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This section provides an overview of what CLTs are and why they are a powerful way to support thriving places.
🌿Quick links to learn more about:
the roots of the CLT movement
the first CLT, New Communities, Inc. and
more about Black cooperative economics
What You'll Find on this Page:
What You'll Find on this Page:
What is a CLT?
What is a CLT?
The community land trust (CLT) exists so that the community benefits from and cares for the land according to its own vision, rather than see land sold off to the highest bidder. CLTs reclaim land from the process of buying and selling, and hold the land permanently, for the community.
The CLT, a nonprofit organization, owns and governs the land. The CLT agrees to never sell the land, and instead leases the land for community-aligned uses.
CLTs and their partners build farms, protect open space and commercial spaces, build and preserve housing, places of worship and cultural practice and more.
Image: Greater Boston CLT Network
Why CLTs?
Why CLTs?
Different groups of people will create CLTs based on their group's vision and needs. Some CLTs focus on home ownership, some on affordable rentals, and some on local food systems. Some CLTs are making advances in developing and protecting commercial spaces, or a combination of all that and more. While physical development of our neighborhoods is the most visible impact of CLTs, our CLTs share the common goals of increasing local control, community power building, and equitable and democratic decision-making while maintaining permanent affordability and promoting development without displacement.
How does it work?
How does it work?
CLTs follow the same basic structure: the CLT owns the land and leases the land to the person or group that will most directly benefit from access to the land (i.e. a homeowner, a farm, a group of community gardeners, a small business.)
The person or group leasing the land pays lease fees (AKA "ground rent") to the CLT, and agrees to care for/use the land as envisioned.
Land use decisions are made by the CLT-- which includes the board of directors, staff and community members -- and are compliant with local zoning regulations.
CLTs are investments in communities: doing long-term neighborhood and cultural planning, organizing campaigns to strengthen neighborhoods and stopping economically-fueled displacement.
A CLT acquires land in different ways— through bargain sales, land donations, transfers from municipalities, market purchases or land return/land back initiatives—and holds the title to that land in perpetuity- never selling.
CLTs either maintain the land as it is (i.e. with existing housing or farm) or develop that land (i.e. with new housing or farm) often in partnership with other community development organizations or contractors.
Resources for learning basics about CLTs & their structure:
"Rationale," from the CLT Startup Manual
Shared Equity Models of Ownership, National Housing Conference
Click on image for larger detailed version
Dual Ownership & Shared Equity
Dual Ownership & Shared Equity
Dual Ownership
Since early European settlement and colonization of these lands, through the establishment and expansion of the United States to today, land ownership has been paired with the right to build upon, develop, tear down, change and enclose the land. And it's a privilege reserved for classes of people, not for all.
Within this dominant mindset - of the rightness and ability of humans (and only some humans) to control land as an other and as an object - our present-day legal land ownership system developed. Commonly, on private property in the US, the landowner holds legal title to both the land and the buildings or "improvements" on the land. The landowner, within limits, has a right to build on land and own what they build.
In a dual ownership model, like a CLT, ownership is split: a CLT—effectively the community— owns the land and a different entity owns the home or other improvements on the land. (Sometimes, a CLT owns both land and buildings or other amenities, like a greenhouse, on the land.)
This dual ownership model - while still enclosing land and treating land as a "thing" that can be owned - puts land into collective ownership, rather than individual, and permanently removes the land from the cycle of buying and selling (the market). The land stays under the protection of the CLT, and upon the land, others can own homes, schools, farms, etc. Together, the CLT and the owners of the amenities on the land ensure that the land is kept under community stewardship.
What is “shared equity” homeownership?
One key purpose of many CLTs in the US is to provide permanently affordable housing to its community.
An owned CLT home is affordable for the buyer because:
they are buying the home, not the land (dual ownership), and
because the home is subsidized and the price is controlled by the CLT, not the market.
CLTs use their own values-based equity formula to determine the way in which the home appreciates in value over time (the CLT's equity formula). By building in equity appreciation and a cap on that appreciation, CLTs balance one family's ability to accumulate wealth through the home with the need to keep the home affordable for the next family. Through the shared-equity homeownership model, CLTs support individual and community wealth building, and work to de-commodify housing.
Resources for history, roots, & the broader ecosystem:
Roots of the CLT Movement, International Center for CLTs
Origins and evolution of the community land trust in the United States, John E Davis
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