Khraish Will Sell 130 West Dallas Homes to Tenants Rather Than Evict and Demolish

In a startling turnabout in the deadlocked West Dallas war over low-income housing and gentrification, Khraish Khraish, a landlord locked in a battle with the mayor over hundreds of low-rent houses, turned the tables Monday by announcing he will sell 130 of his properties to the current tenants.

Mayor Mike Rawlings had pushed Khraish to sell his West Dallas holdings to corporate buyers whom the mayor recommended. Khraish brushed off those offers.

Monday’s announcement means he is selling the properties instead to buyers of his choice — the current tenants. If that plan holds, it will create a wall of low-income neighborhoods for at least 20 years around the aggressively expanding gentrification area at the foot of the new Margaret Hunt Hill bridge.

The deal announced Monday means the current tenants, mostly poor and working African-American and Hispanic families, will remain in their homes in an area where land values are soaring and gentrification is rampant. If the solution sticks and the families can buy, the irony will be that a resolution came not from City Hall, whose actions so far have tended toward displacement, but from a private sector landlord whom the mayor had labeled a slumlord.

Read more: http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/west-dallas-landlord-relents-on-evictions-will-sell-to-tenants-instead-9491374