SAN ANTONIO \u2013 An effort is underway in the historic West Side to ensure that neighborhood improvements benefit those who live there.<\/p>\n
The Esperanza Community Land Trust, a nonprofit, buys properties and helps families pay for improvements so they aren\u2019t forced to move because of repairs or taxes they can\u2019t afford.<\/p>\n
In a recent KSAT town hall, neighbors told KSAT developers have been eyeing homes on the West Side because of their low property values and need for repairs.<\/p>\n
Jazmine Herrera knows that need well.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was around COVID when I had lost my job, and there was a winter storm and a lot of fixtures needed to be done on the plumbing. It cost me a lot of money,\u201d Herrera said. \u201cSo I kept falling behind payments on the house, and I didn\u2019t know what else to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Herrera, who lives in the home once owned by her grandparents, then found out about the Esperanza Community Land Trust<\/a> through the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important that the people who have lived here be the people who get to benefit from any improvement coming in, right? That\u2019s the problem that we\u2019ve seen on the East Side,\u201d said Leticia Sanchez, an organizer of the land trust. \u201cA lot of development has taken place, rehabs and things like that. But the people who grew up there, a lot of them can\u2019t afford the housing.\u201d<\/p>\n A community land trust, allowed by state law, exists to develop and preserve affordable housing.<\/p>\n The Esperanza Land Trust works in one of two ways.<\/p>\n The trust buys homes and pays for repairs, opening the door for a West Side family to live there one day. Or, in Herrera\u2019s case, the trust pays off the homeowner\u2019s mortgage and helps pay for needed improvements.<\/p>\n The trust owns the land on which her home sits.<\/p>\n Herrera is responsible for paying the taxes on the improvements, but the city cuts property taxes in half for homeowners who are part of the trust, according to Sanchez.<\/p>\n The money to fund the trust comes from Bexar County, the San Antonio Housing Trust and a federal grant through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.<\/p>\n Neighbors who are part of the trust also pay into it, like Herrera.<\/p>\n \u201cI want my family to be able to stay generations beyond that here on the West Side, where we\u2019re happy, and we can be around family and community,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Read also:<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 An effort is underway in the historic West Side to ensure that neighborhood improvements benefit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[841,82,84,83,51314,2098],"class_list":{"0":"post-159371","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-nonprofits","9":"tag-san-antonio","10":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","11":"tag-san-antonio-news","12":"tag-we-follow-through","13":"tag-west-side"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}