Merced Housing Texas began the SOS Program in 2002, to provide emergency
health and safety repairs to elderly or disabled homeowners
who, through illness, physical disability or other misfortune over which they
have no control cannot maintain safe, sanitary, or structurally sound homes.
The 
program
was inspired by Miss Juana Rosa Mercado.
Miss Mercado is an elderly lady who lived in a historic, Victorian, gingerbread-style
home. She subsisted on a fixed income and had no means of maintaining her
home. When we met her, she was cheerfully enduring barely livable conditions.
Miss Mercado had no hot water and no heat, not even a working stove. She cooked
on a hot plate and heated water for bathing in a crock-pot.
With $2,000 of our own funds to match, Merced applied for and received $5,000 initial funding from the Dave Coy Foundation administered through the Bank of America. Merced replaced Miss Mercado’s water heater. One of Merced’s property management agents, Encore Management Company, enlisted its employees and associates to make additional necessary repairs to Miss Mercado’s home. Miss Mercado is not alone. Many San Antonio seniors live in similar conditions. Our initial target area for the SOS Program was Miss Mercado’s neighborhood – the Denver Heights and Nevada Street neighborhoods on San Antonio’s near east side. We have expanded the target area to include the adjacent Dignowity Hills and Harvard Place/Eastlawn neighborhoods. Word of our SOS Program has spread, and we have received more than 100 applications for SOS assistance.
We target homeowners age 56 and older or disabled who make 30% or less of the area median income, or $10,600 or less annually for a senior living alone. Qualified SOS recipients can barely afford to keep food on the table, let alone repay a home improvement loan. Merced makes repairs at no cost to them. The SOS Program enables very low-income senior and disabled persons to stay in the homes they own and love. We also have found that receiving SOS assistance often restores faith and hope to seniors whose existence has become bleak because of their limited means. Repairing homes through the SOS Program also serves to maintain the quality of the single-family housing stock.
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