The piece by writer Gus Bova chronicles the development’s significance in Mexican American culture and cautions that its destruction to make way for mixed-income housing will indelibly alter the historic near-downtown neighborhood where it’s located.
Bova pulls no punches in his description of the West Side project but gives humanity to the people for whom it’s a source of housing stability, including 36-year-old Kayla Miranda, who’s called it home since 2017:
“Bouncing from friends’ couches to motels, Miranda began missing work as her son’s school peppered her with calls about his increasingly frequent meltdowns. Disaster loomed. Then, after a year and a half on a waitlist, a space opened for her at one of San Antonio’s public housing projects in mid-2017.
“’It’s a safety net, thank God,’ Miranda tells me when I visit her 80-year-old cinder block apartment complex in January. It’s not an ideal place: The bedrooms scarcely fit a queen mattress, there’s no central air, and the roaches are resilient. But Miranda, a mother of three who also cares for her 3-year-old nephew, pays only $168 a month in rent. And after two and a half years here, she feels connected to her neighbors. For her, it’s a home worth fighting for.”
Some of the most affecting prose comes as Bova chronicles the history of the housing project, which was established in 1939:
“In her exuberant Spanglish, Blanquita Rodriguez, an 86-year-old ranchera singer with Las Tesoros de San Antonio tells me of her childhood at the courts. ‘I grew up muy contenta; era muy bonito, m’ijo. It was like a big family,’ she says, recalling the complex’s large hedges and her days performing at the nearby Guadalupe Theater. ‘I have a lot of beautiful memories, chatting on the porch. Nadie te molestaba. You needed a couple tortillas, you went and knocked on your neighbor’s door.'”
Last year, the Current and the San Antonio Heron collaborated on a lengthy analysis of gentrification’s sweep across the West Side, including the scheduled demolition of the Alazán-Apache Courts.
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This article appears in Apr 8-21, 2020.
