Cooperatives and Community Land Trusts: Natural Partners?
Community land trusts provide far fewer units than other forms of affordable housing, but advocates now believe the model can be one possible solution to preserving the affordability of limited-equity co-ops. We take a closer look.
From Mobile Home Parks to Multifamily Housing Cooperatives
As tenants organize to take over their buildings, there's been an increased interest in going the co-op route. Could the networks that support resident-owned mobile home park communities shift their focus to support residents of multifamily buildings that want to go co-op?
Durham’s Community Land Trust Allows Generations of Families to Continue Living in Their Hometown
CLT works in one of the oldest and largest historically Black neighborhoods in Durham.
You Can’t Carbon Copy Community Ownership
Community development has long made attempts at wealth building, with a focus on trying to find successful or innovative models that can be replicated. And yet the transformational change we’ve sought hasn’t materialized. Displacement...
Western Queens CLT: Looking to Start Big, and Not With Residential Units
Western Queens Community Land Trust (WQCLT) was founded in 2019 as the result of a fight against Amazon, which had been eyeing Queens for a potential 250,000-worker campus. The world’s largest online retailer ultimately...
From At-Risk Tenants to Activist Property Owners
A little more than a year ago—while the pandemic raged and the economy cratered—a group of 38 low-income, mostly Black and Brown families won an unprecedented, years-long battle to buy five neglected multifamily buildings,...
Proud Ground: When Land Is Expensive, Look Outside the City
This community land trust focuses its efforts on helping people of color purchase homes across five counties.
Keeping Community Control as Community Land Trusts Grow
When a CLT grows, the “community” it represents can sometimes be more difficult to define. But to some extent it always was.
Community Land Trusts: Combining Scale and Community Control
This is no longer my neighborhood.”
Too often, communities of color that experience new investments report that the changes are a detriment to their lives, and a benefit to newcomers, who tend to be more...
Champlain Housing Trust: Breadth and Depth
Over 2,400 rental apartments, 600 shared-equity homes, cooperatives, and a couple of hotels for the unhoused—How the largest community land trust in the U.S. scaled up.
First a Park, Then a Citywide Land Trust in D.C.
Douglass Community Land Trust began with a desire to prevent a new park from displacing neighborhood residents—but it soon got much bigger.
Scaling Up: How Some Community Land Trusts Are Getting Bigger
The community land trust model is in a time of dramatic growth and creativity. Some CLTs are aiming for larger scale than has been typical. How are they doing it?
Interboro CLT: A Committed Pipeline from Powerhouse Community Development Groups
Four New York-based organizations work together to place every homeownership unit they develop into a community land trust.
Atlanta Land Trust—From Central Server to a Centralized CLT
If at first you don’t succeed, partner with a land bank.
Understanding Community Land Trusts
What are CLTs? How do they work? What are the benefits and areas of concern? An overview.
Housing Solutions—Centering Community in Ownership, Control, and Long-Term Affordability
How is community control of housing realized? We explore different community ownership structures, how tenants form a cooperative, and how larger housing nonprofits can incorporate residents into decision-making.
How Community Ownership Is Evolving
The latest Shelterforce series takes a closer look at community land trusts and cooperatives to see how both are evolving.