Nearly half of all households in Bexar County are struggling just to keep food on the table and a roof overhead, according to a new report from the City of San Antonio. The report found that 44% of Bexar County residents can't afford basic needs like housing and groceries, a figure that includes families earning above the poverty line but still falling short of what it costs to get by.
That 44% figure comes from the city's Department of Human Services, as first reported by KSAT. It mirrors county-level data in the 2024 ALICE Report, which found 774,392 households across Bexar County's population of 2,127,737 residents, with 44% falling below what researchers call the ALICE Threshold, according to the ALICE County Report for Bexar County. ALICE stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed — households earning more than the federal poverty level but still unable to cover the basic cost of living locally.
Breaking down that 44%, 15% of households fall below the federal poverty level outright, while another 29% earn more than that but still can't cover essentials, per News 4 San Antonio. The city's report also found that 15% of Bexar County residents live in poverty overall, compared with a higher 17% rate within San Antonio city limits itself, according to the same KSAT report cited above.
Where the Hardship Is Concentrated
The report's ZIP-code mapping shows poverty is not spread evenly across the county. It's concentrated inside Loop 410 and in the southern parts of San Antonio, the KSAT report notes. The data also shows a demographic shift in who's struggling most: the poverty rate among children actually decreased, a slight improvement, while the rate among adults 65 and older increased, per the same source.
Single mothers face the steepest climb. In 2024, 74% of single-female-headed households with children in Bexar County fell below the ALICE Threshold, according to the ALICE County Report. Black and American Indian residents, women, and people with disabilities were also identified as groups disproportionately affected by poverty, the city's report found.
Wages Aren't Keeping Up With the Cost of Living
Money coming in just isn't matching money going out. The median household income in Bexar County sat at $72,568 in 2024, below the statewide average of $79,721, according to the ALICE County Report. Meanwhile, a single adult in Bexar County needed $34,056 a year — roughly $17.03 an hour — just to cover a bare-bones survival budget covering housing, food, transportation and other essentials, the same report found.
Statewide group United For ALICE has tracked this gap for years, noting that households continue to struggle especially as wages fail to keep pace with the rising cost of household essentials like housing, child care, food, transportation, health care and technology, according to its Texas county report. Across the state, an estimated 40% of Texas households fell below the ALICE Threshold in 2024, made up of 13% below the federal poverty level and another 27% of ALICE households, per the organization's statewide ALICE report.
The math gets stark for working families. A Texas household with two adults, an infant and a preschooler needed an estimated $74,784 a year to cover a basic survival budget in 2024, the statewide ALICE report found. But combined full-time earnings for a household where one adult worked as a cook and the other as a teller totaled just $60,915 annually — well short of that survival budget, according to the same data.
A Problem That Has Lingered for Years
This isn't a new crisis so much as a persistent one. Bexar County's financial hardship rate held flat at 46% in 2022, unchanged from 2021, according to a United Way of San Antonio and Bexar County blog post on that year's findings. Wages for some of the region's most common jobs rose by as much as 26% around that time, but the gains didn't offset climbing costs for child care, housing and food, the organization found. That 2022 report also found that 80% of single female-headed households with children in Bexar County were experiencing financial hardship, a rate that has since eased somewhat but remains elevated.
San Antonio's broader poverty rate has moved only modestly over the past decade, dropping from 18.6% between 2013 and 2017 to 17.7% between 2018 and 2022, according to the San Antonio Report. The outlet has also reported that stagnant wages and rising housing costs continue to put pressure on ALICE households, and noted that the state and national poverty rates — 13.8% and 12.5%, respectively — remain well below San Antonio's own numbers.
