By Dana Kennedy
PLUM GROVE, Texas – In the piney woods and wetlands 35 miles north of Houston, one of the biggest housing developments in the country is now one of the most controversial.
Colony Ridge, a sprawl of homes, trailers and even tents is home to as many as 75,000 people in an area at least 50 percent bigger than Manhattan.
But next week it will be the subject of a special session of the Texas legislature, ordered by Gov. Greg Abbott, because of claims it is a “no-go area” for criminals, home to drug cartels, and a magnet for “illegal immigration.”
Texas’s 25 House Republicans, who’ve also called for an investigation, said it is “an optimal haven for illegal aliens amid a historic border crisis.”
The 40 square mile development on unincorporated land in Liberty County launched 15 years ago by billionaire developer brothers Trey and John Harris.
Its latest and largest subdivision, when complete, will be 30,000 lots.
Called both “Colony Ridge” in English and “Terrenos Houston” in Spanish, it is promoted in Spanish-language advertising as “the perfect solution for you to become the owner of your own land in the United States.”
“Stop paying that toxic rent!” one young woman says in one Spanish-language advertisement.
“Properties with water, electricity and drainage, easy financing with the owner-to-owner method, low down payment, and comfortable payments, it is very easy to apply, we do not check credit!”
Instead it offers owner financing to prospective buyers, meaning undocumented migrants can bypass the credit rating and proof of residency required for traditional bank loans.
But once they put down a small down payment, buyers have to pay credit card-style interest rates of up to 15 percent as well as hefty fees for water and sewage hookup.
Opponents accuse the Harris brothers of preying on people, especially migrants, by advertising a 1950s-style fantasy of suburban home ownership that in reality — they allege — is a vast shoddily-constructed, environmentally unsafe trailer park run on predatory loaning practices.
And local authorities say crime and drug overdoses in Colony Ridge have soared.
The Harris brothers told The Post they vehemently disagree with all charges, and that the total population is 40,000, not 75,000 as critics claim.
When the Post toured Colony Ridge, we saw tents, trailers, ramshackle shanties and packs of dogs alongside some nicer homes and more well-kept lots.
Gang graffiti is visible in some places.
Residents in the poorest areas of Colony Ridge — which reportedly aren’t shown to prospective buyers touring the development — released their pitbulls from behind chain link fences when a reporter tried to speak to them.
Texas Department of Public Safety statistics say there were 12 murders in Liberty County 2022, and just one in 2011.
By comparison, the Census Bureau says the county’s population has gone from 75,643 in 2010 to an estimated 101, 992 in July 2022.
Both locals and law enforcement sources told The Post that they believe the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels bought property here early and have considerable influence.
Liberty County Sheriff Bobby Rader said recently that his department doesn’t have enough officers to properly patrol the settlement, which he described as a somewhat of a no-go zone. “I’ve heard rumors that the cartel is buying up these houses,” he said, without offering evidence.
“We don’t have any access. If they don’t break the law we don’t know about it. We can’t go and knock on doors and ask if people are doing it. It’s a problem. It’s a big, big problem.”
Inside Colony Ridge, however, it is the owners, not claims of cartels, which concern Maria Acevedo, 51, who bought a lot of land in 2018 where she planned to build a home with her husband, envisioning a peaceful life in the countryside.
Instead, she said, she lost everything. After she put a small downpayment on the $39,000 property, she found there was a mysterious $7.6 million lien on it and things went downhill from there, she said.
“I’m an American citizen,” Acevedo, 51, told The Post last week while asking not to be photographed because she fears retaliation.
“But a lot of these people here aren’t — and they don’t speak English. They’re lured up here with the promise of buying a piece of the American dream, and it turns into an American nightmare.
“There were feces coming out of the drain between me and my neighbor. I’m a businesswoman and I still got taken in. My life’s been ruined.”
Many who decide to buy at Colony Ridge end up in foreclosure.
Since 2020, at least 97 percent of the foreclosures in Liberty County have been located inside Colony Ridge, public records show.
The developers buy the land back at auctions.
Sisters Keilah Sanchez, 39, a web developer, and Suellen Sanchez, 41, an esthetician, formed a website called Terrenos Houston Demanda in June 2021 after what they said was their own nightmarish experience buying 8 lots at Colony Ridge.
Like Acevedo, the sisters, both Puerto Rican, want to help those in the settlement who feel they’ve been taken advantage of but can’t fight back.
“They’re exploiting people here by not telling people the truth when they show interest in buying here,” Keilah said.
“Nothing the sales guy said was true, like he said it had never flooded there when it did. We were told the lot was turn-key but we had to go buy our own electric pole and figure out how to put it up. They told my sister she wasn’t paying for her lot when she was. It was one endless money pit.”
Both Sanchez sisters, Acevedo and others told The Post they’ve experienced retaliation for speaking out about what they say are unfair business practices and unsafe living conditions.
“We can’t talk,” said one man who did not give his name but said he was from Honduras and stood outside a run-down mobile home with a friend. “They don’t like us to talk to anyone.”
But the Harris brothers told The Post that they are enabling thousands to achieve home ownership and say that allegations that their development is a dangerous “colony” are “preposterous and unfounded.”
On Thursday, they plan to show Texas lawmakers around Colony Ridge ahead of next week’s special legislative session after inviting them last week.
Both brothers say that Colony Ridge is home to mainly US citizens of Hispanic descent, not people without legal status, and that they have followed all rules and regulations in developing the area.
“We’re proud of what we do,” John Harris told The Post. “We don’t apologize. (Our opponents) don’t like the fact that we give Latinos opportunities to, to have their own homes and to have their own place and to have something they can be proud of and have an opportunity for the kids to go to better schools.”
They brothers said that they sell mainly to poor residents of Texas who could not find a way to buy a home otherwise.
They also say that Acevedo, who sued them, is a “liar” and that they offered her a good settlement because she was unhappy with her purchase, while the Sanchez sisters are just two disgruntled customers out of many satisfied ones.
And they say that they blame the residents of the town of Plum Grove, population 1,344, which abuts Colony Grove for the controversy about the new development, accusing them of being “racist,” not liking “brown people” or “poor people.”
But Plum Grove’s feisty former mayor, Lee Ann Penton Walker, 55, who lives next door to the house where she grew up, told The Post: “I may be a redneck but I’m not racist.”
She says property taxes have skyrocketed in Plum Grove to pay for new schools needed for the influx of people into Colony Ridge, while once-quiet rural roads built to handle 1000 cars a day now see more than 20,000.
“We don’t have the infrastructure to take on all these new people. Hell, Houston doesn’t. New York doesn’t. Look what your mayor’s been saying lately. Is Eric Adams a racist?
“People think we care about Biden or Trump down here. We don’t. We care about the politicians in Texas being in the back pocket of the developers while pretending to be against illegal migration. They’re making money off these people.”
She — and other critics — highlight John Harris and his wife’s donations to Gov. Abbott and his campaigns, for example, which total more than $1.5 million.
Attorney Kathleen Lieberman and her husband Mark are preparing lawsuits on behalf of 13 residents of Plum Grove whose homes, they said, were ruined or damaged by flooding downstream from Colony Ridge.
One client, Plum Grove resident Michael Shrader, 53, planned to spend the rest of his life in a three-acre home that was worth about $250,000 in 2020.
It was flooded four times and at the end, Shrader said, he was forced to sell it for $90,000.
Shrader said he’s felt threatened since speaking out, not only about his damaged home but about the changes in the area.
“As soon as the Colony started being developed, the murder rate suddenly jumps,” Shrader told The Post.
“We started having dead bodies found out there. Somebody’s hand was brought up to their house by a dog. They found a body with a gun buried out there.”
And another person who has spoken out against Colony Ridge is Robert Rehak, a former top Chicago advertising executive who moved to the affluent neighborhood of Kingwood, 10 miles south of the development, and who calls accusations of racism “bulls–t.”
He has chronicled flooding which he says is caused by poorly-mitigated drainage at the development since 2020 on his blog, Reduce Flooding and said: “They’re flooding my community. It’s also a humanitarian issue. Some of the people there are living in very bad conditions. This has nothing to do with racism.”
“The (developers) make huge political contributions and that buys them air cover,” said Rehak.
“They flout the regulations and cut every corner. They abuse people and they allow people to live in conditions that are hazardous to human health.”
