Mayor Ron Nirenberg’s Housing Policy Task Force plotted a course Tuesday to develop a set of policies to address affordability, gentrification and displacement as the city continues to prepare for an additional 1 million residents expected over the next two decades.

The task force, comprising a diverse set of members, has been working privately for the past three weeks, preparing for its first public meeting to lay out its plans to develop the framework over the next six months.

“I have charged the task force with developing a comprehensive and compassionate housing policy framework to address the pressing housing challenges that our city faces — from availability and affordability to gentrification and displacement,” Nirenberg said, kicking off the meeting in the Central Library auditorium. “This plan will align existing public and private resources, and address issues of gentrification, displacement and the need for rehabilitation of existing housing stock.”

The group — made up of Chairwoman Lourdes Castro Ramírez, a former principal deputy assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; architect Jim Bailey; former Councilwoman María Antonietta Berriozábal; engineer Gene Dawson; and commercial banker Noah Garcia — has “full autonomy” on structuring its work, including gathering community input, Nirenberg said in his opening statement.

“I have complete faith in their abilities to execute a strategy that in six months will result in action-oriented policy recommendations that the community will have an opportunity to vet and the City Council will have an opportunity to vote on,” he said.

Ramírez, who was CEO of the San Antonio Housing Authority before moving to HUD under then-Secretary Julián Castro, said the task force would incorporate input from city staffers and subject-matter experts and also ensure that community members’ voices are heard.

Christine Drennon, director of urban studies at Trinity University, will serve as an adviser to the task force. She presented a report on housing issues that served to offer “context” to the myriad statistics the panel will review.

San Antonio’s housing is reaching “crisis” levels, said Dawson, who added that he hoped his presence on the task force would help the business community acknowledge it must play its role in addressing the city’s housing issues.

The task force’s undertaking is nothing short of massive. Its members said they plan to attack gentrification and displacement and also address new housing and its rising costs, labor availability, neighborhood integrity and other issues.

“There’s a wide range of issues we need to tackle,” Bailey said.

And, the task force will have to navigate disparate citizen input, determining how best to implement — and weigh — the varying perspectives.

One resident asked whether the task force would support a policy that would block projects under the city’s housing bond if the affected neighborhood, through its neighborhood association, opposed it. Others, including activist Graciela Sanchez, questioned whether the group would even be effective, as previous mayors have tackled the affordable housing issue.

Berriozábal already had underscored the fact that officials are still having those same discussions.

She noted, earlier during the meeting, that a TV reporter contacted her earlier in the day for an interview on affordable housing and reminded the former councilwoman that they’d done an interview on affordable housing some four decades ago.

Sanchez said she hoped the group would develop lasting and effective policies, as she’s seen her own property values skyrocket. She described herself as a college-educated woman who could speak and write in English and is fighting to control rising values, which increase tax bills. Sanchez asked the task force to consider how much more difficult that fight can be for others.

Still, there was significant optimism in the room. Several people, including Nirenberg and Berriozábal, said Tuesday was historic because affordable housing — something long discussed — is finally being treated as a front-burner issue.

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