Log in. Community land trust homeowners all seem to tell the same story. It goes like this: Before they bought their home through a community land trust, they struggled with high rents and instability. Afterthey had a home they could afford, the stability that comes with that, and the freedom to live the lives they envisioned for themselves and their kids. As their two kids approached school age, he and his wife desperately wanted to find a better living lanc. Then they heard about their local nonprofit community land trust Communitg. The CLT worked with them until they found the right land trust home.
Latest Issue. Past Issues. Take the case of the capital city of Texas, where parts of East Austin, right next to downtown, are in the process of becoming whiter, and hip restaurants, coffee shops, and even a bar catering to bicyclists are opening. Rogers and other groups have a bold plan to try and reverse this course: Make homes in the area affordable—forever. How, exactly? In the housing model, the nonprofit builds a home on the land and sells it to someone in need. But the nonprofit retains ownership of the land that the house sits on, leasing it to the homeowner for a designated time period, typically 99 years. As part of the deal, the home will always be affordable. The first community-land-trust home in the state of Texas is a one-story, mint green house with a wraparound porch in a quiet East Austin neighborhood where prices have skyrocketed in recent years. GNDC loaned her the money, since it was difficult to get a loan for a land-trust home. But rather than take the profit of the rising land prices, the nonprofit holds onto the land, keeping it affordable for future residents. The idea was first popularized in America as part of the civil-rights movement, when a community activist named Robert Swann decided to try and obtain a large piece of land for black sharecroppers to settle and develop. The backers of that land trust took inspiration from the Jewish National Fund, which at the time was buying up land and setting up settlements in Israel, and the Bhoodan Movement in India, which tried to persuade wealthy landowners to give some of their land to the poor.
Conservation and Community Land Trusts
Cities in states such as Massachusetts, California, and New York embraced the idea. The city of Boston even used eminent domain to clear a portion of land for a local land trust. There are currently community land trusts in the country, the largest of which is in Burlington, Vermont, and leases land to about owner-occupied homes. But, elsewhere, the idea was slow to catch on. Banks, unaccustomed to loans just for structures and not the properties they sit on, refused to give loans for land-trust homes. Tax assessors charged taxes for the properties based on similar properties in the area, not on the value of the homes as designated in the leases.
Land Lines Magazine
July 26, ; Denverite and Asheville Citizen Times. As NPQ has noted, community land trusts help cities seeking to preserve housing affordability for low-income residents. With a community land trust, land is held in trust by a nonprofit, with a board that includes public, local government, and tenant representatives. The trust preserves affordability by removing its holdings from the private market, usually through year ground leases and preemptive purchase requirements that limit how much the house can be sold for. The remaining equity stays with the trust so that the house can be made available at an affordable price to the next family with no additional subsidy. Community land trusts have proven to be effective at stabilizing housing. However, they are often under-resourced. Denver and Asheville are no exception. CDOT offered up the money through a competitive process as a way to make up for the demolition of some plus homes. The partnership already has purchased three homes in the area.
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Property taxes are paid either by the homeowner or the CLT, via an agreement between them. The state assesses the fair market property value in CLT homes by taking into account any limitation on resale prices set forth in the CLT ground lease. Where CLTs control land for conservation or preservation purposes, they can apply for an exemption from property taxes, if certified as environmental land trusts by the state. Source: Md. While most CLTs deal with homeownership, several operate rental properties as well. Unlike traditional rental property operators, the community membership of the CLT makes the rental property effectively accountable to the community—not to an absentee landlord. Also, the ground lease arrangement with CLTs gives tenants the added security that rent increases will be limited and that forced eviction will not occur for economic reasons, because community interest, not profit, guides CLTs. Housing people with limited or no-incomes is almost impossible for those seeking private profit. CLTs are similar to non-profit community development corporations CDCs and non-profit developers in their quest to obtain public funds, grants, and financing for affordable housing.
Most CLTs are started from scratch, but some are grafted onto existing nonprofit corporations such as community development corporations. Asked in Organizations How does a community center benefit for a community? When you buy a home, you typically pay for both the structure and the land it occupies. One of the most popular methods for protecting private land is through a conservation easement. All Rights Reserved. The ground lease requires owner-occupancy and responsible use of the premises. Asked in Relationships How does the biotic community benefit from these relationships? The initiative was known as the Bhoodan or Land gift movement, and many of India’s leaders participated in these walks.
The Atlantic Crossword
To buy a home in a community land trust, you must be able to cover your mortgage and upkeep costs, and you must also agree to sell the home for the same price that you paid in order to keep housing affordable. Unanswered Questions. Some CLTs focus on a single type and tenure of housing, like detached, owner-occupied houses. Asked in Real Estate. With colleagues Matthei guided the development of 25 regional loan funds and organized the National Association of Community Development Loan Funds, later known as the National Community Capital Association. New Communities Inc. There is considerable variation among the hundreds of organizations that call themselves a community land trust, but ten key features are to be found in most of. From this early point in time, trusts served the purpose of communiyy property so that trjsts beneficiary could benefit. Under Matthei’s tenure, the number of community land trusts increased from a dozen to more than groups in 23 states, creating many hundreds of permanently affordable housing units, as well as commercial and public service facilities. Finance Planning Tips Here are some tips to help you with generating income and planning for the future. Typically, CLTs are run by a board of directors whose members include three groups of stakeholders : residents or leaseholders, people who reside within its targeted community but do not live on its land, and lastly the broader public .
Another kind of wealth: community
A community land trust CLT is a nonprofit corporation that develops and stewards affordable housing, community gardens, civic buildings, commercial spaces and other community assets on behalf of a community.
The community land trust CLT is a model of affordable housing and community development that has slowly spread throughout the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom over the past 40 years. The model was originated in the United States by Ralph Borsodi and Robert Swanndrawing upon earlier examples of planned communities on leased land including the Garden city movement in the United Kingdom, single tax communities in the US, Gramdan villages in India, and moshav communities on lands owned by the Jewish National Fund in Israel.
New CommunitiesInc. Narayan and Vinoba Bhaveboth disciples of Gandhi. Vinoba walked from village to village in rural India in the s and s, gathering people together and asking those with more land than they needed to give a portion of it to their poorer sisters and brothers.
The initiative was known as the Bhoodan or Land gift movement, and many of India’s leaders participated in these walks. Some of the new landowners, however, became discouraged.
Without tools to work the land and seeds to plant it, without an affordable credit system available to purchase these necessary things, the land was useless to. They soon sold their deeds back to the large landowners and left for the cities. Seeing this, Vinoba altered the Boodan system to a Gramdan or Village gift. All donated land was subsequently held by the village.
The village would then lease the land to those capable of working it. The lease expired if the land was unused. The Gramdan movement inspired a series of regional village land trusts that anticipated Community Land Trusts in the United States. The first organization to be labeled with the term ‘community land trust’ in the U.
Their vision for New Communities Inc. It has a long and established legal history of leasing land to individuals, to cooperativesand to intentional communities such as kibbutzim and moshavim. They decided on a model that included individual leaseholds for homesteads and cooperative leases for farmland. New Communities Inc.
The land was eventually lost as a result of USDA racial discrimination, but the example of New Communities inspired the formation of a dozen other rural community land trusts in the s. It also inspired and informed the first book about community land trusts, produced by the International Independence Institute in Ralph Borsodi, Robert Swann, and Erick Hansch founded the International Independence Institute in to provide training and technical assistance for rural development in the United States and other countries, drawing on the model of the Gramdan villages being developed in India.
InSwann, Hansch, Shimon Gottschalk, and Ted Webster proposed a «new model for land tenure in America» in The Community Land Trustthe first book to name and describe this new approach to the ownership of land, housing, and other buildings. In the s, ICE began popularizing a new notion of the CLT, applying the model for the first time to problems of affordable housing, gentrification, displacement, and neighborhood revitalization in urban areas.
ICE pioneered the modern community land trust and community loan fund models. Under Matthei’s tenure, the number of community land trusts increased from a dozen to more than groups in 23 states, creating many hundreds of permanently affordable housing units, as well as commercial and public service facilities.
With colleagues Matthei guided the development of 25 regional loan funds and organized the National Association of Community Development Loan Funds, later known as the National Community Capital Association. From —, Matthei served as a founding Chairman of the Association and from — he served as a founding board member of the Social Investment Forumthe national professional association in the field of socially responsible investment. Matthei also launched an effort in the early to mids to address many of the legal and operational questions about CLTs that were arising as banks, public officials and1 by an ecumenical association of churches and ministries created to prevent the displacement of low-income, African-American residents from their neighborhood.
During the s, the number of urban CLTs increased dramatically. They were sometimes formed, as in Cincinnati, in opposition to the plans and politics of municipal government. In other cities, like Burlington, Vermont and Syracuse, New York, community land trusts were formed in partnership with a local government. One of the earliest and most influential is the Burlington Community Land Trust BCLT in Vermont, which was organized in the early s as a response to rapidly increasing housing costs that threatened to price out many long term residents of the city.
CHT has provided a substantial increase in the Burlington area’s affordable housing stock, with CHT units comprising 7. There are currently over community land trusts in the United States. Similar nationwide networks for promoting and supporting CLTs have recently been formed in the United Kingdom and in Australia. There is considerable variation among the hundreds of organizations that call themselves a community land trust, but ten key features are to be found in most of.
A community land trust is an independent, nonprofit corporation that is legally chartered in the state in which it is located.
Most CLTs are started from scratch, but some are grafted onto existing nonprofit corporations such as community development corporations. Most CLTs target their activities and resources toward charitable activities like providing housing for low-income people and redeveloping blighted neighborhoods, making them eligible to receive c 3 designation from the IRS.
A nonprofit corporation, the CLT, acquires multiple parcels of land throughout a targeted geographic area with the intention of retaining ownership of the parcels forever. Any building already located on the land or later constructed on the land can be held by the CLT or sold off to an individual homeowner, a cooperative housing corporationa nonprofit developer of rental housing, or some other nonprofit, governmental, or for-profit entity.
Although CLTs intend never to resell their land, they can provide for the exclusive use of their land by the owners of any buildings located thereon. Exclusive use of parcels of land can be conveyed to individual homeowners or to the owners of other types of residential or commercial structures by long-term ground leases.
The two-party contract between the landowner the CLT and a building’s owner protects the owner’s interests in security, privacy, legacy, and equity and enforces the CLT’s interests in preserving the appropriate use, the structural integrity and the continuing affordability of any buildings on its land.
The CLT retains an option to repurchase any residential or commercial structures on its land if their owners ever choose to sell. The resale price is set by a formula contained in the ground lease that is designed to give present homeowners a fair return on their investment but giving future homebuyers fair access to housing at an affordable price.
By design and by intent, the CLT is committed to preserving the affordability of housing and other structuresone owner after another, one generation after another, in perpetuity. The CLT does not disappear once a building is sold. As owner of the underlying land and as owner of an option to repurchase any buildings located on its land, the CLT has an abiding interest in what happens to the structures and to the people who occupy.
The ground lease requires owner-occupancy and responsible use of the premises. Should buildings become a hazard, the ground lease gives the CLT the right to step in and force repairs. Should property owners default on their mortgages, the ground lease gives the CLT the right to step in and cure the default, forestalling foreclosure. The CLT remains a party to the deal, safeguarding the structural integrity of the buildings and the residential security of the occupants.
The CLT operates within the physical boundaries of a targeted locality. It is guided by and accountable to the people who call the locale their home. The community may encompass a single neighborhood, multiple neighborhoods, or, in some cases, an entire town, city, or county. Typically, CLTs are run by a board of directors whose members include three groups of stakeholders : residents or leaseholders, people who reside within its targeted community but do not live on its land, and lastly the broader public.
This third group is frequently represented by government officials, funders, housing agencies, and social service providers. Organization bylaws may designate each of these groups a specific and equal number of seats, and they may be elected separately by their constituent groups.
CLTs are not focused on a single project located on a single parcel of land. They are committed to an active acquisition and development program aimed at expanding the CLT’s holdings of land and increasing the supply of affordable housing and other types of buildings under the CLT’s stewardship. A CLT’s holdings are seldom concentrated in one corner of a community but tend to be scattered throughout its service area, indistinguishable from other owner-occupied housing in the same neighborhood.
There is enormous variability in the types of projects that CLTs pursue and in the roles they play in developing. Many CLTs do development with their own staff.
Others delegate development to nonprofit or for-profit partners, confining their own efforts to assembling land and preserving the affordability of any structures located upon it. Some CLTs focus on a single type and tenure of housing, like detached, owner-occupied houses. They develop housing of many types and tenures or they focus more broadly on comprehensive community development, undertaking a diverse array of residential and commercial projects. CLTs around the country have constructed or acquired, rehabilitated, and resold single-family homes, duplexes, condos, co-ops, SROs, multi-unit apartment buildings, and mobile home parks.
CLTs have created facilities for neighborhood businesses, nonprofit organizations, and social service agencies. CLTs have provided sites for community gardens. Permanently affordable access to land is the common ingredient, linking them all. The CLT is the social thread, connecting them all.
In Scotland, the community land movement is well established and supported by government. Members of Community Land Scotland own or manage overacres of land, home to over 25, people. But they have tended to have a greater focus on the participation of their local members and community-level democracy, and are more likely to emerge as grassroots citizen initiatives. In Scotland they are also associated with communities reclaiming land from absentee aristocratic landowners.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. See guidance in Wikipedia:Summary style. August Main article: New Communities. University of Illinois Press: Retrieved December 16, The Atlantic. CLT trusts are usually divided into thirds, where one third of the trust leadership is residents from the CLT community, one third is people from the neighborhood surrounding the CLT, and one third is made up of technical experts and municipal officials who provide particular expertise legal, architectural, engineering, political.
Prosper Australia. Grounded Solutions Network. Archived from the original on 27 October National CLT Network. Retrieved 8 August CLT Network. Retrieved 10 October Categories : Urban planning Neighborhood associations Community development organizations. Hidden categories: Webarchive template wayback links All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from September Namespaces Article Talk.
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Land Trusts 101 by Attorney William Bronchick
H igh land costs are an obstacle to developing and securing affordable housing for lower-income families. One way to address this issue is to purchase a house without the land, and a community land trust is one mechanism that allows this arrangement. This article reports on a roundtable attended by researchers, policy analysts, technical assistance providers, funders, and community land trust staff members to discuss the community land trust model and related research needs.
For a truly affordable home, buy into a community land trust
The community land trust model is an extremely attractive mechanism for maintaining and expanding the stock of affordable housing. Currently there are approximately community land trusts operating in every region of the country. These community land trusts are nonprofit, community-based organizations whose mission is to provide affordable housing in perpetuity by owning land and leasing it to those who live in houses built on that land. In the classic community land trust model, membership is comprised of those who live in the leased housing leaseholders ; those who live in the targeted area community members ; and local representatives from government, funding agencies and the nonprofit sector public interest Burlington Associates A lease within a community land trust also includes a resale formula intended to balance the interests of present homeowners with the long-term goals of the community land trust—balancing the interest of homeowners and the interest of the community land trust to provide affordable housing for future homeowners. In partnership with the City of Albuquerque, Sawmill Community Land Trust’s has created a permanent stock of affordable housing in the neighborhood with housing units as well as a plaza, park, community center, commercial space and open space connected with trails. The plan calls for expanding the Sawmill Community Land Trust model to other neighborhoods to ensure a permanent stock of affordable housing and a mixed-income community for the long term. For many households experiencing lagging wages or underemployment, the purchase and financing of a house is increasingly difficult. High land costs are another obstacle to developing and securing affordable housing for lower-income families in some markets. One way to address this second issue is to purchase a house without the land, and a community land trust CLT is one mechanism that allows this arrangement. This article reports on a roundtable attended by approximately 25 researchers, policy analysts, technical assistance providers, funders and CLT staff members to discuss the CLT model and related research needs.
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