Live in Downtown El Paso

Downtown is the oldest part of the American city. It stands on Juan María Ponce de León's grant, the best known of the land grants made from El Paso del Norte across the river, and Anson Mills finished his plat of the town of El Paso on it in 1859. The railroads came in 1881 and 1882, and by 1890 the adobe village had more than 10,000 people. This guide takes the Downtown Management District, about 304 acres from Interstate 10 to the river, less the blocks south of Paisano Drive that the City counts in the Segundo Barrio, which have their own guide. What is left runs from the freeway down to Paisano, about 240 acres. The City's map of neighborhoods has no Downtown: 547 of the residents here are in its Union Plaza neighborhood and the rest in none at all.

The census count is mostly not households. The 2020 census found 1,295 people inside the line, and 583 of them, 45%, were on the single block of the El Paso County Detention Facility on East Overland Avenue, which holds up to 1,010 inmates. In all 602 lived on blocks with no homes, which leaves 693 people in 564 homes. That block reported nobody in 2010, so the rise from 821 then is the jail being counted, not a revival. Of the 464 homes occupied on census day, 433 were rented and 31 were lived in by their owners; 100 stood empty.

An owner pays a sixth levy. The five taxing units on a City and El Paso ISD address add to 2.643693 per $100 for 2025, the highest combined rate of the Texas cities on this site, and the district adds 12 cents, as it has since 1997: 2.763693 in all. Zillow put the typical home in ZIP code 79901 at $135,191 in August 2026, up 4.1% on the year, but most of that ZIP's residents live in the Segundo Barrio. At that value a homestead owes the five units about $2,052 a year and nothing to El Paso ISD, whose $140,000 exemption is larger than the value; without the exemption it owes about $3,574, and the district adds about $162. This guide could not find whether the district takes anything off a homestead. Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone 5, over most of downtown, adds no rate. The arithmetic is on the El Paso page.

Part of downtown is a City historic district. About 12% of the guide lies in the City's Downtown and Old San Francisco historic districts, home to 230 people in 2020, where the City's FAQ says a certificate of appropriateness must be issued before a building permit for alteration, new construction or demolition. Staff can approve many minor exterior changes; the rest go to the Historic Landmark Commission, about a month. Three individually designated landmarks also stand inside the line.

FEMA's current map of downtown is on paper. Its digital flood layer leaves the district out, so the effective zone has to be read on the scanned 2006 panel. The preliminary countywide map of August 2025, not yet in force, shows none of the guide in its 1% or 0.2% zones. Storm water still runs off the Franklin Mountains through the streets toward the Rio Grande, and El Paso Water says flooding happens where runoff outruns an arroyo or a channel. A homeowners policy does not cover rising water.