Habitat for Humanity could soon take over dozens of lots owned by a landlord locked in a dispute with Dallas City Hall.

Khraish Khraish, who runs HMK, Ltd., with his father Hanna Khraish, announced he has a deal with the affordable housing group Thursday in a meeting with The Dallas Morning News editorial board.

The number of lots is somewhat flexible, he said.

"Right now, it's no less than 130, and we'll just see what Habitat's appetite is," Khraish said.

Dallas Area Habitat for Humanity CEO Bill Hall said afterward that the agreement has been "in place for a while," but he hadn't spoken publicly about it. Hall said he couldn't discuss specific terms, but that the deal is to generally allow Habitat to buy lots in South Dallas and West Dallas over time as they become available.

Khraish's announcement of the agreement with Habitat for Humanity came as he tries to drum up political support for a plan to convert his rental property business into a development that will include new affordable housing units. He's been waging a public fight against Mayor Mike Rawlings for months, claiming city leaders want to force him out of business to gentrify West Dallas.

Hall said the deal actually preceded much of the drama that has surrounded HMK in recent months. The agreement allowed Habitat for Humanity to buy properties as HMK decided they were no longer useful as rental properties.

But the lots could become more rapidly available for Habitat for Humanity's development after HMK decided to leave the rental business.

HMK came to city's attention in 2015 after the mayor started looking into low-quality single-family rental homes and the people who owned many of them.

Khraish Khraish, with West Dallas Housing, shows his plan during a meeting of the Dallas County Tejano Democrats at La Calle Doce in Dallas on January 3, 2017. (Nathan Hunsinger/The Dallas Morning News)

When the city council last year enacted new housing standards that included inspections of single-family homes, Khraish announced he was closing his hundreds of rental homes and evicting the tenants. The tenants had mostly been on 30-day leases with rents of $575 or less.

Khraish has accused the mayor of targeting HMK because they don't fit in with the new high-end developments that have been sprouting up near the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge.

Rawlings has denied wanting any such thing. His program, as well as the city's housing regulations, had aimed to improve living conditions for residents.

After the threat of evictions, tenants won a reprieve from the courts. City attorneys and HMK later agreed to allow the families to stay in their homes until the end of the school year.

Khraish has since announced he hopes to build hundreds of affordable multifamily rental units and some high-end townhouses. He also planned to sell some of the higher-quality homes to the people who live in them.

"This is about protecting the community," Khraish said. "My agenda is whatever protects the community, I'm for, and whatever tears it apart, I am against."

But Khraish has been asking for political support from city officials, who have so far resisted his overtures and pointed out that Khraish can do much of the plan without their help or acquiescence to what they perceived to be requests for special favors.

Khraish said he's already started. The Habitat deal is underway. And he said Thursday that he has sold 30 homes to tenants in Oak Cliff for a median price of about $45,000 on a 10-year term with about a 5 percent interest rate. He plans to sell more.

Hall said he likes that the plan would bring more affordable housing to Dallas.

"We have to have mixed income communities," Hall said. "It would be a great way to show we can do it as a city to have it happen in West Dallas."