The San Marcos City established a Workforce Housing Task Force to assist City Council in developing housing policies as working families face housing challenges.
In January 2018, City Council identified housing for working families as one of its five strategic initiatives. The task force will try to identify and initiate housing solutions within the community by focusing on the limited supply of housing, the affordability of living in San Marcos and the number of people moving to the area. Mayor John Thomaides said there will be a number of different strategies to deal with housing policies.
“A really healthy city has to have housing opportunities and find a way to keep the middle income,” Thomaides said. “Some of the strategies we have discussed have been land banking, where City Council partners with private sectors on land and then make the housing models alternatively affordable so that houses that are built and owned by people and sold have to qualify.”
Thomaides said these strategies will help make San Marcos an affordable place to live for middle and working-class families.
Abby Gillfillan, planning manager for the city of San Marcos and leader of the Workforce Housing Task Force, said the task force is comprised of 20 members from all different sectors of the community, including home builders, service providers and affordable housing developers who will present policy recommendations to City Council.
“They’ll meet a minimum of five times and by fall of 2019 they’re gonna be producing a policy recommendation to the City Council,” Gillfillan said.
Gillfillan also said they will have a minimum of one community input session and could evolve through the process.
The University Star reached out to the following entities who either did not comment to The Star or did not respond: Greater San Marcos Partnership, Gary job corps, SMCISD, real estate agency. The University Star also reached out to Margaret Yackel, coordinator for off-campus living at Texas State, who could not give an interview without her supervisor’s approval, who was out of town.