161. Former Assistant City Manager Lori Houston Reflects on 23 Years at City Hall and Her Next Steps

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Welcome to Big City, Small Town, the weekly podcast all about San Antonio and the people who make it go and grow. I'm your host, Bob Rivard. This week's guest is Laurie Houston, a familiar name to most people in our audience. She had a distinguished 23-year career with the City of San Antonio that began in the administration of Phil Harburger when you were just an intern, Laurie Houston, and then by 2015 was an assistant city manager. And was very involved in, or actually presided over, some of the most consequential downtown projects that have occurred in our city in the last couple of decades. And we're going to talk about quite a few of those, as well as her all-new venture as the owner and CEO of the CE Group, which for 30 years in San Antonio has been one of the leading event public relations, marketing, and branding organizations in our city. Lori, welcome to Big City, Small Town. Thank you so much for having me. So tell us right now, 6 months out of your career at the city, have you gotten your hands around the CE group and are you actively engaged in it now day to day? I did retire September 26, 2025, and I took— I did take 3 months off.

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Good for you. And so recharged. I recharged. I, I had been preparing to depart from the city for a while mentally because other than working at Target for a year and a half, The city was my life for 23 years. We didn't know about Target. Yes.

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And so I was preparing to depart from my family. The city has been such a fabulous employer for me. And so that was hard. And I knew that I needed to take some time off to kind of just decompress, rest, refocus. Janet is talking about rewirement. And she's not going to retire. She's gonna rewire.

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And that's what I kind of needed to do was, was rewire because at the city it's such a fast-paced environment and I don't think I realized how fast it was until I stopped.

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And you're thinking, how did I ever go that fast? And so I slept for 2 months.

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Like I, the only thing getting me up in the morning was taking my daughter

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30, get her to school, exercise, read a lot of books, took a nap at 2 o'clock, and I cooked dinner like every night for the first month. Got a little domesticated, visited my parents in Tucson. My mother has late-stage Alzheimer's, so going through that journey with my brothers and my dad, but it was just time to take a step back and then Thanksgiving hit and your daughter doesn't go to school.

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How old is your daughter now? She's 11 years old. Okay. I remember when she was a baby. I know. And, um, so there's nothing there to wake you up. And I kind of got lost. I was like, what am I doing? What, what is going on? And in the back of my mind, I knew the CE group thing was happening. I was working on it, but we intentionally, I needed to take this time. And just focus on me. But it got really hard after Thanksgiving. And because you just don't have anything to wake you up to start your day.

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And that's when I'm like, I got to go back to work. And so December, I really kind of started kicking things off, finalizing negotiations. How did that come about, Lori? Because you and Janet have been longtime friends, families connected. Yes. And she's been a very visible force in this city for as long as I can remember. She's literally the first person I knew to get a cell phone. And back when they looked like bricks. But of course, Janet.

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But she's always been a pioneer and just a whirlwind and a force of nature. I have— I'm not— I've never seen somebody leave public service like you and acquire a company and go into business. I've seen plenty of people go into the private sector or go in and out of the private and public sector, but I haven't seen anybody get their arms around a going concern and say, I'm going to— I'm going to become an operator. Yeah. Janet and I have a very, very special relationship.

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I met Janet when she did the grand opening event for the Museum Reach urban segment, and you were part of that.

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2007 to 2009, Mayor Harburger, who I absolutely adore, he is my favorite mayor. He gave us an edict and said, I'm gonna give you this money to complete the project, but you're gonna have it open May 30th, 2009, because he left office the next day.

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And boy, for 2 years, that project really was a 30, 36-month project. For 24 months, we just were blowing and going. And I met Janet through that process. You always admire women from afar. We were kind of, you know, hey, I like you. Never really got together until I had Millie. And this is a beautiful story. I'll make it really short. But we were in Central Market.

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Millie was old enough to sit in the basket, so she was sturdy enough to hold herself up. And Janet and I are at the prepared food counters talking, and Millie's like putting her hands up to Janet, keeps putting them up. And Janet's like, I think your baby wants me to hold her. And I said, I think I think she does. And so she picks Millie up and it keeps happening. And then one day we're in the airport and Millie breaks free from me and sees Janet and runs to her. And I remember it because Janet was on a flight to Aspen, going to Aspen for 4th of July or something. And Millie had heard her, just ran to her.

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So I'm like, what is going on? So that was when I was like, we gotta go to dinner. And it was at that dinner that we realized that Millie's birthday is August 31st, 2014.

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And Janet and Rob Holliday had a little girl named Melissa who died when she was 3. Her birthday was August 31st. And we thought, this is meant to be. And it's amazing. Janet and Rob are Millie's godparents and they're grandparents to her because my mother-in-law passed away during COVID My mother has late stages Alzheimer's. We don't have a set of grandmothers or a set of grandparents that really can be active, and that's Janet and Rob. And so we celebrate Melissa's birthdays with Millie's birthday. We do a lot of family events when we can't be with family, but we have a beautiful, beautiful relationship because of Millie and Melissa. And so Janet's always been a mentor of mine, and I didn't know what I wanted to do. And honestly, I was scared to leave the city.

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That was all I knew. And you're thinking, like, if I leave the city, are people still going to pick up my call? Am I anybody outside the city? Like, I had all these concerns.

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And it wasn't until one day I just decided I do not want to be the city manager for San Antonio. And the only reason to stay in that position was if you wanted to be the next city manager.

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A lot of us thought you would be, Gloria. And I thought about it, but It is a hard job. It's a grind. It's a grind. And I, first of all, I hope Eric stays there as long as he can. Eric is amazing. He's thriving through the current challenges. He is thriving. And I'm so proud of him.

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He had said some things early on when we had the new mayor come on and he managed our city manager form of government like a champ.

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And he emerged as this leader that his internally, his staff knew he was, but finally the community was really seeing like Eric Walsh is, he's the coach. He's the guy that you want on your team, leading your team. And I'm just so proud of him. And I learned so much from him, but Eric's life is being city manager. Now he's a great father. He's a great husband. He has a great marriage. And, but it's a lot of work. And I thought, I don't want to do that. I have an 11-year-old. And so do I want to be an assistant city manager for the next, you know, 8 to 10 years, or do I want to do something else that provides me more flexibility? And honestly, I was a product of assistant city managers moving on and doing something else. And I got my chance to get called up to that bench. And I want to give other leaders that opportunity because there are directors and amazing leaders in the city of San Antonio who want to move up. We want to keep them. And so I thought, let me do something different. And I know that I've been chastised for saying— you keep saying you have good 15 years left in you.

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What I'm saying is I have like 15 to 20 years left of working in a career for the grind. But then I want to retire. And I thought, maybe I don't want to do it at the city. And so when I decided that was a big decision, I asked Janet just to talk to her about some mentorship and really talk about, you know, my options, what skill set translates to the private sector. And really, you know, when I've talked to Terry Brechtel, Cheryl, other amazing women, they said, you know, you're kind of, you are a CEO, you're a COO, you operate a portfolio, you have a major budget, and you are operating a company basically with these 5 or 6 departments. So your skill set is very valuable. And so understanding that and then understanding what projects excite me, and I am truly passionate about the large events. I love working on Final Fours. I love working on the marathon. I love all those things cuz they're complicated. I love logistics, but also you have this opportunity to be creative and I love being creative.

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And I would say in the city, I was very creative. And then I had, you know, the parameters of what Cheryl and Eric gave me.

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Cheryl Scully, the city manager for most of your time there. Yes. And they were very flexible. Eric would come in my office and say, what would you do? And, you know, I would say, well, this is what I would do. And then Eric would kind of protect the boundaries like, okay, I like your idea, but we need to figure out how we, you know, we do this within the public sector. And he would kind of provide those parameters for me to operate in. And Cheryl did the same. And I loved that. But I wanted I wanted to be able to be creative. And Janet had always talked about her next chapter, but honestly, I didn't know if I had the opportunity to do that. I was, you know, at the time when we talked about it, before I even decided, I was married to Sam and he had his own business. And that's a lot of risk for two people to go on and do their own businesses. And I thought, you know, I probably should be the stable one and be the insurance. And then Sam and I, decided to separate and co-parent Millie, which is fabulous.

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He's a great dad and he's a great father to Millie. But then Darryl came in my life. Darryl Byrd. Darryl Byrd. First we were talking about Sam Houston, attorney at law, just to flesh this out, and now Darryl Byrd, who ought to serve as a role model, Lori, for being able to leave the public sector and jump into the private sector because he's done it in spades. I mean, he's a walking example of— how to do it. Yes. And so one day he was like, what do you want to do? And I did say, you know, if, if I could, I would love to acquire CE Group from Janet. And he said, well, let's do that. I said, I can't do that. He's like, we can do that. And I thought, wow, okay, let's do it. And so we developed a plan on how we do it. And I approached Janet. Janet, who is an amazing businesswoman, was smart. She said, well, I have a broker and there was a process.

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And so they put me in touch with this broker and I read through all the documents about CE Group, learned everything I needed to do to make a proposal. I made a proposal and it was accepted. And that's how it really started. Like, I was never ready. And then I made it. Well, you say you're never ready. Isn't particularly for women empowerment, isn't it a matter of It's confidence. Yes, it is absolutely confidence. Because of course you can do it. Yes. And I had everyone telling me that, but you know, you're doubting. Like, Bob, would you really return Lori Houston's phone call if she wasn't assistant city manager?

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Yes, you would. Sure. But I doubted it. And what I learned when I left was just be nice to people, build relationships, and sometimes you can't do what they want. But if you try hard and you really work with them and compromise, that respect comes and it's mutual. And it's about building relations and not being a jerk. Well, you also have the benefit of a great mentor who you're transitioning with, who— I mean, I would imagine everybody inside the CE group is very happy with the way it's going versus somebody from Phoenix coming in and buying the company. What Janet wanted to do was sell the company to someone that would continue her legacy. And I'm sure they were, I don't know who else wanted to buy the company, but I would imagine some people would buy it to get her out of the way or some would absorb it and not continue that legacy.

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And I absolutely wanted to continue the legacy. What Janet has done with CE Group, what she's done with mentoring women. I don't know if you know much about her intern program. I don't know anything about it. Oh my goodness. Like, I was a product of an intern for the City of San Antonio, and they had a wonderful organized internship program where we would rotate different departments. You got real-life experience, and then hopefully you found a job.

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And I was amazed when I went to intern orientation and for CE Group, and it was more formal. And Janet, the CEO, took it more serious. And she spent about an hour with the interns talking about CE Group, talking about our history, and then each director talked to them each about their division, and then the interns are assigned to different divisions. There's like a task list of certain things they each need to do. We get feedback from them regularly, but Janet treats this internship as her pipeline for her workforce. And so you're not going to see an intern stapling and doing printing and getting the copy. You're going to see an intern working an event. You're going to see an intern in a meeting with Janet, watching her negotiate and talk about the services CE Group does and services they don't. And so I'm really proud of the internship that she's created. I'm so excited about that. I'm going to continue that. I think it's brilliant what she's done. And The majority of CE Group employees, the full-time employees, they were all interns. And I think it's just amazing, a great way for women and men to learn the, the CE way, which Janet takes very seriously. A great way for them to really understand, you know, events and PR. What is it really all about?

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And something I definitely want to continue. And honestly, I was surprised. I was overwhelmed when I got in there and just thought like, wow, a CEO of a company is spending time with interns and she spends time with them regularly.

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She will talk to them during meetings, they're at events.

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We did the Alamo 190 salute this past week and Raquel, who is an intern, was there at the event working the event and it was her first event and she got to see from how it started to like how everybody was working that whole week getting ready for this event and the execution and then the celebration and then kind of the feedback loop that you get with the client. And I think that's just amazing that we can do that. Lori, tell our members of our audience that may not have much familiarity with the CE Group, give us the size of the business, how many employees. I don't know whether or not you can share any revenue figures or are all your clients local and how is the business doing? First, I did not buy a broken business. I bought a team. You know, it's very hard to sell a service organization. You don't have product that, you know, when the bank, you fold under and the bank can take that. It's you. And it's your clients and your team. And so I bought a team of experienced marketing and event professionals, and the CE Group has about 25 full-time employees plus another 5 to 7 full-time contract employees plus another 50 to 70 part-time employees. Really? Yes.

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And so thank you. Around events? It's around events. And so One of our service lines is the destination management company. So think about a major conference coming into San Antonio. They will hire a destination management company to help them with transportation, to help them with programming, staffing their events. And that's a heavy lift.

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And so CE does a lot of business in that space. We do a lot of galas and events, and I think that's what people think of when they think about CE. We're doing grand openings and events, but we— our number one client is Frost Bank. And we do— That's a good number one client. Yes. And we do a lot of events. We do a lot of PR for that team. And that's a huge client to have. We do a lot of work with Silver Ventures or Oxbow or Pearl. You know, do a lot of their events. We are currently at Pearl Brewery. Janet was their first tenant in the full goods building. And she kicked off events and initiated those events like the farmers market. And then those were taken on by Silver Ventures. But they do a lot of events still for Pearl. Spurs events, looking at, you know, Broadway Bank as a client. We do work with security service. And so people don't think about those other clients that we're doing PR, marketing events for. They think about the galas and the grand openings, and that's such a small section of it. We do PR. We have a fabulous PR and communications team that really could just do the PR and communications for a small business or a nonprofit. We also partner within our service line. So you might have our events team partnering with PR for one event. So, you know, great service line. We also do creative. We can do logos, we can do invitations, we can do designs for events and branding. And so people don't think about these service lines, but we are an experiential marketing firm. We're about experiences and then experience soups to nuts. But we can do everything. We can organize your event, we can do the invitation, we can staff the event. Technology disrupted your industry because it's disrupted so many industries, certainly the newspaper industry that I came out of, but also public relations, marketing.

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Initially it was the advent of the internet, then it was email, then it was Wi-Fi and remote working. And, and now we have AI doing writing where humans used to do the writing.

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And I remember a time, probably early in your career, Lori, when a city council meeting would have presentations from the Atkins Group, from Dublin McCarter, from the CE Group. There were all these major firms that were multi-level firms in terms of the services they offered. And I think CE Group and then Giant Noise out of Austin, they're kind of the last ones standing. I don't think anybody had an option. If you wanted to survive, you were going to embrace technology. And Janet is the queen of reinvention and embracing new things, hitting it head on. We are constantly looking at AI and figuring out how much more we can get out of it without compromising our own creativity. And our business model. I'll say during COVID there were a lot of companies like Janet's that did not survive. And Janet pivoted immediately and started doing online events and doing other ways where they can have social gatherings through technology. She survived and, and she, she turned a profit that year. Not, you know, not a big one, but she was one of the ones that knew like, we've got to reinvent ourself. And she has such an amazing team.

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That she had to bring everybody's hours down, but everyone was willing to do that. But she survived. And part of that was because she embraced technology and figured out how can I make this work for the event space in the experiential marketing space. We are having a lot of conversations about AI and what we can do with that to, like I said, it's about how do you not compromise the integrity of your product, but how we can use that and leverage it because everyone else is doing it and there's a lot of times where maybe people might think we don't need PR. I don't need someone to write me a press release because AI can do it. Well, we can still show you how we add value to that through our network and through being able to add that personal touch and make sure that people know that was not an AI-generated press release. So we can make sure that we can show, yes, we engage, we embrace, but we differentiate because we're still authentic. And our creativity is number one. And so I think that others have not embraced it like Janet has, and you will be shocked, but you know Janet Holliday personally, and we all love Janet because she talks a lot.

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But when she is running a meeting and it's a 30-minute meeting, I was shocked going into Janet's first meeting because I thought it would be very conversational. She has an agenda and it's like item 1, And if someone starts going out the boundaries of that discussion, it's like, okay, let's go back to the agenda. I've got a meeting in 20 minutes. And it's— you're just like amazed. And you're like, no wonder this company survived because she is a fabulous businesswoman and constantly reinventing the business, has survived so many issues throughout the economy. I mean, been around for 36 years. You're going to see some challenges in our economy, but it's about reinventioning and pivoting. And that's what she's done. Well, we're going to watch the CE Group under, under your tenure, Laurie, closely and wish you lots of success. It would be a disservice, though, to you coming out of the podcast without me talking about some of the most consequential projects that occurred in your, your time at the city. Just looking back myself, preparing for this, I'm just amazed how much has happened in the urban core since Mayor Castro, Julian Castro, declared the decade of downtown. During his tenure as mayor, which was— I'm just going to name some of the things that happened, but certainly one of the biggest was in 2014-15, the public-private partnership between Frostbank, the Western Urban, and downtown. We hadn't seen anything like that in the city, and that has resulted in— you know, we're next door here at the Rand Building to City Tower, which used to be the Frostbank, and that's now the consolidated city staff. The City Hall, historic City Hall, was redone.

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The new Frost Tower was built. We've got the minor league baseball team coming and everything else Western Urban's doing. Then pivot over to Project Marble that you managed over on the east side of downtown. And we've got the complete continuing redevelopment of Hemisphere, which is also something that started a decade or so ago with the Hemisphere Redevelopment Plan under your watch. We now have the new arena coming and so much more expansion of the convention center, the new Monarch Hotel I noticed just opened up. I'm anxious to get in there and see what's going on.

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You had the $150 million housing bond in 2022 that voters approved. 2015, we became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. For our missions in the Alamo, the Alamo and Alamo Plaza redevelopment plan. I could just go on and on. I'm wondering what else. We've talked about the Museum Reach and River North, which has been an extraordinary change in the urban core.

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An awful lot happened under your watch there, and you've got to be very proud of that record. At the same time, we're witnessing a period at City Hall where we're seeing political turmoil like we've never seen with Mayor Gina Jones and a council that has increasingly lined up against her. And I wonder, did that hasten your departure from City Hall because you worried about whether you could be as effective as you had been? And now, as a private sector executive looking at city business from the outside, what are your thoughts about our trajectory as a city and the moment we're in? Even before Mayor Jones came into office, our budget was getting— our city budget was getting tighter and tighter. We were losing— we already saw the loss of federal funds coming in and our tax base wasn't increasing. And we had challenges with the tax cap. It shrunk a little. And it shrunk. And so when you're looking at your budget, what's your priority? It's basic services. It's fire, it's police, it's street maintenance, it's animal control. Those basic services need to be taken care of. And then when you get to economic development, depending on where that falls within the priority of council, that will be looked at through that lens. What was happening was that downtown wasn't the priority that it used to be.

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And that did shift a little bit when Ron came into office.

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And what Ron did was, you know, everybody has to have a priority. And I believe Phil Harburger, it was about parks and green space.

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Julian was about downtown. I'll jump over to Ron because Ivy was there for a short period. Period. But Ron saw the housing crisis coming in, and so— and the equity lens, and the equity lens. And so that was his priority. And so it shifted to affordable housing. And when you have a budget that you're managing, you've got to manage based on priorities and what the community wants. And downtown was not that priority. And so it was harder and harder to redevelop within downtown because it's not going to happen without subsidies. I don't think people understand how hard it is to develop within the downtown area. It's much more expensive. It's much more red tape. Land values are higher. Historic issues. Historic. You're on a, you're on a typical street grid that's interrupted by a winding river.

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And then layered on top of that, you have design guidelines that dictate how high and how far your building can be set back because our river requires 5 to 6 hours of sunlight a day. And so you are challenged by design issues that are gonna cost more because you have that hurdle. And then you have structured parking that you have to build because there aren't opportunities for you to build parking right outside your building. So that makes your building more expensive. And then you have the quality of construction that you want.

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And then you have this issue called the economy where you have market rates that aren't going to be able to support that product.

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And so when you put all those challenges together, you cannot make a Project Pencil in downtown. And I'm sick of hearing the word evil developers.

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The developers that we have in downtown San Antonio, they are not taking a return that other developers in Austin and Dallas are getting. They're taking a much lower return already to make a project work even when it is subsidized by the city because of this rent issue.

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That's why a lot of developers don't develop in the urban core. They do greenfield development on the suburbs where it's— Absolutely. It's easy. They can make money.

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And it doesn't just happen. It doesn't just happen. You know, council members in the past say, can't you just sharpen your pencil? Like, I can't change math. And this is a loser.

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And a developer is not going to commit to this project unless they can get a reasonable return. And that requires incentives. And that requires incentives. And so you have this issue with market rate housing that we desperately need in downtown, because if you look at all the housing we have, there is high occupancy. I know that, you know, more luxury products, they are slow to get the occupancy numbers higher, but it'll happen. But there is a demand for market rate housing in downtown San Antonio. Then on the other end, you have this issue of affordability, which I think we should double down on as well. We need affordable housing, but they both have to exist in the same space, and it's not one or the other. If one gets out of balance, then the other one suffers. For example, if we are not subsidizing affordable housing like we should, or market-rate housing like we should, the market-rate developer is going to look at the, the naturally occurring affordable housing that we have in the downtown and surrounding area, they're going to acquire that product and they're going to convert it to a higher market rate and take that affordability out of downtown. It's about balance. And it's really hard for, for people to understand that. And it's, it's hard for the general public to understand because it took me 7 years to be able to really understand, you know, what was happening in downtown San Antonio.

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And so it's a complicated issue if you don't understand finance and returns and, and how to build a construction project and how to build a budget.

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And so So you have this issue of we need both, we need balance, and then you have a council that wants to meet the priorities of the community, but sometimes that priority, if it's affordable housing, means that you need to probably bring some market rate into the mix, because if you don't, your retail's off-kilter. I mean, the whole grocery store discussion, you need people with disposable income to drive the market. And so if we were to put a lot of affordable housing in downtown, we wouldn't get the services you need to support the neighborhood.

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And so there's so many factors at play, and it's about balance, and you can't have one without the other. You need both. But it takes money on both ends, and it takes a lot more money for affordable housing. And that's why you have housing tax credits, you have all these other layers, but there needs to be more subsidy from the city. But we still need to continue subsidizing market rate. I wonder if you worry as I do, Laurie, and disagree with me if you think it's an exaggeration, but I see a perfect storm on the horizon where in 2026 we know that SAWS is coming in for a rate increase. We just had Rudy Garza from CPS Energy on here and they're looking at a plus or minus 5% increase. They'll ask counsel for this year. And Eric Walsh himself has noted that while the city often has celebrated the fact that it hasn't had to raise taxes since 2004, that also means we have a city that's accustomed to not having to deal with tax increases. But we now have a city that's dealing with budget deficits. And it was at one level in 2025. It's going to be a multiple of that in the fiscal year coming up and even higher in the third fiscal year. And so some very tough conversations are going to have to happen around how much revenue the city is collecting versus the demands on it for services, and we have a mayor and some new council members that are very progressive, got elected on anti-poverty, social welfare initiatives, and that's their, their primary concern, which is understandable given the districts they run. I wonder if you're concerned about clouds on the horizon, financial clouds. Before the new administration, I saw that my passion was getting diminished more and more, and there wasn't going to be any tools for me able to continue to do that community development. That I wanted to do. And downtown has been a big part of my, my career and my development experience. And I felt like, you know what, I want to do something that brings me joy. And so that was a big decision for me to leave the city was I'm not doing— I'm not able to do the things that I really get to do. I am really good at complicated projects. And so Eric was constantly throwing me more complicated projects like homeless like Project Marvel, and I did those, and I felt like that I did a very good job. But when it comes down to downtown development, it's something that I worked on for so long and really made a huge success in, but it needed to keep going. It was really hard to see that that was going to stop. And I thought, maybe my talents are better on the other side. And so I decided to leave or pursue other opportunities way before the new administration.

00:32:08.001 --> 00:32:30.440
I will say that when the new administration came in and the way I saw things moving pretty fast, I decided that I wanted to accelerate my departure because I wanted to just be happy. And, um, it was, you know, a lot of stress going on, a lot of moving parts. And, um, I was so disappointed how hard it took to get Project Marvel through.

00:32:30.551 --> 00:33:15.510
Here's a project that I think is a no-brainer. I think, you know, we want to keep the Spurs. We come up with a deal that doesn't impact the general fund. We come up with a way that someone is taking $1 billion of their money or a developer's money, investing it in the Hemisphere and taking 100% of the risk. That seems like a no-brainer to me. And yet it was such a close vote. And we saw those challenges way before November. I thought there's a movement going on, and I decided, you know, now's a good time to depart. So that was the reason why I departed a little bit earlier than I wanted to. Now, I do see there's a storm a-brewin'. There's a storm a-brewing with all these needs.

00:33:15.688 --> 00:33:22.335
We have infrastructure dating back to the early 1900s. How else are we going to update this infrastructure?

00:33:24.196 --> 00:33:46.080
It's unfortunate, but there are going to have to be fee increases. Now, council is going to need to figure out, you know, how much and when does that get phased in. But I don't see another way. We are an old city and we have developed quickly, or we've developed quite a bit over the past two decades.

00:33:46.674 --> 00:34:19.994
We've seen this boom in downtown and people realizing what San Antonio is and how it's a great place for your family, a great place to be an employer. And so how do we keep up? CPS— this is something that we see every couple years. And then the property tax issue. I mean, we have basic services, and so how are we going to take care of those basic services? And so there has to be some really, really hard conversations. I think that the council knows the, the complications with this. And that's why they were elected. And that's why we have a great city management team.

00:34:20.764 --> 00:35:34.536
And Eric and Ben Gornzel and Maria Villagomez are definitely— there's no better team to be able to handle this and make a recommendation to our governing body on how we proceed. We're running out of time, Lori, but you mentioned your work with the homeless organizations, and I want to take you back to a summit that we had a little more than a year ago of all of the homeless organizations that that have truly formed a network and are working, I would say, together collaboratively in a way that we haven't always seen in the city, which is great. But you were a keynote speaker at that, and I was stunned in the audience to hear you give a very honest and emotional and raw account of your own journey to sobriety, which I had not known anything about at all. There was an audience of several hundred community civic nonprofit leaders there, and as well as people from the homeless community, and it was a very moving moment. And I just wonder if you would reflect on that a little bit in your decision to go public. For our listeners, I've been sober for almost 16 years. That is a very important milestone in my life. And one of the things I've been able to really reflect on and truly appreciate is that, one, getting sober is the hardest thing I've ever done.

00:35:34.971 --> 00:36:09.014
I couldn't do it alone. And, you know, I have to, you know, it was my faith. But also I had all these tools that I had access to. I had, you know, it's not a tool, but most people who are in my situation might not have this, but I had a family. And I can tell you my mother would have remortgaged the house, refinanced it, done whatever to get me sober. I had two brothers that were constantly checking on me, telling me they were proud of me. Then I had an employer that— You were at the city. I was at the city.

00:36:09.672 --> 00:36:13.108
And I remember telling Pat and Cheryl.

00:36:13.300 --> 00:36:16.400
Pat DiGiovanni, Deputy City Manager. Cheryl Scully.

00:36:16.898 --> 00:36:23.833
And I was kind of scared because— How they would react. How they react. And what it would do to your career.

00:36:24.684 --> 00:36:32.487
Yeah, absolutely. And but it was, you know, Cheryl was— this wasn't her first time. You know, this wasn't her first rodeo.

00:36:32.568 --> 00:36:39.728
She had dealt with this in Phoenix and she sat me down and told me, yes, you can do this. And these are the resources we have.

00:36:39.858 --> 00:36:57.858
And I want you to work with our HR department. And it was just nothing but love from the executive leadership at the City of San Antonio. But my employer had services that I had access to for free, which is unheard of. You know, not everybody has that.

00:36:58.646 --> 00:37:21.125
And of course I'm strong-willed and I had that going for me, but it was really those two things. Plus I had money. I had— Sam was, was and still is a successful attorney at the time when I was trying to get sober and I made great money. And so I could pay for other resources if I couldn't get them through the city.

00:37:21.864 --> 00:37:42.527
And You know, when you deal with a homeless population in this US, 70% are addicted or mentally ill. And how many of them had a family? How many of them had an employer? How many of them had financial support to be able to help them get sober? They had nothing.

00:37:43.505 --> 00:37:54.068
And so I constantly think about how lucky I am that I was able to get sober. And I'm not joking, it was the hardest thing I've ever done.

00:37:54.885 --> 00:38:21.172
Alcoholism is a disease. It is something that I dealt with every day and something that, you know, in the beginning you're so uncomfortable. You don't want people to know that you're, you're not drinking. You'll get a club soda with a lime and tell everybody it's vodka. You will, you will talk about, oh, I'm on medication that doesn't allow me to drink. Like, you don't want it to be I can't drink because I'm an alcoholic.

00:38:21.574 --> 00:38:43.795
And so the first couple of years are very, very fragile because you're trying to get into your own confidence of I'm okay with telling people. I hope we've become a world where it's easier to say I don't drink and nor do I need to explain myself to anybody. You know what happened? COVID really made a shift in that. I believe in the first 10 years of my sobriety, I had a lot of people like, you don't drink? Are you pregnant?

00:38:44.052 --> 00:39:48.262
What's going on? And then finally, you know, it was— it got so common, like it was a lifestyle change. And then finally I just got sick of it because you'd get pressured. I was like, I'm an alcoholic. You don't want me to drink. And they're like, oh, okay, you know, but you just— there's such a social pressure. There is to drink. It's unfortunate. And when people are drinking who are uncomfortable about their own drinking, they don't like the fact that you're not drinking. And I found that, you know, my first couple of years, you kind of shed friends. You figure out who's your friend, who are your supporters. And it was, you know, the first 10 years were really, really hard, but I was so comfortable after the first couple years that I was able to get through this. COVID, really, like during COVID what did people have to do when they were having to stay home? They worked out, they got healthy, and you saw alcohol sales kind of dip. And then you had these brands coming out and you already had Athletic Brewing. But they weren't as big as they are today. And I think that it's really amazing to see how more and more young people are choosing not to drink.

00:39:48.789 --> 00:40:03.195
And I love going to restaurants and they do have alcohol-free champagne and other offerings on their menu and they tout that and more and more people are more comfortable with it. But I do attribute a lot of that to, to COVID.

00:40:03.773 --> 00:40:18.043
Now I started sharing my story because I shared it at the city, and I got 2 or 3 emails or calls just saying thank you and asking for help or assistance.

00:40:18.844 --> 00:40:25.516
And I remember going to AA meetings and constantly searching for women that looked like me.

00:40:26.702 --> 00:40:52.746
And I had a sponsor that took me to a lot of places and a lot of AA where they don't look like Lori Houston. And you're feeling alone out there. You're like, I had everything and I'm the idiot that failed and I can't drink. And I had everything going for me. And that's how you feel until now. I'm like, I'm like, yeah, I've succeeded. I kicked its butt and I won.

00:40:53.500 --> 00:41:16.336
But getting that feedback from other women that I shared my story with really, really helped me share my story more. And then I think that when I took on the homeless portfolio at the city, there were a lot of people who were upset because, you know, here's Lori Houston, she gentrified our downtown, she doesn't care about the homeless.

00:41:17.574 --> 00:41:43.804
And I felt like I needed to tell my story to get some cred and explain, you know, have no clue. I think that I was so fortunate to have a family and to have an employer, but it only takes a couple years for your family to realize we've got to stop supporting this person. We've got to let them fail. And your employer doing the same thing. And next thing you know, you have nobody and you could be homeless.

00:41:44.784 --> 00:42:09.425
And I felt, you know, I really need to make sure that people do not look at the homeless and say, why can't they just quit drinking? Thank you. Your personal story is a very powerful one, and I appreciate you sharing it with our audience again. And, and, um, we probably didn't spend enough time on all your accomplishments at the city, but I was able to list some of the, the major milestones, and it's really remarkable the impact you've had, Lori. And we hope you, uh, continue to have that with the CE Group.

00:42:09.489 --> 00:42:15.820
So good luck there. And thanks for coming on to Big City Small Town. No, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

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All right, y'all. Thanks for listening to this episode of Big City Small Town. If you enjoyed this conversation, please share it with friends and colleagues who might find it interesting. You can also sign up for our newsletters, Bob Rivard's Monday Musings and My San Antonio Something. You can find those linked up at bigcitysmalltown.com. Our show, Big City Small Town, is made possible by Weston Urban, building a city our children want to call home, and Geekdom, where startups are born and smart ideas become businesses. If you're part of a business or organization that believes in strengthening San Antonio civic engagement, and would like to explore a partnership with us at Big City Small Town, we'd love to hear from you. You can reach out through our website or connect with us on social media. All right, y'all, thanks for being here.

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We'll see you next time.