San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones joins Inside Texas Politics to discuss the city’s future.
SAN ANTONIO — Six months into her job, and now approaching 2026, San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones sees opportunities for the city, but also plenty of economic challenges.
“Top of mind, obviously, is going to be the implementation of the one big, beautiful bill, which will see cuts in our community to Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and SNAP,” the mayor told us on Inside Texas Politics. “So, we’re trying to weather that and best account for that as we look at the FY ’27 budget.”
Affordability will be an issue facing just about every city in Texas in 2026, and San Antonio is no exception.
Mayor Jones claims that a $100 increase in median grants, or maximum income levels to be eligible for programs such as Section 8 housing, leads to a 9% increase in homelessness.
And she told us affordability is already top of mind because of the pause in SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits during the government shutdown in November. San Antonio receives $50 million worth of SNAP benefits every month.
The mayor said the city is also positioning itself to secure large economic agreements and business deals in 2026. She just finished her first international trip as mayor earlier this month when she and a trade delegation visited Mexico.
“The review of the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement) trade deal, it’s going to be really important not only for the economic impacts today, but also those advanced manufacturing sectors that are on the horizon that we look forward to bringing here to San Antonio,” Ortiz Jones said.