The owners of Colony Ridge, a Houston-area developer accused of running a predatory lending scheme that deceived Latinos, agreed to a sweeping legal settlement that will require them to invest in law enforcement and infrastructure on their properties and tighten selling practices to address a range of accusations from Texas GOP leaders and conservative media.
Chief among the allegations was that Colony Ridge developers sold land to undocumented people, giving rise to a crime-ridden complex of subdivisions about 30 miles outside Houston allegedly being run by Mexican drug cartels.
The developers denied that their communities were unsafe, a contention backed by testimony from local officials when the Legislature held special hearings in 2023 in response to outrage and accounts from residents in the developments. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the developers soon after, accusing them of deceptive sales, marketing and lending practices in a suit that echoed claims lodged by the federal government in a separate case.
Under the settlement released Tuesday, Colony Ridge’s owners agreed to clamp down on the documentation it requires from buyers. {snip}
The agreement resolves the state and federal lawsuits, which alleged the owners of Colony Ridge lured would-be Spanish-speaking homebuyers into seller-financed mortgages with high interests that they could not afford. By federal authorities’ estimate, roughly one in four Colony Ridge loans resulted in foreclosure. The company would then flip those properties to new unsuspecting customers eager to become homeowners, court filings allege.
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