like that in the neighborhood and how it could look and how it can fit in because a lot of times people who've been owners for a long time they get really nervous about the idea of something that doesn't look like their house being built in their neighborhood so those are some practical suggestions so I live in the Beacon Hill neighborhood along with Ms. Burios of all which is one of the neighborhoods Ms. Drunin that you called out as having the anomaly increase in housing prices do you have any thoughts as to what's creating that anomaly and that one in particular I know those neighborhoods they share a particular housing stock and we could dive into that data to see because I offered some generalizations there's a lot of cash sales so you see these cash sales or you see FHA mortgages meaning like two really different groups higher education rate yet not a higher income rate so we can look specifically at a couple of those but yeah mine were generalizations and again you've got a housing stock that started as a higher income when it was originally built it was higher income the thing with the inner city San Antonio so much of it was built it was actually built as working class housing originally when it was originally built it was working class housing it's always been humble it's always been modest and we're losing so much of that just through deterioration so that neighborhoods like that one that actually were built a little higher quality are vulnerable to the process so we've got a different housing stock than a lot of cities do because it's a little bit newer it's a post war housing stock it was built really really quickly neighborhoods like yours so two really vulnerable points right there two more on you and this is going to be the last one back here good afternoon my question is can you talk a little bit about the kinds of incentives and benefits that the city of San Antonio offers developers to come and revitalize and then compare that with the current efforts being made to ensure that these benefits are accessible and affordable to low income people well I guess I well let me start off with a disclaimer which is that I started out my career focused on affordable housing that was the main thing I was focused on how can we create apartments that are going to be where there's going to be a subsidy so it's cheaper for people to live in how can we create opportunities for first-time home buyers some more modest homes for people to live in what I found is that after years of the city focusing on investing just in affordable housing in the inner city that that did not help stop the cycle of decline in those neighborhoods so for me personally my focus has been on creating mixed income neighborhoods which means in many cases how can we bring a higher product and people that have more disposable income into these vulnerable neighborhoods because I think that's going to create more opportunities for stability in the long term though it may create a little pain and discomfort in the short term so we have a variety of incentives where we provide waivers related to some of the fees for development we also we provided cash incentives to some of the housing developers and one of the things that was developed during my time on council was instead of a project by project review process where it could get very political as to whether your project gets funding but your project doesn't get funding we developed an as-of-right incentive program which means if you meet these criteria then you're going to get these incentives so that took a lot of the politics out of it and resulted in a lot of investment in mainly apartments because our previous mayor was really focused on this decade of the downtown with one of the key components of creating a vibrant downtown of having more people actually living downtown so he's very focused on how we could bring more housing and it has been successful. Now I will say that I don't think we have been as strategic or creative in relation to that balance related to affordable housing because we've just been doing I think we focused on single-family and so many of the folks that have been doing affordable housing for years they were just building subdivisions where they're building a little 3-2 with Hardy Plank and Carpet and Formica and that's going to be comfortable for that family that's moving in but when they decide to move out and move up then who wants to move into 15-year-old Hardy Plank and Carpet and so I don't think that we have been as creative as we need to be and that we're starting to look at some ways that we could provide more balance and I think some of the things that Ms. Barry Osabo talked about we really haven't even touched on like land trust because someone was saying something earlier I think the young lady who was talking about her grandmother's situation I do have to say that while I believe that renters play an important role in can be vested in a neighborhood if you want to control what happens to a piece of land you have to own it right now within the system in which we operate ownership really is kind of a big chip so if we could find ways to convey ownership to people who have less means then that could be a more creative way that we could try to better strike that balance if you just google ICRIP San Antonio you're going to get pages and pages of the kinds of assistance that developers are getting to create businesses and apartments it's not for single family and one of the problems that we have in San Antonio that's historic and I don't think we're unusual is that we have not done much to promote and provide affordable housing except what we get with CDBG which has been going down every year so we depend on the federal government for the affordable housing and that has been shrinking so we're going to have to create programs on our own locally like Austin Austin had a couple of bond issues for affordable housing can San Antonio do that can we build up a demand in this city that we need to provide money and bond issues for housing whether it's housing rehabilitation affordable housing whatever kind of housing but go to ICRIP because they get a lot of stuff second to last one thank you to the panel for being president organizing this event my concern is with the nuisance of affordable housing in a market based system that Mayor Taylor referred to all in looking at the center city developments office list of inner city downtown housing inner city housing development projects out of 22 only one of them has been designated as mixed income and that was the survival sloths in this case mixed income means market 8 market rate and section 8 with the market for rent hovering above or below $2 per square foot and with things like Cherry street modern city view modern around lower heights and sack loss starting at about $250,000 with the decade of downtown and its goal of accomplishing 7500 new housing units can we hope to see or at least have considered affordable housing for the student population or for young single or married college graduates making between $20,000 and $30,000 a year first I have to start out with the correction because I did not refer to affordable housing as a nuisance I said that as a result of market forces that affordable housing is usually located near nuisances okay but I think what I would just say very quickly and I'll let the others weigh in is that kind of an answer to the previous young ladies question for a long time I think the pendulum was swinging one way in that we're focusing all our efforts in relation to development in the inner city on affordable and that was not resulting in the changes we need to see and so we kind of swung the pendulum the other way where we've been focusing our efforts in the last probably six or seven years on how we can bring people who have more disposable income into the inner city though there have been a couple of bright spots that address some of the classes of folks that you talked about I think the peanut factory development over on Frio Street near UTSA is going to provide some student housing I know in district two that we've been working on the merchants ice house which is going to be of the style and character of the apartments on Broadway but price a much lower price point so that people who are maybe a first year teacher or you know in a working class job could possibly afford an apartment that's on the east side but situated very downtown so I think there definitely is a lot more work for us to do to strike to strike that balance last question Dr. Blasey from the sociology department I like somebody to comment on an old idea out of Catholic social thought John A. Ryan 1905 my memory serves me right that is the graduated property tax graduated by size of the property this could be used to address issues of urban sprawl as well as the transportation difficulties that come with it secondly there were a lot of course settlements with banks because of redlining that required set-asides for monies to go to moderate and low income housing in various cities throughout the country and while I do not anticipate more such court settlements I wonder if some kind of policy could address set-asides in the funding of development and thirdly when a neighborhood reaches the abandonment stage I would suggest that that be seen as an opportunity because if the land can be claimed for the taxes then be used as a subsidy for a developer to basically be given the land on the condition that they develop it into say moderate income housing that's where the land trust would come in it would be perfect if it's a neighborhood that's already in the decline doctor that you would kick in a program like that but you know I used to when I was in city council I used to go to the national league of cities meetings with Alex Precenio sometimes and everybody else and I would hear what cities like Seattle in San Francisco and Detroit Portland hate to bring up Portland but Portland would have and then I would come back to city council with all my notes and all the handouts and I would be told that's never going to happen in the city I was told that by very important people and some of them were like the one I love is linkage fees a linkage fee is let's say a developer is building a skyscraper or some building you provide a fee that links your needs your public needs as a community with the growth and then you have a little sum maybe it's going to be 0.2% of each square foot that you put in a fund and the fund can be for affordable housing one city Seattle was even using it for employment for employment training whatever your community decides that you need you exact that from your from your developer and say okay we're going to give you all this money you're going to have the privilege of building in our city that's a great city and this is what you have to do but people think that if you do that then people will come to San Antonio well you know what I think we've had this syndrome like a little girl that's really pretty and she's like 15 years old and this ugly guy comes and that's who she goes with because she thinks there's not going to be anybody better and we we have to we have to quit having that complex and deal with the table with those developers this is what we're giving you and this is what our community needs that's just one example there are others and I would talk myself blue in the face but it was that that's not going to happen another one that we have funds in banks in the city a lot of money so what if we got just a tiny little bit of the interest and put it in the housing trust fund that we have we have a housing trust fund I helped to create it and why don't we put just a little bit in there but we need like long-term money that's going to be injected into our budget to take care of those needs but again is the political will in a community that sees that there's a need and that we have to change our ways so he's going to take us home not literally but well I hope you enjoyed that that was one of our best community conversations and for those who have never been here before I this is what they're like and we hope to see you in February when we'll have yet another one but I would be remiss if I didn't thank this really excellent group beginning with Mayor Taylor who when I asked her was not the mayor and continued in her commitment to be here it was extraordinary we hope that this is your first visit as mayor to campus we certainly hope it will not be your last visit as mayor to campus Maria thank you so much for being here Dr. Drennan I really like your style your lecturing style to get up and I couldn't sit there either I understand what that's about and Kerry Clack this is an excellent group and join me one more time in thanking them and thanking you for being here tonight