Marlene McNeese-Ward, the Houston Health Department chief of HIV/STD and Viral Hepatitis Prevention, stated "We're really looking at Acres Homes especially, and Sunnyside, but there's not too many ZIP codes... where we're not seeing any (cases)." A gated community in the area opened on of land in 2008. La Sierra, a development on the same size of acreage and adjacent to the original one, was being developed as of 2017. Contempo Builders, operated by David Bohorquez, a Venezuelan American, developed both properties. In 2016 the Highland Heights Annex Action Committee wrote a letter to their Houston City Council member, Jerry Davis, stating opposition to developments of new industrial facilities and townhouses. Acres Homes is still a predominantly African American neighborhood. The community has of land, much of it in a pine forest. Not much of the land, as of 2002, is used for commercial or industrial purposes. Acres Homes had 8,548 housing units in 2002; 31% were rental units. Housing includes mostly smaller tract-style houses, many with wooden frames, with a smaller number of larger houses on lots with trees. Kristen Mack of the "Houston Chronicle" stated in 2002 that the lots of the "comfortable" larger houses were "well-maintained" while the smaller houses, among them many shotgun houses were "ramshackle". Absentee landlords owned many of the smaller houses. Rafael Longoria and Susan Rogers of the Rice Design Alliance said that the layout of Acres Homes could be described as "rurban," a word coined in 1918 which describes an area with a mix of urban and rural characteristics. Undeveloped land permeates Acres Homes in a checkerboard-like pattern. In 2002 Mack stated "Fairly or not, Acres Homes has become synonymous with "urban blight" in Houston" and that Acres Homes "can best be described as a bit schizophrenic." Many acres of land in the community are empty. In 2002, many of the formerly large properties had been sectioned off, and horses were commonplace in the neighborhood. Most areas in Acres Homes had no curbs, no sidewalks, and no storm drains. Deep ditches lined many of the streets. As of 2008 Acres Homes has the largest concentration of closed landfills in Houston, including permitted and unpermitted ones. According to Sammie Mae Ford, a resident of Acres Homes quoted in the "Houston Chronicle", in the 1920s most of the residents had gardens in their yards and raised chickens and hogs.