Live in Mission San Jose

Father Antonio Margil founded Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo on 23 February 1720, and the limestone church that still stands was begun in 1768. The mission was secularized in 1824, rebuilt by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, and since 5 July 2015 has been one of the five San Antonio Missions on UNESCO's World Heritage list. This guide covers the area the Mission San Jose neighborhood association files with the City: about 715 acres from Southcross Boulevard to Military Drive and from South Flores Street to the San Antonio River, with the mission inside it. The 2020 census counted 5,636 residents there, four more than in 2010.

Nearly half the neighborhood is a City historic district. The Mission Historic District runs about seven miles along the river, the largest of San Antonio's 32, and covers roughly half this area and 2,550 of its residents, 45%. Inside it, the Unified Development Code requires a certificate of appropriateness before a permit for exterior work, new building, demolition or relocation. The Office of Historic Preservation approves most routine items at staff level; new construction and additions go to the Historic and Design Review Commission, which meets on the first and third Wednesdays. Outside the district the ordinary zoning applies, and no neighborhood conservation district covers any of the area.

The houses are cheap by the city's measure, and the school rate is the county's highest. In 2020 owners lived in 45% of the 1,844 occupied homes and renters in 1,017. No price index follows the association's line. Zillow's figure for ZIP code 78214, which holds 89% of the residents and runs well beyond it, was $137,401 in August 2026, down 2.8% on the year, against a Bexar County median sale of $280,999. Most homes here are in Harlandale ISD, whose 2025 rate of 1.2575 per $100 is the highest of the twelve school districts on the county's table, and the seven units together charge 2.542774. But the state's $140,000 school exemption is larger than a typical home's value, so a homestead at the ZIP figure pays $0 in school tax and about $1,450 a year in all, while a landlord pays about $3,494. At the county median it would be about $4,746; the city's own example is on the San Antonio page.

The river is the mapped flood risk, and it is on the edge. FEMA's effective map, dated 2010 for this panel, puts 4.7% of the area in the 1% annual chance zone, all along the river on the eastern line, and no census block with residents has its center in it. That is not the whole risk: flash flooding and low-water crossings reach well past the mapped floodplain.

What this guide could not settle is the schools. Harlandale ISD publishes no attendance-zone map that could be read, so no zoned campus is stated here for any address. Transit is simpler: VIA's 42 runs down Roosevelt Avenue, and Primo 102, every 12 minutes on weekdays, stops on Military Drive about a kilometer south.