HEDC study shows need for lots of homes

By Rosanne Fohn

Anvil Herald Reporter

A new study presented to the Hondo Economic Development Corporation board shows a severe lack of housing in Hondo that prevents young families from living here, limits the number of children attending Hondo schools and prevents employees from living here.

Executive Director Sean Patty presented the report at the board’s September meeting.

In the executive report, Patty said that the city is losing residents by attrition. The housing stock in Hondo is old, with about half of it unavailable for rent or purchase, due either to its condition, or to a trend toward shrinking household size where current homeowners grow older while younger families have nothing available to rent or own. Another striking point is that due to this housing shortage, the city imports 73.3% of its workforce. 

“The city is not emptying because people are leaving the region. It is emptying because the households already here are getting smaller, the housing stock is shrinking rather than growing and the working-age families forming here cannot find anything [housing] to buy. So they cross the city-limit line and become county residents instead,” he said.

Patty lays out several points that back up these claims in the report, available on the EDC website, growhondotx.com.

Declining households

Between 2010 and 2020, Hondo lost 464 residents but only two households. The average household size fell by 0.16 persons which, across 2,356 households accounts for about 377 people. 

Hondo Independent School District enrollment figures independently confirm the population decline. 

A comparison across 15 school years, from 2011-2012 to 2025-2026, shows enrollment is down 21.7% or 459 students. Meanwhile, enrollment in the rest of Medina County more than doubled, he states in the report.

Patty said that two-thirds of the decline is a real loss of resident students while one-third represents students who transferred to neighboring school districts. Surprisingly, students are not going so much to east Medina County where the county’s main population growth is, but to small, neighboring districts such as D’Hanis ISD (68 students) and Bandera ISD (42). Medina Valley ISD gained 20 former Hondo students.

Housing stock is shrinking

Of the 2,596 housing units in Hondo, just 86 (3%) are available for sale or rent, the report stated. Nearly half of all vacant units here are not for sale or rent but are shown on the tax rolls “at a depressed value.” This is either because they are owned by older people who have a 65-and-older tax exemption or because they are in poor condition.

This feeds into another reason: Nearly 57% of housing stock in Hondo was built before 1980, the report states. The median build year for a Hondo housing unit is 1975, compared to 1996 across Medina County and 1994 in Texas. Statistics show that about a third of Hondo’s housing was built in the 1940s and another third in the 1950s. Only 4% of Hondo homes were built in the 2010s and 6.6% in the 2020s, the report highlighted.

Patty says that there is not much difference in price for homes inside Hondo compared to Medina County.

“Hondo is not failing to attract working-age households. It is failing to sell them a house,” Patty said.

Importing workers

Hondo imports workers and exports residents, the report states. Data show that “73.3% of the jobs in Hondo are held by people who do not live here,” Patty said. This equals 1,810 people.

About 78% of those 1,810 people live in unincorporated Medina County or small nearby communities, while about 10.9% come from San Antonio. Forty percent of the commuters work in health care, education and public administration jobs, his figures state. 

He explained that housing just 10% of those who currently drive to Hondo from someplace else (452.5 people) would require 181 additional households. This exceeds anything Hondo has built in 20 years, he added.

Regarding the people who commute elsewhere for jobs, Patty said his research shows that it’s not so much a wage gap but the lack of jobs in Hondo that causes people to commute. 

Sources

Patty said that the statistics he used for the study are all publicly available and include U.S. Census figures, Texas Education Agency statistics, local school district data, five-year American Community surveys, Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts tax data, as well as city and county documents.

To learn more about the report, visit the HEDC website, growhondotx.com. Click on “Competitive Advantages,” then “Data and Demographics” and “Download Report.”