SAN ANTONIO – A group of housing advocates protested in front of City Hall to voice their concerns about affordable housing in San Antonio on Thursday morning.
The protest comes as Mayor Ron Nirenberg is expected to appoint members of the city’s housing commission, which leads the city’s housing strategies.
“The people that need to be appointed to these boards are people who are recently and currently experiencing housing insecurity, who have been displaced, who have been evicted,” said Jessica Guerrero, a housing advocate.
Guerrero served on the housing commission for three years.
“When we heard the rumor that (former San Antonio Councilwoman) Shirley Gonzales might be the incoming chair, we then saw a very clear direction away from what we had been working towards,” Guerrero said.
Guerrero doesn’t believe Gonzales is a good fit.
“She has voted in several projects that do not support an affordable housing agenda in our city,” Guerrero said.
One of the projects Guerrero referred to was the controversial Friedrich Lofts project.
The vacant building is being transformed into a 358-unit housing complex. One hundred seventy-nine units will be for people earning either 60% or 80% of the area median income.
Guerrero said it doesn’t have enough affordable housing.
KSAT attempted to reach out to Shirley Gonzales for this but was unable to get in contact with her.