A mayoral task force created to tackle gentrification in San Antonio continued to debate how best to address the thorny and emotional topic Thursday, days before a scheduled presentation to a City Council committee about the group’s draft recommendations.

It was the last meeting of the group, called the Mayor’s Task Force on Preserving Dynamic and Diverse Neighborhoods, before members will address the City Council Quality of Life Committee on Tuesday. The city then plans to hold at least one public meeting — possibly more — to get public reaction. The proposals are meant to spur the creation of more mixed-income neighborhoods and ensure that residents with limited financial means have a range of affordable places to live, aren’t displaced from their communities or, if they are displaced, get the help they need to mitigate their relocation.

City staff will take the proposals and the public input to the entire City Council sometime in March. Many of the group’s proposals will require council action.

The group, which includes community and council members, was chaired by Mayor Ivy Taylor, but she was traveling Thursday and did not attend.

Although the task force has at times wrangled over its focus, this much has become clear since the group first met in October: gentrification is a “monumental” issue for people, said task force member Christine Drennon, a Trinity University professor of sociology and anthropology.

“These issues are foundational,” Drennon said. “They’re about where we live.”

The task force was created last summer in the wake of a controversial vote to rezone a South Side mobile home park called Mission Trails, thereby clearing the way for its sale and the involuntary relocation of hundreds of low-income residents who lived there.

The decision continues to resonate and hang over the task force: several Mission Trails residents attended Thursday’s meeting as they have many times before. One held up signs in Spanish, encouraging task force members to look at the consequences of the rezoning and the suffering the families have endured.

All of the families must be out of Mission Trails by the end of this month.

The meeting also comes on the heels of an emotional and sometimes chaotic public forum about gentrification held earlier this week at the University of Texas at San Antonio Downtown Campus and co-sponsored by the university and the Express-News.

Some of the task force’s short-term proposals include creating a commission to track the implementation of the group’s proposals, development of a relocation assistance policy, planning a May housing summit, and amending how residents are notified about zoning changes.

Longer-term goals involve creating a voluntary incentive policy that might compel developers to include affordable housing as part of residential projects, launching an affordable and workforce housing bond program in 2017, and creating a community land trust.

But the proposals are still being revised and will likely be amended again before Tuesday’s council committee meeting. Many task force members said Thursday they didn’t have enough time to study the current recommendations or thought they could use more fine-tuning. Drennon called the proposals “incomplete” and agreed with other task force members that a dedicated funding source for affordable housing, both new and rehabilitated, needs to be created.

Mu Son Chi, Bexar County director of the Texas Organizing Project, was not on the task force but attended several meetings. He remained concerned the proposals were too focused on what happens to people after they displaced from their homes and not enough on how to keep them there.

“This task force is treating displacement like an eventuality,” he said.

vdavila@express-news.net