Susan Sheeran and Kristin Davila

[00:01] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: My name is Susan Ray Sheeran. I'm 79 years old. Today is December 7, 2022. We're in San Antonio, Texas, and Kristin Davila is my interview partner, and she is my successor at Merced Housing Texas.

[00:23] KRISTIN DAVILA: My name is Kristin Davila. I'm 40 years old and in. It's December 7, 2022. We're in San Antonio, Texas. My interview partner is Susan Sheeran, and Susan has been my mentor at Merced housing Texas. So, Susan, when can you talk a little bit about the beginnings of Merced?

[00:49] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: Yes, I moved here in 1992 from Denver, Colorado, and I had heard about an organization called Mercy Housing in Denver. In fact, I acted as a consultant for them one time. And as I worked in a couple different jobs before I came to Merced, I had heard that the catholic sisters in town were trying to put together something to address the housing needs here. And I was working at the housing authority at the time and got a phone call from a person who now works at the city, Mark Carmona, who said to me, did you know that the sisters are putting together a nonprofit that's going to provide affordable housing? And I hadn't heard about it. And he said, well, I think this is the last day to submit a resume. If you're interested, you should send it to so and so. And so I did, and the rest is kind of history. So that was in 1995. The sisters, the congregations were nine congregations. They made the decision to affiliate with another nonprofit, that very mercy housing, out of Denver. And it made perfect sense when I was interviewed that I might be the leader of this organization because I already knew about mercy. So Merced started in May 15, 1995, and as an affiliate of Mercy. And when I think back on it, they really provided the whole infrastructure for a nonprofit organization. We were starting from scratch, but really they had other things in place because they had other affiliated organizations. So that was really, really helpful to Merced. It wasn't like there was one person there, and you had to think about everything yourself. And we, the sisters who were the leaders in the deciding to form this congregation, several of them were on the initial board of directors. And so what they brought was their amazing orientation to service in the community and their ability to discern what was most needed in the community. And we developed a small property in Somerset, Texas, in kind of the next year. And when that got built, I can remember Sister Susan Mika saying to me, wow, this is great. Is this going to be it? And really it was just the beginning of it. In a couple years after that, we noticed we and the sisters on the board noticed that there were some huge needs in the community. And as an affiliate of Mercy Housing, we only did multifamily housing, produced multifamily housing. And in a way, we wanted to respond locally, but under that format, we had a hard time doing that. So it took quite a while, and it was quite a process, but we disengaged from mercy housing, and then we were able to start different programs, which we'll talk about later, that were not just multifamily housing.

[04:49] KRISTIN DAVILA: Thank you. And so, as you said, Merced was originally a subsidiary of Mercy Housing, and like you said, said they focus on multifamily development. You said that there were some other needs in the community that we wanted to be able to respond to as an organization. Can you tell me about some of those, what were some of those needs?

[05:11] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: Yes, I met some people in the nearby neighborhood of Denver Heights, and I wanted to get to know the community, because, like I said earlier, I came from Denver, Colorado, and one day I was going to go to a community meeting, and it was in a house owned by a lady named Rosa Mercado. And she lived on Denver street. So I thought that was pretty cool that she lived on the street where I came from. And I parked my car and got near the her sidewalk, and she said, honey, be real careful when you go there. I don't want you to fall off. And she had put a board that went from the sidewalk to the top of her porch. And when I walked that plank, that board, I noticed that her porch was falling in. So I got inside the house. I asked her how I could help her host the meeting. And I went into the bathroom to wash my hands because she had bought some food to put out. And I noticed that she didn't have any hot water. And I walked in the kitchen, and she had cardboard boxes on her stove. And I said, miss Mercado how do you fix your food? And she said, oh, I just warm it up in this crock pot. And as I got to know her, I saw that she was a gracious hostess of a community meeting, but she didn't have the basic services within her home to be able to live well. And so I talked to a person I had met who worked for a management company, and I just asked her for help. And she had a maintenance team, and her maintenance man came over, and she needed some help with her electrical wiring, and she needed some help with a water heater. But then I found out her services had been cut off because she hadn't paid for them. And one thing led to another, and this company helped Miss Mercado. But then I realized this was just a drop of water in a great big, huge ocean of need.

[07:59] KRISTIN DAVILA: You've told me before about how eye opening it was to drive through neighborhoods that are outside the typical, I'd say, tourist area where people come to San Antonio and know the downtown area and love the riverwalk and stay in a nice hotel, but don't necessarily see the conditions that people are living in on the east side, west side, and south side. Can you tell what did you see? What was your experience moving here from Denver, from seeing how things were in Denver to what you observed here in San Antonio? As a new resident?

[08:41] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: I was really shocked. I went into one house that was within a mile of city hall, and that house had a dirt floor. This was in 1995 or 1996, and the house was very organized and clean. But yes, there was a dirt floor. And another time on the near west side I went. By that time, we had started to raise money to do our repair program. But at that time, I saw the different houses we fixed. And I walked into this one house, and there was a lady lying on a couch, and she seemed to be very lethargic. And then I got a whiff of the smell in the house, which was a gas smell. And I walked in, and she was polite to us, but I could tell she just was lethargic. And I saw in her kitchen the gas stove. All burners were lit up bright orange. And I had to walk out of the house because I was getting a headache. So imagine the unhealthy situation that she was in. She wasn't even really aware of what was going on.

[10:11] KRISTIN DAVILA: Wow. Wow. So the owner occupied repair program really started as a result of that, what you saw as a need. Can you tell me a little bit about how that program grew to. We'll get to where it is today, but there's a huge need. How did that program grow? From one person donating time and resources to make a repair to a water heater to kind of a program that the organization became known for?

[10:50] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: It started out, as you said, very modestly, but just when we needed people to help, they seemed to show up. And I would hear from someone who maybe was at a foundation, a local foundation. And at that time, Merced didn't have any kind of a track record. So I would bring people with me to see what I saw, and then they would help me think through how we might get the money to do it. And there's a story that's very close to where we're recording this right now. At the mission library on Roosevelt street, there was a community leader named Roberto Angiano, and I had gotten to know him, and he also was on the saws board at the time, the water system board, and Mister Angiano I would learn he was just an amazing community advocate. And he told me that in the vicinity of the missions, there were people who did not have basic services, like water and sewer services. And I just, like, couldn't wrap my head around that. And so he would pick me up, and we'd go driving around, especially down by Mission Espada, and he would know the names of the people that lived in the houses, and he'd tell me that. He'd say, look there. See how there's a water hose from this house to the next house? That's how she gets her water. And I saw outhouses. This was in probably at that point, 1998 or 99 outhouses. And one thing led to another. It was declared a health emergency, for one thing. And once that happened, SaaS had to respond. And so we built a system of people, or a group of people who could look at every aspect of this one thing. We found out that the lots that the houses were built on weren't neatly on a grid north southeast west, like the rest of the town north of it. And so in order to install a pipe for one property, you might have to cross over another property. And so then we thought, well, gosh, how are we going to work on that? And we had to get easements. And there was a group of pro bono lawyers who we got to help us, the C group, the community group of lawyers, they helped us out, and then we enlisted the help of many other people, the city of San Antonio, the SaaS board. And that project took several years to complete. But I'm happy to say that some of the first people who lived in San Antonio, in those houses that were built initially, now had access to basic services of water and sewer. And that kind of added to our owner occupied repair program, too, because many of the houses didn't have operating bathrooms. And so we raised money so that we could build those bathrooms. Many entities helped us. I remember the Meadows foundation helped on that one quite a bit, too. But Mister Angiano who helped build this very library, we're sitting in hedgesthem. He was the person behind all that.

[14:58] KRISTIN DAVILA: And so Merced's role, in addition to organizing people to respond, was saws came in with their sewer lines, and as an organization we stepped in to help connect those people to that sewer line and the water lines because they didn't have that infrastructure. Is that right?

[15:20] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: We did that, but we also had to kind of organize the whole program, the whole concept. And believe me, that took a great deal of time and effort.

[15:33] KRISTIN DAVILA: Definitely. Yes, definitely. So that program has grown significantly, like I said, and we'll talk more about that, what the current needs are in the community. But what I'm going to switch gears a little bit and talk about one of the other programs that Merced has. And, you know, I think in San Antonio, we're most well known for the owner occupied home repair program, but we also own affordable housing throughout the state and primarily here in the San Antonio area. In 2005, shortly shortly after I started working for Merced and got to know you, Hurricane Katrina hit, and there were thousands of families that moved to San Antonio from New Orleans, not by choice, and we were able to respond by providing housing for those families. What did you learn from that experience? And is there any one story that sticks out from you from that time? Because I know it was very impactful for me, and I imagine it was with you, too.

[16:51] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: The property that we owned on the west side of San Antonio was really struggling economically, and we were discerning what really we could do about it. The financing was in place, and yet, like any other business, your income has to pay for the expenses of operating the property. And we struggled. And the reason Kristen worked at that property was that even though we couldn't barely meet the expenses of operations, we had a resident service coordinator in place, which is what she did. And because we always saw that if you just put somebody into an apartment room that doesn't help them necessarily thrive. They've got to have maybe some additional help. And so Kristen was working there, and it kind of happened suddenly because the hurricane happened suddenly, that we found out that hundreds and hundreds of people were coming to San Antonio to seek shelter after they were displaced by the hurricane. And so we were able to work very quickly and find out how many units we did have available. And then there were several entities around the community who were willing to help with things, with money and, and things that people needed to get started. And I don't remember the exact number that moved into that place.

[18:41] KRISTIN DAVILA: 70 families lived in at Avion Place.

[18:47] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: And it was just amazing. We had this one community meeting where we had gotten someone to provide dinner for the families. And I stood up in front of the group, and I kind of, I said, let us know as you get settled here, let us know what you need. And I almost fell down because the lady said, could you get me a can opener? She did not have the basic. She had been given food, but she didn't have the ability to open the can of food. And then Kristen, I'm sure, has many, many stories about that, but I can remember running around to town to buy shower curtains and basic things that people needed. And as it turned out, so we took a property that was troubled, and we used that to be able to help people. And I think that theme got repeated many, many times in our history. There was a property in Conroe, Texas, that was troubled, and we were able to secure a grant to rehab that whole complex. And again, it was turning something that was troubled into making it really, really wonderful for people to live there.

[20:18] KRISTIN DAVILA: Yeah. What you brought up about the can opener experience, and that's a valuable lesson that I think a lot of people in the nonprofit world or in a helper role sometimes forget, and that's that you need to ask people what their needs are as opposed to assuming what their needs are. And you knew enough to ask that question, and when you ask the question, you know how to respond. And I do remember you driving around to get the can openers and the shower curtains and all sorts of different things that we take for granted every day. And I remember there was one resident in particular that, that had called you one night, called Merced, and you happened to be there kind of later, after hours, when you got the call. And it was just really, I guess, providential that she got to speak with you. So can you tell me about who that. About that person and why that person was in need of housing, why she called you?

[21:39] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: Well, that person, I remember her very well. And Miss Harris was one of the persons who was housed in a hotel. The city had made rooms available, and she had a daughter who was handicapped and in a wheelchair, and she, I guess, had called the city and gotten the numbers of housing providers and literally called Merced. And it had just happened that we had caused several units. I think there were four or five units at this property where we helped to make them handicapped accessible. And I was able to just say, well, yes, as a matter of fact, I know a place you can go. And I think she was moved in the very next day and has remained a friend of yours, you and me, all these years.

[22:36] KRISTIN DAVILA: Yeah. And she had a pretty powerful story in sharing that she was actually evacuated from New Orleans from the roof of the hospital that she worked at.

[22:46] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: Yes.

[22:47] KRISTIN DAVILA: And she and her daughter were airlifted out of New Orleans. So it's wonderful that we were able to provide housing for her.

[22:56] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: And I guess Sister Jane Anne would say that was providential that she called us at the time she did, and that I answered the phone.

[23:08] KRISTIN DAVILA: Absolutely. Absolutely. One of the stories I remember from that time, or one of the residents, I was new to San Antonio and grew up in Michigan, and so living in a small town in Michigan, and I just graduated college. So moving to San Antonio and especially working on the southwest side, it was a bit of a culture shock for me because I had not been in a community that was primarily hispanic. And then with New Orleans, the hurricane there, the majority of the folks that moved to San Antonio were african american. The gentleman that was one of the residents that we had helped to get a unit, he was spending some of his time volunteering to organize some of the donations that we received, clothes and household goods and food. And he and I got to talking about, what are things that we miss from home? And he said that he missed red beans and rice. And I said, well, red beans and rice. I've never had red beans and rice. And he said, you haven't had red beans and rice? And literally the next day, I was staying a little bit late at the property, and he came and knocked on my door and brought me a plate of red beans and rice. And that was a very powerful moment for me, because here's somebody who had literally nothing that still wanted to give and to show thanks. So that's an experience that I'll always remember.

[24:56] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: Yes, that's quite an experience. And then it turned out when we were able to develop a senior housing facility on the west side, I mean, he was able to move in that. And with our resident services program there at that property, he's been able to thrive at his residence.

[25:17] KRISTIN DAVILA: Yeah.

[25:17] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: And he's still there and still helping the community.

[25:21] KRISTIN DAVILA: Absolutely.

[25:21] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: When we were needing a maintenance man, I remember he was out there sweeping the hallways.

[25:27] KRISTIN DAVILA: Yeah, yeah, he was. He was. That was an incredible experience. I think the other experience that really stands out in my mind and was kind of one of those moments that rattles you to your core and really helps to open your eyes and see what people experience was one gentleman who was just so frustrated. He came in to get. He came into my office to get help with, I don't know what resource in particular, but he started to express his frustration with the situation that he was in, having to relocate to San Antonio. And he flat out said we weren't treated fairly because we're black. And that for me was just, I had never experienced somebody expressing their experience of racism before to that degree. And I didn't know what to say to him because I understood where he was coming from, you know, that it was clear that there was a lack of response for people that were in marginalized neighborhoods. So that was something that stuck with me that has really shaped a lot of the work that I do in the way that I approach work.

[26:57] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: Mm hmm. Yes.

[27:01] KRISTIN DAVILA: I think we've learned a lot of lessons from Hurricane Katrina and those that we served that way. Susan, you led Merced for 25 years. Nearly 25 years.

[27:23] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: Nearly 25 years.

[27:24] KRISTIN DAVILA: Nearly 25 before retiring. Can you describe what you learned about Merced but about San Antonio's affordable housing needs during that time?

[27:36] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: Well, like I said, before, I came from Denver, Colorado, and prior to that, I had been a high school teacher of English and French and journalism. And then I worked a while in a catholic parish as a pastoral assistant. And after I did that, I worked for a little while at a nonprofit in Denver that was a housing provider and then got another job at a mortgage company and then the state housing finance agency. One job kind of led to another there, and I learned how to do the financing that was called low income housing tax credits at the time. And like I said earlier, I'm older than the average bear. I was around when the program was started, just started. And so I'm not particularly bright in finances, but I did learn the abcs of that program when I came here. On one hand, I could see the poverty, not to say there's not poverty in Denver, because there is. But here it was greater and bigger and more. And so it was. And also we were affiliated with Mercy Housing, and there was an expectation that we would produce housing kind of quickly and fast. And because of the fact that I knew some people here at the Texas agency, I was able to make the contacts. And like I said earlier, we were able to develop a small project in Somerset, Texas, that was senior housing, very affordable. But every time we would try to do something or produce a new or buy an older property, I realized that the need for subsidy was greater than I ever imagined. And so I think to this day, I think Merced owns now, what, ten properties that Merced either developed or built or bought. And each one has its own story. And if you try to serve the very poor, you want to make your rents affordable to those people who are there. But yet that doesn't generate enough income to run the property. So we're always seeking funds to make the numbers work. And like I said earlier, we provide resident services to the residents of the properties. So that's on top of just making the project numbers work. So I think the greatest challenge was always trying to find a source for the money. And that ties with an earlier story that just when we needed somebody to help us, that person emerged and was part of our team. And it was pretty remarkable to me to see how that happened over and over. Any project or property that you think of today, there was a story like that, that we were able to build the property and provide resident services there.

[31:27] KRISTIN DAVILA: And, you know, that's what's interesting is that that's one of the things that developers are dealing with more so now than ever, is having to be creative about how you put together a project. And I think that that's one thing that you helped to do for the organization, was create a space where you. You looked at things from a creative perspective. How do we creatively address the needs of the community? How do we solve this problem? And there's roadblocks, but how do we move those roadblocks?

[32:07] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: I remember one time, Kristen, and this involves you, a person on our staff, left to do another job, and I was always seeking out the employee who could come and help, and I sought you out to come to the main office and help. And I remember that one time in the very, very beginning, we were working on a closing of apartment complex, and I asked you to make a copy of the document, and you did that. And then I said, did you read it? And you want to just elaborate on that because it was a real moment of awareness on your part.

[32:56] KRISTIN DAVILA: Absolutely. Up until that point in time in our discussion that followed that, I was looking at my role as kind of putting a cog. I was a cog in a wheel, and I didn't have that same, I guess, orientation to looking at the whole picture. And what you said was, well, no, I'm looking to you to read it and to understand so that you have a greater sense of what's going on with this work. I'm not simply asking you to make a copy, to be an assistant in some way. I'm looking to you to learn from this. And I still remember when you handed me the HUD handbook for developing a 202, and you said, by the end of this closing and development of this property, this book should be dog eared and highlighted and underlined and marked. And I didn't understand what you meant at the beginning, but certainly by the end, I definitely understood that, that you have to really put your all into something and really take ownership, and for something to be successful, you really have to take ownership of it.

[34:21] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: Yes, that's true. And I guess I can say that you certainly did take ownership of it, and that book was dog eared by the end of the process. The rest is history. When I knew that I was going to be retiring sometime soon, my husband had passed away and I continued to work. But then I had some little problems myself with some physical problems, and I knew I needed to kind of move along. And Kristen was the employee at Merced that I really focused on to mentor. And I think that many organizations, as their founders grow older and want to retire, they stay because they don't know who they're going to entrust the organization to when they leave. I've seen it happen many, many times, and I feel like just as the employee had many opportunities for leadership training and took those opportunities for leadership, if I had to do it over, I would have paid more attention to that and made sure that the whole staff had an opportunity to learn more about what they do and that the whole staff could see how important they were to the organization and that they weren't. Just, like you said, a cog in the wheel.

[36:09] KRISTIN DAVILA: Yeah. So what advice would you have for maybe other executive directors that are facing what you did a couple years ago and wanting to retiree, ensuring that you've got someone that you can entrust the organization to? What did you learn from that? That you.

[36:30] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: I think it assumes that the executive director has a very good working relationship with a board of directors, because essentially, when you decide to retire, essentially you don't get to pick who's going to succeed you. And I think the more communication that can happen at that point, we hired a consultant to help us look at our planning. And I think it takes time and it takes very concentrated effort to see what the organization needs, because when, let's say in 1995, when Merced started, what the organization needed was way different than what the organization needs today. With you as the executive director.

[37:25] KRISTIN DAVILA: Yes. And the need is greater now in the community. I mean, here we were formed to respond to a need in the community at that time in 1995, and that need has just continued to grow. And I think a testament to that is this owner occupied repair program that you conceived as really just a response to a need, seeing a need, and responding to it. That program has grown exponentially, not just for us, but even with the city of San Antonio taking on its own program, they recently accepted applications for home repairs. And in a month's time, they had collected 3580 applications. And that, I think, is a testament to the number of people that are living in really poor conditions and just make do because they don't have another choice.

[38:25] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: And if you've gone to a grocery store recently, you learned that it cost about double what you think to just buy your basic food.

[38:34] KRISTIN DAVILA: Exactly. Exactly.

[38:38] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: So what are some things that you're putting in place these days?

[38:42] KRISTIN DAVILA: So with the owner occupied repair program, again, learning from what our history with the organization has been with supportive services, we've started providing supportive services for the homeowners that we serve through the owner occupied.

[38:56] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: That's wonderful.

[38:58] KRISTIN DAVILA: So we have a social worker on staff that meets with the homeowner to help identify what are some of the needs that they have that maybe somebody in construction doesn't necessarily see, you know, maybe accessibility issues that that person has. And then they also look to make sure that they've still got, they've got access to all of the property tax exemptions that they qualify for and help them apply for those exemptions. And then also connect them with legal services to put together a will and any other end of life documents so that when they pass their home, there's a plan for that.

[39:39] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: Oh, that's wonderful. That's great.

[39:42] KRISTIN DAVILA: Thank you.

[39:46] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: Well, this has been a wonderful conversation, Kristen, and you are such a wonderful leader, and I can live in my retirement happily knowing that you're taking care of things that were set out in Texas.

[40:01] KRISTIN DAVILA: That means a lot to me, especially coming from someone who has been such a huge influence in my life and in my career path and has really supported me in so many ways to succeed. So I really appreciate that. And you built a great foundation for the organization and for me to continue on.

[40:22] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: Oh, thank you. You're putting a roof on it.

[40:25] KRISTIN DAVILA: Thank you.

[40:26] SUSAN RAY SHEERAN: Thank you, Kristen.