Our Story
Who we are
The Harris County Community Land Trust (CLT) provides and preserves affordable housing for residents of Harris County. Our goal is to help people buy homes so that renting is not their only option. Purchase price is based on market rates. As part of each sale, CLT provides the homebuyer with a 99-year renewable ground lease, which ensures that CLT houses will never turn into rental houses with absentee landlords and expensive rents.
The CLT homeowner has full use of the land just like any other homeowner, and can even pass the home on to his or her children. If the homeowner decides to sell the house, CLT will buy the house back from them or find another low to moderate income family or individual to purchase the home.
CLTs are governed by a board of CLT residents, community residents and public representatives– in Harris County’s case, the Harris County Housing Finance Corporation. There are over 225 community land trusts in the United States.
For more information about homeownership opportunities with Harris County Land Trust, please contact our Chief Housing & Development Officer, Rene Martinez @ 832-927-4827.
Our Goals
Among our top priorities:
- Providing a wide range of decent, safe, and affordable homeownership opportunities to low-income homebuyers;
- Ensuring housing stays affordable for future low-income community residents.
If your financial situation makes typical homeownership unattainable, the CLT may be right for you. Here’s how it works:
- A community land trust buys or receives houses and makes them available for sale to limited-income homebuyers.
- A family or individual purchases a house that sits on land owned by the community land trust.
- The purchase price is more affordable because the homeowner is only buying the house, not the land.
- The homeowners lease the land from the CLT in a 99-year lease that is inheritable and renewable.
- The lease gives the homeowner the exclusive right to occupy and use the land, just like traditional homeowners do.
- If they wish to sell later, the homeowners agree to sell the home at a restricted price to keep it affordable in perpetuity, making the benefits of CLT homeownership available to another household who needs this same opportunity.
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The length of time the homeowner owns the home may increase what the homeowner can make at resale
- CLTs play an active and ongoing role in assisting and supporting homeowners in their efforts to remain successful as homeowners.
Board Members
The Harris County Housing Finance Corporation (HCHFC) is governed by a nine-member Board of Directors appointed by the Harris County Commissioners Court. The Board guides the day-to-day operations of HCHFC and are non-salaried positions.
A collection of various links to resources that Burlington Associates has compiled for CLTs to use and share. Burlington Associates has been making resources like these available for over 15 years, drawing from their wealth of expertise in the CLT space, to cover topics like: Marketing & financing CLT homes, Forming a CLT, Choosing a resale formula, and Evaluating CLT performance.
This is a description of a film about the first CLT; the site has info about the movie and a link to purchase a DVD.
This is an article from Bloomberg City Lab, a well-known urban policy and economics website, explaining CLTs and featuring the Grounded Solutions video.
Our Team
Rene Martinez
Chief Housing & Community Development Officer
Rene Martinez is the Chief Housing & Community Development Officer for the Harris County Community Services Department.
In that capacity, his portfolio includes: leading development and finance corporations, including the County’s Community Land Trust; Planning affordable housing strategy, including the County’s 1st every comprehensive housing plan; and developing mixing income housing. These corporations include the Harris Co. Redevelopment Authority, and TIRZ 24, the Harris Co. Housing Finance Corp. and its subsidiary corporation the Harris Co. Community Land Trust Management Corporation, and the Harris County Community Development Fund CDE, Inc.
His areas of expertise are community and economic development, non-profit management, public finance, and housing development & finance, including the underwriting of over $300M in loans/bonds for capital projects, economic development, and housing projects.
Rene currently serves on the Board of Directors of Blueprint Houston, a non-profit organization dedication to implementing a general plan for the city of Houston, and Peoples Trust Credit Union Foundation.
The Harris County
CLT Timeline
Lots of Harris County residents have dreamed of homeownership for years. Similarly, the Harris County CLT was a vision, then a plan, and now a reality. Various Harris County departments, as well as a consulting firm Burlington Associates, planned and coordinated for years to create and administer the CLT.
- June 1980
- Harris County Housing Finance Corp (HCHFC) was created to increase the availability of reasonably priced housing opportunities for renters and homebuyers in Harris County. It was incorporated pursuant to Texas Local Government Code Chapter 394.
- 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s
- Housing becomes harder to afford, as more residents move to Harris County andnatural disasters like Hurricane Harvey destroy housing stock and affordability in the area.
- Housing becomes harder to afford, as more residents move to Harris County and
- May 2019
- Harris County Commissioners’ Court approved the creation of Harris County Community Land Trust (CLT) to provide affordable housing for low-income and moderate-income county residents, with a goal of 560 homes and 7 full-time employees by 2027. This action is pursuant to the enabling statute of Chapter 373B in Texas’ Local Government Code.
- June 2019
- The Harris County Community Services Department approached the Harris County Housing Finance Corporation (HCHFC) Board to discuss the HCHFC serving as the CLT’s trustee (being responsible for the CLT’s administration).
- July – August 2019
- The Community Services Department worked with the County Attorney’s Office to find a consultant group that would help get the CLT off the ground.
- September 2019
- Harris County Commissioners’ Court approved an agreement in which the Community Services Department would provide management and accounting services to the HCHFC with regards to the CLT.
- September 2019
- Harris County Commissioners’ Court approved hiring the consulting group Burlington Associates in Community Development, LLC, to prepare the CLT’s business plan.
- December 2019
- Burlington Associates presented to HCHFC on the initial financial modeling for a County-sponsored community land trust with HFC as the proposed trustee.
- January – June 2020
- Burlington Associates, Community Services Department, the County Attorney’s Office, and HCHFC worked together to develop the CLT operations plan.
- January 2021
- CLT Management Corporation was formed as an entity under the HCHFC to manage the CLT’s operations.
Learn More
Community Land Trust Studies
Here are some examples of CLTs in the US that have been in existence previously
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