Richard Montellano says he didn’t take the code violation notices that seriously at first. Then a few years ago, city code compliance officers started showing up at his home on San Antonio’s West Side every few months to document deteriorating conditions like leaning walls and a cracked foundation. Montellano, 63, who lives alone and inherited the home from his mother, tried to fix what he could himself. He applied for home repair assistance programs, but he never found help. Then the pandemic hit and work dried up. “I was doing a lot of hospitality jobs, banquets and stuff like that, but then most of it just stopped,” Montellano recalls.
In August 2020, city officials decided that Montellano hadn’t done enough to resolve the violations. They ordered him to demolish the house where he’s lived his entire life, giving him the option to tear it down himself or pay the city to do it. Montellano, who’s still fighting the demolition order, says he has nowhere else to go and feels blindsided by the process. “I’m begging them to just let me fix what I can,” he says. “What other option do I have?”
San Antonio leaders say demolition orders are a tool of last resort, yet issue them far more often than in any other metro area in the state. Between 2015 and 2020, the City of San Antonio issued 626 orders to vacate and demolish occupied single-family homes, compared to 16 orders in Houston, Dallas, Austin, and Fort Worth combined during that same period, according to a report published last month by researchers at the University of Texas School of Law. The report argues that San Antonio appears to be violating state law by failing to provide relocation assistance for people who are displaced by home demolitions—a claim city officials have vehemently denied.
