Live in Jefferson

Jefferson is the grid of mostly one-story houses northwest of Woodlawn Lake, between St. Cloud Road and Wilson Boulevard and between Babcock Road and West Woodlawn Avenue. The lake came first: a land company building a streetcar suburb dammed Alazan Creek in 1889, and the lake was given to the City as a park in 1919. Thomas Jefferson High School opened just east of today's line in 1932, and in 1948 the Jefferson Village shopping center at Donaldson Avenue and Manor Drive was judged the best in the nation by the home builders' national conference. This guide takes the City's Jefferson Neighborhood Conservation District, adopted on 16 April 2009, as its boundary: about 474 acres where the 2020 census counted 3,647 residents, 4.2% fewer than on the same blocks in 2010. The association's own area is nearly twice as large and overlaps its neighbor's.

The district decides what you can build. Under the Unified Development Code, no building permit is issued here for a new house, or for an alteration or addition to a street-facing wall, without approved design plans and a certificate of compliance from the City's development services director. The 2009 plan sets the standards, and they reach work that needs no permit at all. A house's living space may not exceed a quarter of its lot, so a 6,000-square-foot lot allows 1,500 square feet; houses stop at two and a half stories or 35 feet; a garage or shed may not exceed 40% of the house; paving and roofs may not cover more than half the lot; and a new front fence stops at 42 inches, with no chain link. The plan also bars vinyl and aluminum siding; the code forbids material rules only in plans adopted after 1 April 2019, so ask the City whether it still applies that one. This is not a City historic district; Monticello Park, across Wilson Boulevard, is.

Most people own, many outright. In 2020 owners lived in 1,038 of the 1,401 occupied homes, 74%, and 408 of them had no mortgage; 363 homes were rented and 159 stood empty. Zillow's figure for ZIP code 78228, where 93% of the residents live but which holds 56,369 people in all, was $169,996 in August 2026, down 1.7% on the year, against a Bexar County median sale of $280,999. This is San Antonio ISD, at 1.1552 per $100 in 2025 against Northside ISD's 1.0049, but at these values the state's $140,000 school exemption leaves little for the higher rate to bite on: a homesteaded owner at the 78228 figure pays about $2,084 a year, against $2,097 on the Northside example the San Antonio page works through, and a landlord about $4,149.

Alazan Creek clips two corners. The creek touches the district at St. Cloud Road near West Huisache Avenue and again along the southern edge near Kampmann Boulevard on its way to the lake, and FEMA's effective map puts 4.3% of the district in its 1% annual chance zone, on census blocks holding 68 residents. The reference point is outside every mapped zone, and the City lists no low-water crossing inside the line. San Antonio's storms flood streets that no map shades, and May, September and October are the wettest months; the City's Class 6 rating takes 10% off a federal flood policy outside the mapped zone. VIA's 524 Frequent bus runs the length of St. Cloud Road, and the nearest Primo station, Babcock, is about 1.3 km east in a straight line.