The city’s proposed housing bond was thrown into upheaval Tuesday after members of the commission appointed to set the bond priorities learned two of the three initiatives they wanted to put before voters can’t be on the May 2017 ballot.

That’s when city residents are set to vote on the city’s overall $850 million bond package, the largest in San Antonio’s history. The housing bond, the city’s first ever, is proposed to be a part of that larger package. It would address what many say is a shortage of affordable housing options in the city.

The Housing Commission to Protect and Preserve Dynamic and Diverse Neighborhoods, which is proposing what should be part of the housing bond, originally planned to ask for a $50 million slice that would go to three initiatives: gap financing for affordable housing construction, emergency repairs for deteriorating single-family homes, and preservation of affordable multi-family units.

But because of a series of complicated legislative and city charter limitations that commission members were alerted to Tuesday, the group will likely only be able to move forward with the gap-financing measure. Now the commission is discussing reducing its funding request to $30 million, but members won’t vote on the revised proposal until Aug. 2.

City Council is set to start discussing the bond program, which will also include streets, drainage, park improvements and other infrastructure projects, in mid-August. About every five years, the city asks residents to vote on such a bond program. It would not require a tax increase, city officials have said.

Putting the housing bond on the ballot would have required an amendment to the San Antonio’s charter. Unlike other cities’ charters, San Antonio only allows bonds to be spent on public works. Public works does not include housing, said the city’s Chief Financial Officer Ben Gorzell.

Housing commission members always knew a charter change vote would be needed to allow the housing bond. But they’d been told that vote could happen on the same day as the bond election next May.

A city can only amend its charter every two years. San Antonio’s last amendment was in May 2015.

Then, the city discovered the state Legislature had moved up the election day by one week — making it one week shy of the necessary two years between charter amendment elections, Gorzell said.

“We can’t get past our charter right now,” he said.

So the city is proposing a work-around to salvage the gap-financing part of the housing bond.

It would still be on the ballot. If approved, the city could buy and rehabilitate land and then sell it to a multi-family housing developer. By the city using bond funds for some of the necessary up-front costs on the land, like demolishing old buildings, adding sidewalks or doing environmental mediation, the developer could rent the units at an affordable rate.

But city would have to establish an urban renewal program through the Office of Urban Redevelopment San Antonio — the former San Antonio Development Agency — a move that didn’t sit well with many commission members. The office would administer the bond money.

The commission members also asked Gorzell and an outside attorney the city consulted to seek advice from the state attorney general about whether or not gap financing could be used for single-family homes and whether bond funds could be used for relocation costs if someone is forced to move.

But commission chairwoman Jennifer Gonzalez said the group needs to at least try to move forward with some kind of housing bond.

Even if the group can’t get everything it wanted, at least “we have begun to have the conversation about the need for affordable housing in San Antonio,” Gonzalez said after the meeting.

vdavila@express-news.net

Twitter: @viannadavila