SAN ANTONIO – A new housing project to help support more than 200 chronically homeless people officially broke ground Wednesday.
The Commons at Acequia Trails, located off Old Corpus Christi Road, will provide 201 units of permanent supportive housing run by San Antonio Metropolitan Ministries (SAMM). The group expects it to be done by late 2026 and filled to near capacity within 90 days.
More than just a place to live, permanent supportive housing offers services for people who have been homeless for at least a year and have disabling conditions.
“We provide a host of on-site supportive services — physical health care, mental health care, substance use treatment, you name it,” said SAMM President and CEO Nikisha Baker.
The new units will help the City of San Antonio creep closer to its goal of adding 1,000 units of permanent supportive housing by 2031.
According to a City of San Antonio news release, the $56.2 million project includes the following funding:
- $34.7 million from private sources
- $9.1 million from the City of San Antonio’s 2022 Affordable Housing Bond
- $7.5 million in HOME-ARP provided by the city
- $3.9 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds provided by Bexar County
- $1 million land grant from the San Antonio Housing Trust
“We need them yesterday,” said Neighborhood and Housing Services Director Veronica Garcia. “So we have families who are moving from the street into emergency shelter, and then this will create that next stepping stone for them to move into permanent supportive housing.”
Garcia said with the addition of the Commons at Acequia Trails, the city “will be nearly halfway” to its goal.
Isaac Mercado, 53, lives at Towne Twin Village, another permanent supportive housing development. He said he was homeless for about half of his life, in and out of being incarcerated.
Moving to Towne Twin Village a year and a half ago has changed a lot, he said.
“I’m learning how to have the responsibility, how to pay my bills,” he said. “I learned how to maintain, and I know how to stay clean, how to get off the drugs, how to product myself to be part of the community here.”
While advocates for homeless people celebrate the use of permanent supportive housing, it doesn’t always get neighbors’ approval.
“It will set a precedent of what will be built next to it, and investment will be siphoned off into the Brooks campus, where no income-determined projects are,” said Brady Alexander, president of the Mission Reach Hot Wells Neighborhood Association.
Baker, though, said the project will be an asset to the neighborhood.
“We are building what will be a beautiful development, which will help to raise property values around this development generally but will also reduce compliance on taxpayer-funded programs like criminal justice and the healthcare system,” she said.
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