Speaker 1: On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele do follow Speaker 2: San Antonio is a fast growing fast moving community with something new happening every day.

And that's why each week we go on the record with the Newsmakers who are driving this change.

Then we gather at the reporters round table to talk about the latest news stories with the journalists behind those stories.

Join us now as we go on Speaker 1: Hi everybody.

I'm Randy Beamer.

Thank you for joining us for this edition of on the record.

And this week, San Antonio is getting some more help to deal with a problem.

You may have noticed more and more of on the streets here, and that is a homelessness.

We are getting $14 million or so from HUD and getting one of the biggest shares of that is Sam ministries and joining us today is the president and CEO of Sam ministries.

Nikisha baker.

Thank you very much for coming in.

First of all, is there more homelessness now than we have seen before and why?

Speaker 2: It certainly seems to be more visible and more prevalent.

I think we'll have a better understanding of what the numbers look like when the results of our point in time count, which just happened on March 1st are released in the next month or so that's our community's opportunity to really evaluate what the numbers of those experiencing homelessness look like.

I think we're seeing a lot of different factors that are leading people to homelessness.

We of course, are experiencing the fallout from the financial crisis that followed the pandemic.

We're also seeing mental health issues that were exacerbated during the time when people had to stay at home or couldn't work when children were in school, no different than the issues that we're seeing with increases in child abuse and domestic violence.

I do certainly think that mental health issues are creating or helping to create some more of that.

Speaker 1: Now ARPA money came to the city to help with that.

This is different money.

In addition to that, what are you going to use it for?

Speaker 2: So Sam ministries is planning to begin a new project to serve families who are fleeing domestic violence.

And so this project is called a transitional to rapid rehousing program and provides intensive support for those families to help them stabilize in the short term.

So think three to six months, and then moving them into an apartment unit of their own in the community and continuing to provide rent assistance and case management and connection to resources for another six months or so.

Speaker 1: But we see on the street, the more visible sometimes are the most reluctant.

And I, you know, I've talked with people who do that, that outreach, how can you get them into that permanent housing with a job with what's going on right now?

Speaker 2: It takes a tremendous amount of time to build a relationship and build a rapport.

So many of the folks that you'll find in encampments under the bridges have been told I'll, I'll help you get into housing, and then it never materialized.

And so some of them have been burned by this by the system.

And so they're reluctant to engage in services.

It takes our street outreach teams, the city of San Antonio, San ministries, central.

There are so many to engage with those individuals to meet them where they are to show up.

When they say they're going to show up and to continue to work with them, connecting them to the resources until they can get them into housing.

Speaker 1: There is a problem with housing as well.

And you were talking about what the city needs more of that and could use more of that for the people who want it.

Speaker 2: Absolutely.

There is about a 93% rental saturation rate in our current market, which means that the most available housing units are the housing units that are not affordable for the individuals that we are serving.

And so we need an increase in affordable housing.

That's available in the community and permanent supportive housing, particularly for those individuals who may have experienced mental or behavioral health issues, or may even have substance use issues.

We as a community, need to make a concerted effort to find and secure resources to offer those solutions.

Speaker 1: And there are hotels now being used for that, some of the extra money you are going to use for that to get a hotel, the city is looking to do the same.

Speaker 2: The city is going to purchase the hotel.

We are planning to purchase a, a 60 unit multifamily apartment community to provide site-based permanent supportive housing, which means that clients living in that apartment community will be able to access a health clinic onsite.

We'll be able to access mental health counseling onsite and we'll connect them to resources like substance abuse treatment, if necessary.

Speaker 1: And again, the people that we see on the street, I've heard from experts who say, it's better if you don't give them money.

Speaker 2: And if individuals who are living on the street can find that they meet their basic needs because someone driving down the highway at the off-ramp gives them $5 or a bag of food, then they will never want to seek the resources that are available in the community.

And so it is best if you can connect them with, Hey, have you been to Haven for hope?

Have you connected with Sam ministries so that we can help provide a long-term solution?

Speaker 1: Could people help you out there?

Right now?

Speaker 2: Sam ministries is always in tremendous need of resources.

And what I mean by that are blankets.

When it's cold weather rain gear, when it's wet outside and severe thunderstorms, when the city is at its worth and worst in terms of weather, our teams are out on the street trying to get folks off the street and into shelter, even if only temporarily.

And so providing that kind of resource, if you could make a donation of snacks or bottled water to organizations like salmon streets, that could be tremendously helpful.

Speaker 1: All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Wish you the best with that.

The new resources, and I hope they really make a difference here.

Nikisha baker, who is president and CEO of Sam ministries.

Thank you very much for coming in.

We were talking about some federal money coming in and to help the homeless here.

Well, more money is coming in for a whole range of causes securing that money, San Antonio, Congressman Joaquin Castro.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Yeah.

Good To be with you.

Ready?

First of all, some of the things we talked about with the pandemic and the housing you're also addressing and some of this other money.

Yeah.

As you know, anybody that's looked at real estate prices in San Antonio, or even rental prices knows that the cost of housing is going up and it's alarming because we haven't seen that fast arise in quite some time in San Antonio.

And so I got about $2 million to rehab existing homes because when, especially when something like that is going on, you want to make sure that every single home that can be used is being used by a person or a family.

And so folks will be able to get some of that money from the city if they need help rehabbing their home and making sure that it's, it remains part of the housing stock that's available existing, We'll be for an existing program.

So if people just go to the city, they know what that program is.

All right.

So the city, within a few months, that money shouldn't be available to the city cause it's it passed Congress.

The president signed the bill and it's for older neighborhoods in San Antonio.

As you can imagine, the homes and older neighborhoods usually need more help.

And so they'll be able to go try to get that money from the city.

Also important money coming to port San Antonio through UTS.

Tell us about that.

Yeah.

The port is doing a lot of great things on manufacturing and cybersecurity.

And so this is a million dollars to help them on that mission there At St. Mary's university.

There's some money coming there.

What does that for, You know, St. Mary's does a lot of great work.

I grew up across the street from the university on globe street, right near the baseball stadium over there.

And they have a family life center there that helps students with all kinds of services.

And so that's some money for them to renovate what they're doing out there, Project quest.

This is a test for you.

Remember All these things right here, And you're making you remember each line item.

Well, project quest, of course, there's a lot of workforce development in San Antonio and they've been around for quite some time.

The mayor and the city council also have entrusted them with, with a lot of the workforce projects for our city.

And so this is some more money for, for them to do that great work, particularly for people coming out of the pandemic, you have a lot of people that either lost their jobs or are basically changing careers and changing jobs.

So there's a lot of re-skilling and retraining that has to go on Important after last year's freeze, San Antonio water system, getting some money for backup power generators.

Yeah.

You know, there was a lot of talk and obviously a lot of people made a big deal about the power outages last year.

But for a lot of people in San Antonio, there were also water outages.

And so shortly after that, the power outage, I had a conversation with Robert the head of saws.

And he said, you know, we really need help on backup generators so that if we get into this situation again, we make sure that there's not an interruption of service.

So that's what this money is for.

And also out on the west side, the linear creeks project, people were wondering about the funding for that important piece that's that's coming.

Yeah.

So it'll be an effort to basically help 11 different areas, the side creeks project.

And I have to share credit with that on that with the white house who actually, you know, we worked very closely with them on getting about $2.3 million for that Westside Creek project.

And you know, when these, these creeks are redone, I mean, they're just done in such a beautiful way that really compliments a neighborhood.

I think it'll be great thing for the people, the west side, to be able to have this basically spruced up And in a minute, we're going to get to a story on the new part of the San Antonio river walk a spirit reach on that.

That's a, that's a, just a tease for you.

Also wanted to let people know we don't have much time, but you are about to be a father again.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My wife and I on and I have an eight year old daughter, a six year old son, and we have a baby on the way in early may, But you don't want to know what it is.

Doesn't want to know what it is.

And she won't let me find out Well, congratulations.

Thanks for coming in San Antonio, Congressman Joaquin Castro, Good to be with The San Antonio Riverwalk.

We'll soon be getting another addition.

Another reach you've heard of the museum REITs it's north of downtown and the mission reach down to the south.

Well, now there is a spirit reach that will be next.

It's going to stretch up to the very origin of the San Antonio river, north and Brackenridge park from Hildebrand and up through incarnate word.

So I took my cameras out to get on the record.

What's in the works, how it came about, and it's next to a big nature preserve.

You also may not have heard about yet.

Speaker 2: One of the things we're really committed to is that we have the headwaters sitting crying at word, but in full recognition that there were other people before us here.

And so we don't have that sense of ownership.

We're the only ones here, but the whole sense of this is part of the identity of San Antonio.

There were indigenous people here long before there was an Irish settlement that also was there for a while.

So we realized that this has been a really special and sacred space because it's water.

So it drew people.

And our goal really is to make it available, accessible, and welcoming to more people, and really encourage people to just come and enjoy the beauty.

Speaker 1: And one of the ways the sisters of charity of the incarnate word are doing that is with their headwaters sanctuary.

In 2019, they established a conservation easement forever protecting dozens of acres in the flood, plain south of almost dam.

Speaker 2: It's amazing how getting rid of the invasives has created such a different, you know, different space.

And, you know, like every season, you know, you have more birds returning.

It's really amazing when you think about is bordered by 2 81, Speaker 1: But for years, the sisters had also quietly thought about doing something along this whole, usually dry river bed, the stretch of the San Antonio river that runs from the blue hole, the biggest of the Springs that just gushes when the aquifer is up, down through part of that sanctuary and on through some of the sisters, other property and the UIW campus all the way to Brackenridge park under Hildebrand avenue.

Speaker 2: Initially it was just talk.

And really, we just came up with spirit, reach, just walking.

We could call it the spirit reach.

And so, but it stuck.

So it has been, you know, on our mind that one day we're going to have the spirit reach.

And then in the last few years, that's where tip Play-Doh.

We had gotten Ted in to help us with some work and the sanctuary, Speaker 1: The sisters reached out to me a while ago and asked me to do a pavilion in the middle of the, their sanctuary space and pretty typical of me because I was going to be doing this pavilion for free.

I said, I'm happy to help you with this pavilion, but we need to master plan this.

And we really need to make these connections to Brackenridge park.

And then ultimately we still haven't done their pavilion, but they were great about doing this master plan fast forward incarnate word now has a fantastic president, Dr. Tom Evans.

So I reached out to Tom, as soon as he showed up and said, Tom, this is what we're up to.

What do you think?

And what do you think about the idea of opening up incarnate word to the, to the rest of the community?

It's a fantastic university and have it be connected to the park and connect to the rest of our community and, and connected to the sisters.

And he was all in immediately fired up thought.

It's the greatest thing to do.

Speaker 2: I am honored and humbled by your trust.

Speaker 1: And I think his very first year, he was speaking about how important this new assignment was to be president of this wonderful university at the headwaters of the San Antonio river Speaker 2: Waters of what has made the city of San Antonio, truly world famous and endearing to all who visit Speaker 1: And an opportunity to finally have the spirit reach happy Speaker 2: Along the banks of an extended spirit reach of the river, walk through our very distinctive campus.

Speaker 1: And he ends his speech.

And a lot of the people in the university came up to him and said, what's his spirit reach?

And where did that name come from?

And he was assuming that it was something that we all that the world had embraced.

And, but it was, it was fairly well kept secret there for a little while.

And it's still not terribly well-known.

But with the university's blessing for several years now, a number of groups, including the city, the county and nearby neighbors have been working on plans for a transformation that will stretch from under Hildebrand up north.

And now the county has approved the first public money for it with more private money to come.

These are some of the very first conceptual designs by landscape architects, SWA, who have also worked on the Pearl and Brackenridge park.

Now you'll go back to the design board, you'll start to incarnate word and all the neighbors along, it will start dreaming about what their spaces can be.

They'll start designing, you know, simultaneously with the designers of the Riverwalk, the spirit rage, this part of the San Antonio river is pretty natural.

I mean, it's a flood.

Plain is delightful when water is flowing, but it itself doesn't need actual, I mean, it needs planting along the edges and it needs to tender loving care.

Thick brush grows along flood ways, smaller invasive species.

And then you have these fantastic Oak trees that you can't even appreciate.

And so there will be a lot of editing that goes on to open up some of the spaces that you, you know, that you see here right now.

And so you get some vistas, but it doesn't need to be reshaped.

But the new things that happen are on the edges where the pathways are, how it becomes an important space for incarnate word that no, this, this should be the heart of our new campus.

That this should be a significant green space, Speaker 2: Right?

Because it's like, it's not just the path, but all that has to happen around it.

That needs to be an investment both of ours, but also in terms of, you know, there's contributions.

Speaker 1: So it will be a game-changer for incarnate word on how its campus feels, how students feel about Speaker 2: One of the things that, you know, we really believe is that it shouldn't be, every reach is unique, every reach of the river, and this really needed to be a more contemplative, softer space as you approach the blue hole.

It's so hidden.

And so part of the whole spirit reach is really to bring attention to, to the blue hole.

What's disappointing.

People come to look for the blue hole and then like, now if they find it dry, it's like, well, what is this?

Whereas in the sanctuary walking, you know, in the sanctuary and among the trees and you get much more of the feel, so it'll be great.

As part of the spirit reaches, connecting the two, a bridge to be able to go from the blue hole, into the sanctuary.

At this time, you have to walk all the way around and go behind the baseball field to enter the sanctuary.

And so a lot of people don't know about it and just coming on a college campus is so, so exasperating because you don't know where to park and you know, all the little roads in between.

And so with time, we really want to be able to make it a lot easier for people to come and to enjoy.

Speaker 1: This is what the area used to look like back in the late 18 hundreds one, the first sisters would take boat rides, but within just a matter of years, the blue hole and this stretch of the river to the south started to run dry most of the time, because of all the Wells drilled into the aquifer for more than a century, all the pumping is drawn down the aquifer well below the level needed for it to flow regularly.

And the river that now seems to start in Brackenridge park only flows there most of the time first because the city drilled Wells in the early 19 hundreds to supply it with water.

And then in recent years, they started piping in treated reuse water.

And yes, if you're wondering, there was talk of somehow augmenting the river flow here in the spirit reached to Speaker 2: There's a couple of problems with it.

One is, you know, it costs us about a million dollars a year to do that, even though everybody would love to see the water flowing through here.

But it's, it's just, you got to, at least at this point, unless somebody invents another way to do it, it would be it's out of reach.

And the other problem is that we wouldn't want it to contaminate when the blue hole is flowing.

We w wouldn't want it to contaminate the, you know, the water.

Speaker 1: And as the spirit reach is being worked on the city of San Antonio is planning a separate longer term project under Hildebrand avenue that will connect to hike and bike path from Brackenridge park to the Western edge of the headwaters sanctuary.

And then on, up and over almost dam plans are for that to be paid for by money from the mid city tax increment and reinvestment zone.

It's a couple of projects here.

There's this spirit reach.

And then there's the hike and bike path.

The Hildebrand bridge crosses over Santana river.

And then, and then there's a second bridge that then goes over a smaller Creek that comes into the San Antonio river.

And we're going to have walkways under both of those bridges.

One, you can peddle a bike through.

That'll kind of almost goes along the edges of 2 81, we'll have a big kind of bridge ramp.

That's like this, they'll go flying over the Alma STAM.

And at that moment, you'll get this big view of the whole basin.

And then you'll slide back down.

It's more boisterous where boisterous things can happen, which it goes along the edge of the sports area.

And then the spirit rage, the quieter part comes at the blue hole.

And then as the gateway to more pathways through the nature area, it's a natural sanctuary.

It will be transformative.

It will be something that people will go what seems like it should have always been here.

Speaker 2: When we first came up with the idea, I thought it'd be 30, 40 years before we would get to it.

So, so it's really pretty thrilling that you know, that we're already on the edge of it.

Speaker 1: And now the next step for the spirit reach is public outreach.

To get more input from you on what it should look like.

And then after final design work, they say construction could start in about a year and a half.

Of course we'll keep an eye on it for you right here on the record.

You may have seen a big story this week in the paper about a kind of water about all of that is brewing west of San Antonio again, and it's all on blowout, Medina lake and the level being down and what to do about that.

And joining us is Elena bris, who is the environment and water reporter for the San Antonio express news.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks for having Me.

The lake being down isn't necessarily new.

It's been off and on down over the years, but some of the things that they want and advocacy groups want are different.

Now, what do they want?

They would like to have the BMA, which is the system that controls the lake.

Their full name is the bear Medina at ASCO.

So water control and improvement district number one.

So they call it the BMA.

They are the irrigation company that controls the lake, and they would like them to be subject to the sunset review, which is a commission in San an or in Texas that can kind of look at these agencies and see if they have any problems with them.

If they're still useful, things like that.

So these, these organizations that are around the lake, which are primarily made of members who live by the lake, wants them to be subject to that review.

And it's basically because it has been so old, it's not a river authority, which would be subject to review.

This was an irrigation district created more than a hundred years ago.

It was created in the 1920s as an irrigation company because the lake is actually the first man-made Lee lake in Texas.

And so they were in charge of that.

But a lot of the stuff at the BMA does, these groups are saying are the same as a river authority.

Like they control this water, they regulate this water.

They, they hold the water rights.

So there's, We allotted to farmers downstream and people who pay for that.

Right?

So I think that they're like, this is a lot like a river authority, and this should be subject to this review.

And some of the issues are because the irrigation canals are so old that they're some of them basically dirt stale, and that wouldn't waste a lot of water.

Yeah.

So there's these dirt canals that they've been around for a really long time.

And the BMA right now has been trying to pipe some of them and they've piped a decent percent of it.

But what happens when the water's running through the dirt canals, it goes, it seeps into the dirt.

And there's a massive loss of water in that.

So when these, when the water's coming down to meet the farmers, like the amount that's actually released at the dam is going to be a lost in the canal.

And so they're going to have to release a lot more at the dam to give that amount to the Farmers, to upgrade those canals.

I'm going to cost a lot of money.

Yeah.

Which, I mean, they have a lot of money because about $3 million comes from the San Antonio water system.

So a lot of the money that gets that's get sent to them from the San Antonio water system is used for conservation.

That's what the BMA says.

Hmm.

What do you think in terms of, is there enough water to satisfy both the needs, even if they get rid of the technical problems and the wastage?

Yeah.

That's an interesting question.

Cause I think that the lake is in an area of Texas that is just becoming more dry due to climate change and it gets water from a very specific area.

And when that area doesn't get water, then that lake dries up in the past 10 years, just the past 10 years, we have seen two droughts in this area in the last drought that's happened since then was the 1950s.

So two in the last decade than one, the 1950s.

So you can see that it's accelerating.

So I think like this is going to be an issue going forward and the way that the farmers are getting their water and the way that the people around the lake are able to handle how much water is in the lake, how can they enjoy it?

That's going to change a lot in the next few years because water is just, it's going to become more scarce in Texas.

And it's not that upstream, they're using more of it in this case, whereas it is in some, No, it's, it's not back case.

It's more like there's just a specific area that is above the lake, which needs rainfall.

And if it doesn't get rainfall in that specific area, then the lake itself is not going to be getting any of that water.

Even if the lake itself rain is coming down to the lake itself, that's not going to be as impactful as if that top part where it has its basin that needs the water.

And that is why that's important and why it's not coming down.

All right.

Well, thank you very much for explaining all that to us environment and water reporter, Elena bris of the San Antonio express news.

Thanks for coming in.

You can read that article online at San Antonio express news.

Thanks.

And thank you for joining us for this edition of on the record.

You can see this show again or previous shows as well as the podcast at dot org.

And we'll see you next time.

On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele do follow.