City Council on Thursday designated San Antonio’s third community land trust.
After unanimously voting in favor of certifying two other land trusts earlier this year, the council voted for designating the Esperanza Community Land Trust as its third. But three council members did not support the Esperanza measure.
In February, the city designated the Silk Road Community Land Trust developed by Culturingua in Northwest San Antonio and the Mexican American Unity Council Westside Community Land Trust. Both followed the city’s 2024 adoption of a community land trust policy.
A community land trust is a nonprofit organization that keeps housing affordable and allows homeowners to build equity and generational wealth.
Land trusts make homeownership affordable by separating the house from the land, making the house less expensive to acquire. The land trust owns the land and leases it to income-qualified homeowners, who own the house but rent the property it’s on from the land trust for a nominal monthly fee.
In the City of San Antonio, the land trust can be eligible for a 50% property tax exemption. The Esperanza land trust has not yet requested the tax exemption.
But, “the fact that we, the community land trust, owns the land means that we can try to keep the land from doubling, tripling, quadrupling for the renter or the homeowner,” said Graciela Sánchez, director of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center.
Created by the Westside advocacy nonprofit in 2021, the Esperanza Community Land Trust serves the historically underserved West Side in Council District 5.
Since then, it has bought 11 homes priced below $100,000 and some land, restored three houses, sold one and leased another.
The land trust’s goal is to renovate existing low-income houses in 1.53 square miles of the West Side and rent or sell them to individuals or families earning less than 30% of the area median income (AMI), or $30,200 a year for a four-person household.
Homeownership in the land trust will be available to families earning up to 50% AMI — $50,300 for a four-person household.
The Esperanza land trust used funding from the San Antonio Housing Trust and the American Rescue Plan Act to purchase the homes and land it owns.
In April, the organization also received $681,400 from the 2022 Housing Bond. René González is general manager of the Esperanza land trust, which is now separate from the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center.
“The CLT designation and bond funds award is a start to address not only the affordable needs of the neighborhood but also one of the lowest performance areas in the Strategic Housing Implementation Plan, housing for low and extremely low-income San Antonians,” González said. “While the need for affordable housing is great across all income levels, it is greatest for those in the low-income levels, for they will often be displaced, made homeless, have to move into substandard housing, or move further out to find affordable housing.”
Supporting community land trusts is one strategy outlined in the city’s Strategic Housing Implementation Plan, which council approved in 2021 to guide the construction and preservation of affordable housing as costs were rising across San Antonio.
Unlike some land trusts that rely on a land-banking model, the Esperanza land trust sets out to acquire properties and ensure that the houses are held as long-term affordability by the nonprofit owning them.
Councilwoman Phyllis Viagran (D3) sought to delay the vote to get more input from city staff on the potential impact of a future tax exemption and proposed state legislation affecting CLTs. Councilman Marc Whyte (D10) and Councilwoman Misty Spears (D9) agreed that the measure should be postponed to October.
After a motion by Viagran to delay the vote on designating the land trust failed, she and the other two other council members voted against the designation.
District 1 Councilwoman Sukh Kaur was absent, leaving seven votes in favor to pass the ordinance.
“When we think about who this community is serving, when we think about even the historic significance of the location of of that area — we often talk about redlining and from this dais — it’s important that we address some of the continued residual impacts of that, and the community land trust certainly does that,” said Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones.
