San Antonio’s Southwest Side is about to get a big shot of income-restricted housing. National affordable-housing developer Dominium is moving ahead with a 404-unit complex off Quantum Drive called the Silo, a cluster of 14 apartment buildings with a heavy focus on larger, family-sized homes. Local filings and reporting indicate financing and approvals are lining up so construction could kick off before the year is out.
What Dominium Is Building
Dominium, a national affordable-housing developer founded in 1972, plans to start work on the 404-unit Silo with amenities that include a clubhouse, pool and playground, and estimated rents between roughly $1,100 and $1,700 depending on unit size, according to the San Antonio Report. Company representatives told local media the 14-building site will lean into larger units aimed at families. A Dominium development analyst said construction could begin by year’s end, with completion expected in about two to three years.
Financing and Partners
Opportunity Home San Antonio, the city’s housing authority, is partnering on the deal by purchasing the land and arranging tax-exempt bond financing. A March meeting packet for Opportunity Home and the Las Varas Public Facility Corporation pegs the total development cost at about $151.8 million and notes the issuer may seek up to $70 million in tax-exempt bonds. The same document outlines a unit mix of roughly 40 units at 30% of area median income (AMI), about 275 at 60% AMI and about 85 at 70% AMI, according to Opportunity Home San Antonio.
Market Context
The broader apartment market is cooling even as this project advances. Developers broke ground on 12,500 apartment units in 2022, 9,000 in 2023 and just 660 in the first half of 2026, according to the San Antonio Report. That puts this year on track for roughly 10.5% of 2022’s pace. The pullback is tied to higher borrowing costs; the Federal Open Market Committee kept its target federal-funds range unchanged in June, but policy rates remain elevated, making speculative, unsubsidized multifamily projects far tougher to finance (FOMC statement). In that climate, subsidy-backed affordable developers like Dominium are still moving, even as market-rate groundbreakings stall.
Why It Matters for San Antonio
Local officials say the Silo will bring much-needed, family-sized affordable apartments to a part of the city that has struggled to produce deeply affordable options. In April, the City Council signed off on $20.7 million in gap funding for eight affordable projects across San Antonio, a signal that local dollars are still plugging financing holes to keep long-term affordability alive, according to the City of San Antonio.
Next Steps and Timeline
Before ground can officially break, the development team still has to secure tax-exempt bond volume cap and finalize partnership agreements. Opportunity Home materials flag the volume-cap process as both time-sensitive and competitive. Dominium, for its part, says it targets neighborhoods where it can price units roughly $100 to $400 below market levels and typically holds its communities for the long term, a strategy that can help projects weather tighter lending conditions as they transition from construction into stabilized operations (Dominium).
