Building Trust
As Texans face the skyrocketing cost of housing, community land trusts offer the promise of permanent affordability. You just have to give up ownership of your land.
By Megan Kimble
April 7, 2020
Early last year, Regina Daniels decided it was time to buy a house. She’d been renting a three-bedroom apartment off Antoine Drive in Houston’s Acres Homes neighborhood, an area she’s loved ever since her family moved there when she was in high school. “It’s homey,” she says. “Neighborly.” Unincorporated until 1974, Acres Homes was originally marketed to black Houstonians as “a bit of genteel country,” named for the acre of land you’d get with your house. Though it’s just 20 minutes northwest of downtown, the neighborhood is quiet, sheltered by stands of pine trees and the occasional farm.
But the rent at Daniels’ apartment was about to go up again—she was already paying $1,200 a month—and she was tired of moving her three kids to a new place every time it did.
