San Antonio Tenants Union organizers speak to reporters last year about the lack of security at Opportunity Home apartments. Credit: Michael Karlis

Organizers from the San Antonio Tenants Union say they plan to protest at the next city council meeting if board members from Opportunity Home, formerly the San Antonio Housing Authority, ignore their complaints about lax security.

Those comments from Maureen Galindo and other Tenants Union organizers came during a protest at the O.P. Schnabel Apartments, a public housing complex in Southtown. The activists said Opportunity Home refuses to pay for security guards at its properties and ignores health and safety complaints from low-income tenants.

“All the while, they’re focusing all of their energy on the expansion of mostly market-rate development at the expense of public housing tenants that they have to take care of,” Galindo told reporters.

As previously reported by the Current, Opportunity Home stopped providing security at its complexes in December 2020 after grant money from the pandemic-era CARES Act ran out. Since then, tenants, including James Hamilton, say crime has skyrocketed at the city’s low-income apartment complexes.

“Over at the Alazan Apache-Courts, they’ve had a murder almost every month since last year,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton said Opportunity Home is reviewing past resident complaints at the Chatham Lewis Apartments following the Current’s reporting on the issue. However, if Opportunity Home board members continue to avoid a meeting with the union, tenants will protest 2at the next city council meeting.

“The city council members claim they don’t have any authority and can’t do anything,” Hamilton said. “They say that the power to do something about SAHA is with the mayor and the mayor alone.”

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This article appears in Apr 5-18, 2023.

Michael Karlis is a multimedia journalist at the San Antonio Current, whose coverage in print and on social media focuses on local and state politics. He is a graduate of American University in Washington,...