Community Control

How to keep affordable apartments and single-family homes out of the hands of institutional investors if the coronavirus pandemic leads to a giant wave of evictions and foreclosures.

As the United States wrestles with its long history of racial injustice, shared-equity programs stand as one solution to address inequality and exclusion in the realms of housing.

We now have a unique opportunity, generated by a combination of life-threatening conditions and focused political will stemming from the Black Lives Matter movement, to re-prioritize local housing policies and resources.

Versions of a law known as the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act are being proposed across the country—in places like New York, Massachusetts and California. Could giving tenants a first right of purchase further protect renters?

Frances Goldin’s vision was of a multiracial, multiethnic community based on the principles of justice. Her instruction to us was to fight for it.

The 50th anniversary of New Communities was an opportunity for celebration and reflection—some of it critical—about the CLT movement.

The story of the nation’s very first land trust shows that sometimes it takes people who have been repeatedly left out of systems to shake us into remembering to aim big, consider new strategies, and leave no one behind.

Agrarian Commons closely resemble community land trusts, but they are unique in that they work collectively to provide long-term affordable and equitable access of small and mid-sized farms.

Night Out for Safety and Liberation provides an alternative to annual police-sponsored community events, and is growing in popularity around the nation.

CLTs’ dependence on external grant funding to acquire land and maintain their operations make them particularly susceptible to mission drift. Coming in with this knowledge, organizers may still be able to use the tool adequately or opt for other collective land ownership strategy.

“We could use some gentrification here.” Let’s never say this—we must refrain from debating the long-term likelihood of gentrification in distressed places.

How investments can be leveraged to ensure residents get to stay in their communities and reap the benefits of new amenities and increased accessibility.