In the grand scheme of lower housing prices, Community Land Trusts (CLTs) have in America largely been exotic animals worthy of further study, rather than tried and true pack horses at work hauling housing affordability to lower income citizens.
This may be partly due to the “tainting” of CLTs with socialism, no thanks to their U.S. association with the unabashedly socialist mayor of Burlington, Vermont — Bernie Sanders — who successfully developed a land trust in that city some 37 years ago.
Whatever the reasons, decades have passed since Bernie hit a home run, and there has been little or no impetus nationally to adopt CLTs as a way of securing homes away from some of the more pernicious evils of financialized housing.
Recent news from Baltimore, Maryland suggests that CLTs may soon have a productive future for Americans living there.
At the risk of belabouring the obvious, the very foundation of CLTs as a way of not only building affordable housing, but also protecting that affordability, is . . . land.
Cheap land overlooking the ice pack on the shores of the Northwest Passage won’t do. It needs to be near employment opportunities, food sources, community facilities etc. That kind of land is seldom inexpensive unless, as in the following example, it is already owned.
A compelling story of just how much extraordinary housing can be built if it is well situated. It comes from the tiny Squamish First Nation, which is building an enormous “green” housing development much like a CLT on land it controls in the heart of one of the most expensive cities in the world — Vancouver, BC. Read more in GIZMODO: Green Housing Can Be Beautiful—and Cheap and in The Tyee: The Squamish Are Teaching Vancouver a Big Lesson in How to Use Its Land
Control of the land is the essence of this story. It can be held out of the housing market, built to be largely market rate project as with the Squamish Nation, or used to create a CLT as in the Baltimore initiative.
Black residents of Baltimore don’t have the amazing Squamish resource at their fingertips. Instead, they have turned to a true pack horse that funds community housing initiatives — a Housing Trust Fund (HTF) established in Baltimore in 2016.
HTFs can provide funding for a range of community housing needs, such as new housing construction, rehabilitation of older housing, emergency repairs and so on. Most important for this Baltimore example, HTFs can support the acquisition of existing housing stock. And . . . acquire land.
The scale of potential CLT developments are hinted by the Vancouver, BC example noted above. But finding and funding suitable land acquisitions will inevitably to be a major limitation to the ultimate impact of CLTs on the housing affordability and security of lower income citizens.
Nevertheless, this step in Baltimore is indeed a promising event for a CLT future. Read more in yes!: Baltimore’s Community Land Trusts Offer a Pathway to Housing Justice
