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.
Tag: community land trust
When a Land Bank Starts a Land Trust
An Ohio land bank adds to its developing power through a nonprofit land trust.
Boston Organizers Protect Individual Tenants, While Trying to Change the System
City Life/Vida Urbana is known for successful tenant union organizing and anti-eviction actions, but every individual action springs from a larger vision of system and policy change.
New Philly Land Trust Was Promised Dozens of Homes; How’s It...
Two years ago, Philadelphia officials agreed to give 59 vacant buildings to homeless advocates. The historic deal has faced several setbacks, but is still moving forward.
How to Retrofit the Housing Economy
Are policy changes enough to address the housing problems we face?
The Financialization of Housing and Its Implications for Community Development
Over the last two decades homeowners and investors have increasingly treated housing as a financial asset, like stocks or bonds. How has this changed the housing market for the worse, and how can we fix it?
Two Paths to Density: Profit vs People
As communities across the country begin promoting density to address the affordable housing crisis, they must grapple with how that housing will be built, and for whom.
Affordable ADUs: How It’s Being Done
In the face of limited financing options, local governments, nonprofits, and social enterprises are experimenting with ways to make affordable ADUs a reality.
Better, Faster, Cheaper Ways to Finance Supportive Housing
A few cities in the U.S. are addressing homelessness by experimenting with different financing vehicles that are helping to preserve and construct more supportive housing.
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.
Durham’s Community Land Trust Allows Generations of Families to Continue Living...
CLT works in one of the oldest and largest historically Black neighborhoods in Durham.
Western Queens CLT: Looking to Start Big, and Not With Residential...
Western Queens Community Land Trust (WQCLT) was founded in 2019 as the result of a fight against Amazon, which had been eyeing Queens for...
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,...
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.