{"id":315,"date":"2026-05-13T14:01:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T14:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sanantoniomovingreport.com\/?p=315"},"modified":"2026-05-13T14:01:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T14:01:28","slug":"who-really-pays-the-hidden-cost-of-source-of-income-mandates-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sanantoniomovingreport.com\/?p=315","title":{"rendered":"Who really pays? The hidden cost of source of income mandates"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Commentaries at the San Antonio Report provide space for our community to share perspectives and offer solutions to pressing local issues. The views expressed in this commentary belong to the author alone.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more \u2018Military City USA\u2019 means protecting voucher-qualified veterans from housing discrimination<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m grateful to live in a city that actively considers its most vulnerable residents. I\u2019m concerned, however, that people in power often make decisions driven by anecdotal information without considering all the factors involved. We live in an age where we can more easily access data, yet at the political level, decisions are often made without it.<\/p>\n

Today, the City Council will consider an ordinance prohibiting source of income discrimination against veterans who rely on federal VASH (Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing) vouchers. The law would keep property owners from rejecting a lease application solely because the applicant is using a VA-administered housing voucher and penalize property owners that do so. This policy appears to have been created primarily by non-housing providers who interpret for themselves what a \u201ccorporate\u201d landlord is or rely on corporate lobbyists.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, we all<\/em> want our veterans housed.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m concerned that I live in a city that doesn\u2019t actively consider its working class and small businesses, in this case local housing providers who depend on providing housing to others as their sole income source \u2014 who typically own 10 units or less.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the daughter of a veteran \u2014 my father volunteered for the Korean War and trained at Lackland \u2014 I have personally experienced what this policy attempts to fix. While still a university student, I remember visiting him squatting in a dilapidated trailer with no running water and no heat, essentially homeless. He answered the door for me, then ran back to a pile of blankets to keep warm. This was in Albuquerque, New Mexico in the winter. I had buried those images in my brain until resurrecting them for this piece.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I became my father\u2019s housing provider while in my early 20s, which is probably why I became a housing provider for others. Yet, the high cost burden of being a local housing provider is usually dismissed in any discussions by government officials and failed to be understood by the non-housing provider public.<\/p>\n

Most people go to a job and work lots of hours. Being a local housing provider is my full time job and my only source of income. I spend lots of hours acquiring old houses, fixing them back up to a liveable condition, and making them available at affordable rent prices. This costs money in mortgages, property taxes (there are no exemptions for non-homeowner occupied housing), insurance (insurance rates are 15-20% higher than owner occupied dwellings), and maintenance (which goes up every year as labor and material costs increase).\u00a0<\/p>\n

I provide local jobs to construction people, housecleaning people, and more. I provide housing to many who may not qualify at apartment complexes owned and managed by larger companies that require credit reports. Local housing providing businesses are owned and managed by San Antonians and can make their own decisions about who to rent to.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In order for housing providers to accept VASH vouchers, properties must pass inspection. The inspection process generally, in my own experience accepting vouchers, is not uniform and takes multiple inspections that create extended vacancy time, resulting not only in lost revenue, but in potential liabilities to repair.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vacancies are a huge<\/em> cost to hold a property for any<\/em> potential voucher renter when the inspection may not pass for weeks or months or more likely require substantial repairs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I recall one inspector who informed me I had to replace the original hardwood floors in a 1920s house where there was no disrepair. When the voucher recipient heard this at the time of the inspection, he immediately panicked and cancelled his application so that he could find another property before his voucher expired.\u00a0 I had reserved that property for him for three months and there was no consequence for him cancelling his application.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Done right, data centers can help keep San Antonio\u2019s power bills in check<\/a><\/p>\n

At another house inspection, the inspector wrote that the sidewalks were in disrepair and that until they were repaired, the property would not pass inspection. Sidewalks are the city\u2019s responsibility as long as it\u2019s not in a gated community, which it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

A significant percentage of the city is older housing stock \u2014 300 years of dwellings \u2014 that will not pass a VASH inspection.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t need another policy to address this issue. Federal housing laws supersede local ordinances anyway. The Fair Housing Act already prevents discrimination. The city\u2019s own Non-Discrimination Ordinance passed in 2013 can be amended to include veteran income without any new ordinance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bad housing policies matter to us mainly because mortgage companies, insurance companies, and tax assessor-collectors don\u2019t care if your property is vacant and you are not generating enough income to pay them. They don\u2019t accept non-payment based on the source of income timeline.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ordinance City Council is considering today is a solution in search of a problem by local city politicians to appease their political bases.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On top of that, this ordinance will be enforced by 311. This is the same city department that manages other safety issues in the hundreds of thousands. This would add yet another ordinance to the list.\u00a0<\/p>\n

San Antonio can do better. This is my hope. Urge your elected councilmember to revise this ordinance. As it stands, the ordinance currently only exempts local housing providers with less than four rental properties from this policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The city should expand the exemption to 10 properties or less so more local housing providers who manage their own properties as their only source of income can be included, as well as provide citizens real, tangible data surrounding this policy. Another option could be to exempt older housing stock. Those are the properties that will not pass inspection without significant renovation improvements.<\/p>\n

No one wants any human being, regardless of identity, to live without a roof over their head. This ordinance is a well intended policy, but would do more harm than good for local housing providers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Where I Live: Sandy Oaks<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commentary: City Council should exempt property owners who own 10 properties or less from the veteran housing voucher ordinance to protect local housing providers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nWho really pays? The hidden cost of source of income mandates - San Antonio moving report<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sanantoniomovingreport.com\/?p=315\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Who really pays? 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