Community Land Trusts
A community land trust is a nonprofit, community-based organization that is designed to ensure community stewardship of land. It’s a form of permanently affordable housing in which a community-controlled organization retains ownership of the land and sells or rents the housing on that land to lower-income households.
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How State Coalitions Are Advancing Community Ownership of Housing
In recent years, housing coalitions promoting community land trusts and real estate cooperatives have formed in multiple cities and states—and they are achieving results. Nonetheless, a lot of work is needed to achieve the policy changes these groups desire.
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What Does a Solidarity Approach to Housing Look Like? A Shelterforce Webinar
In this webinar, we examine what a solidarity economy approach is, what its principles are, how these principles are being applied presently, and how they might be applied more broadly to support housing justice and transformative economic change.
A Historic Black Memphis Neighborhood Turns to a CLT to Avoid Displacement
A former hub of Black-owned businesses in North Memphis that suffered urban renewal seeks to rebuild without a new wave of displacement. Can a community land trust strike that balance?
In Brazil, Organized Favelas Turn to CLTs to Protect Their Land
In Brazil’s settlements, or favelas, residents risk displacement due to unclear property title—but getting clear title could price them out of the community. Could community land trusts offer a solution to this dilemma?
How CLTs are Powering Co-op Growth in Canada: Lessons for the U.S.?
In Canada, more than half of all housing on community land trusts is cooperative housing. In the U.S., that number is less than 2 percent. Why?
Fueling the Future of Community Ownership, a Shelterforce Webinar
A dive into some promising new approaches to both funding community ownership and building out an ecosystem that supports its sustainability.
Denver Land Trust Fights Displacement Whether It Owns the Land or Not
Tierra Colectiva, a community land trust in the Denver neighborhoods of Globeville and Elyria-Swansea, combines community organizing, traditional CLT development, and more unusual roles in a large affordable housing development.
This Multi-Issue Interfaith Organizing Group Has Supported Six Housing Co-ops for Decades
The Naugatuck Valley Project grew out of factory closures and layoffs in the 1980s. But this interfaith and labor coalition also helped to not only found but sustain a group of affordable housing cooperatives in suburban Connecticut.
A No-Subsidy Model for Getting Homes into Community Ownership
The Homes for the Future fund aims create long-haul affordability without public funding by buying homes now and selling them to community land trusts after a period of renting them out.
Turning Equity into Affordability: D.C. Homeowners Are Giving Back to a Next Wave of Buyers
As prices in the nation’s capital have soared, some sellers want their homes to stay in reach of families like their own. The Douglass Community Land Trust is helping them make it happen.
A Community Land Trust for People Leaving Incarceration Honors a ‘Forgotten Figure’ of Black Liberation
CLT named after Ruchell “Cinqué” Magee, considered by many to have been the longest-held political prisoner in the United States, aims to create not just affordability, but belonging.
Mixed Income, Net Zero, and Fish Friendly: Innovation at The Southard
A community land trust took on a difficult site in suburban Seattle—and ended up with a sustainable, diverse, mixed-ownership-form development that challenges multiple norms.
Legacy, Stability, and the Arts: The CLT Keeping Bay Area Artists Housed
Through its bequests and aging in place program, financial education offerings, and more, Artist Space Trust works to stabilize Bay Area artists in their communities.