Under the Lens
Community Ownership Takes Center Stage
Community land trusts and cooperatives are two of the most prominent models of community ownership, and ones we’ve written about for many years. In this series we take a focused look at some of the ways these forms of community ownership are evolving.
How Community Ownership Is Evolving

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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.

Understanding Community Land Trusts
What are CLTs? How do they work? What are the benefits and areas of concern? An overview.

Atlanta Land Trust—From Central Server to a Centralized CLT
If at first you don’t succeed, partner with a land bank.

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.

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?

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.

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.
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, […]

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.

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.

From At-Risk Tenants to Activist Property Owners
Minneapolis tenants won the right to buy their neglected buildings from a slumlord. They now have about two years to transition to owners.

Western Queens CLT: Looking to Start Big, and Not With Residential Units
After Amazon’s plan for a worker campus in Queens fizzled, activists fought to launch a community land trust for various uses.
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