Any conversations about making the city's displacement impact assessment publicly available would likely have to go through City Hall, said Ian Benavidez, assistant director with the Neighborhood and Housing Services Department.
GABE HERNANDEZ | SABJ

The city has preliminary results from testing a new tool that will help it decide where to allocate public dollars.

Last year, the city of San Antonio introduced the displacement impact assessment (DIA), a multi-phase data-gathering tool that would provide feedback on how likely new developments would actively or passively displace current residents of a neighborhood. The city piloted the tool by making it mandatory for developers looking for Housing Bond 2022-2027 funds to complete the assessment, and using the data harnessed to assess whether displacement was likely to occur as a result of the development.

"Displacement is hard to quantify, but we know that it has many drivers," said Ian Benavidez, assistant director with the Neighborhood and Housing Services Department, which spearheaded the DIA's development. "The tool has been successful in telling us what impact this project could potentially have on the surrounding area. How much has the neighborhood changed? What kind of homes are on the ground right now? Price changes, eviction data – and putting all of that information in one place."

After encouraging results, the city is more widely rolling out the program, recently applying it to developments benefitting from Inner City TIRZ funding. While it doesn't lead to an immediate "yes" or "no" for developers requesting funds from the city, Benavidez said the tool helps it make more informed decisions.

In addition to the developers' submitted data, the tool consolidates information from multiple public sources including the city's own data as well as U.S. Census Bureau databases, among others, into a geographic information system (GIS) to help understand the socioeconomic conditions of a given area. Because the tool is still being piloted, conversations about making it publicly available are still far away, but Benavidez said the city has some weighty considerations to evaluate in that regard.

"If it were to be released, our concern would be that you’d be able to use the tool to measure areas that are going through a lot of change, for instance, which might encourage you to purchase property in the area," Benavidez said. The economic implications of that scenario would run counter to NHSD's goal of stewarding affordable housing in San Antonio.

"We want investment, especially in inner city neighborhoods which have probably been neglected more than other areas," said Benavidez. "We want them to have new wide sidewalks, new streets and we want them to be safe."

Publicizing the tool "would probably have to be a conversation with City Council," Benavidez said. He said the reality is that most sophisticated investors probably already have their own tools that might be even better, but this would be making that information even more widely available.

Economic development applications for the tool were also potentially on the table, but substantial parameters would have to be changed, he said.