Land Trusts

It's gardening season in the northern hemisphere. In Pottstown, Pennsylvania, Mosaic Community Land Trust is hosting community garden plots on four lots in the city. Here are a few features...

People who follow affordable housing issues in the United States will be familiar with the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). It launched in 1986. By 2024, LIHTC had...

Hard to forget my lawyer-father's most successful DIY (Do It Yourself) project — a wired and lightbulbed flat biscuit tin. Most first time viewers to choked back their laughter....

A first year teacher who is Black moved to a new city to start his teaching career. During the first month of his tenancy, he was evicted by his...

Would you take on one of the world's most powerful mayors of one of the world's most powerful city councils, while it played ball with powerful building developers dead...

The financialization of housing is raising the cost of human shelter worldwide, leading to similar problems in many countries, with growing populations being priced out of housing altogether and...

When it comes to adding housing that will be deeply affordable housing and permanent, community land trusts are in a good position to step up. When a community land...

The problem is obvious. The tentacles of profit-earning capitalism are enmeshed in the buying and selling of homes. These days, everyone wants to buy and sell housing. That includes...

The United Way of Greater Toronto has recently issued a report called Building Inclusive Communities: Learning from Programs and Policies that Work. Much of Canada's population growth in the...

Gregory Ain wanted to build social housing in Los Angeles. During a lengthy, illustrious career he won a Guggenheim grant to research small, inexpensive, single family homes. Ultimately, the...

Many more U.S. folks live in mobile homes ("manufactured homes" if you want to be snobbish about them) than receive federal housing assistance (e.g. public housing and housing choice...

We've been worried about Habitat for Humanity. Without doubt it has long been recognized as a credible housing charity for hands-on delivery of truly affordable housing. Habitat has over the...

Winning a lottery is undeniably an opportunity. The sudden change in circumstances comes with its own consequences, not all of them good. As well, most people don't win lotteries....

The San Francisco Community Land Trust recently purchased a 40 unit apartment building, which will operate as a housing co-operative providing permanently affordable housing. The purchase is significant because it...

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...

Here are two visions of public housing: An attractive, secure, affordable lifelong home for "workers," first promoted in the U.S. at the dawn of American public housing by the...

There are some perennially familiar annual record breakers: World's most expensive city in which to live: Hong Kong World's most crowded city in which to live: Hong Kong . . ....

News from Reuters appeared recently about low cost housing co-operatives in Thailand, which have been supported by the Thai government since 2003. As a consequence of climate change, more and...

Since the world is largely full of losers, with mere handfuls of winners (think Olympics) chances are as you read this that, although you do not carry a card...

A story from Next City reports on two pieces of legislation recently passed in California. They are intended to assist community based non-profit agencies buy housing. The first requires...

Shelterforce, which supports community development initiatives across the United States, is running a series about community land trusts. The series includes an entry level article that explains what community land...

The City of Vancouver, BC has, as a responsible landlord, found itself going head to head with the authority tasked with extracting the most profitable solutions for the development...

Post-pandemic turmoil in the housing market of America's largest city? Laissez-faire. Leave it be. Let the private sector, master of all housing matters, perform any needed recovery. . . ....

Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), given free rein for several decades, now clearly define how they can serve a particular set of needs — where the term "Public" stands for...

Toronto's Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust is buying properties in a rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood with the goal of making sure that homes are available to people with very low incomes. At...

Community Land Banks, under one name or another, have been around pretty much since the dawn of cities. They are the result of communities, through one means or another, acquiring...

America is a land with no constitutional right to housing, but a pressing need for it, nonetheless. What is a house? With no constitutional definition, it's becoming ominously clear that...

Forget tempting financial carrots to coax developers into supporting affordable housing. Montreal, Quebec is planning to bring the big stick to multiple housing developments in the city. Incumbent mayor Mayor...

Public funding, foundation grants, sweat equity, donated land, land trusts, all these and more play a part these days in attempts to piece together affordable housing projects aimed at...

Actually, we don't really feel we can say too much about the potential of Community Land trusts. Just at the moment, virtually all national governments around the world seem far...

In a reflection of the rapidly worsening national affordable housing crisis, city councils across America are scrambling to put together strategic plans for coping. What follows is an article highlighting...

Stop the land price merry-go-round! Investors certainly want to get on it, but those in need of affordable housing very much want to get off. Land trusts are one way of...

Tax credit and subsidized affordable housing projects need not be be solely based upon an ownership model. However, it seems that many developers would much prefer to avoid build-to-rent...

Increasing density seems the only option for building affordable housing in the downtown core of many cities. Even smaller homes in higher towers may only temporarily be affordable, if...

Shelter, a UK based charity, published New Civic Housebuilding 2017 to present an approach to building affordable housing using successful strategies from the past. The report argues that developing...

Imagine an NGO lifeboat offering to rescue Toronto and Vancouver, bringing news that they can help build the affordable housing that they so desperately need. The key is the land...

How do you stop land and housing speculation in a democratic country committed to accumulating individual wealth through housing investment? Faced with skyrocketing real estate prices, inflated further by foreign...

The postwar housing boom that brought Norman Rockwell's idealized America to a ring of suburbs around every North American city was not built upon 2000-3000 sq ft. ranch houses...

Social housing has been largely abandoned by democracy. Or at least by those democracies that have participated most fervently in the East-West Cold War, where socialism became viewed in...

Thousands of homeowners have purchased affordable homes in Burlington, Vermont, beginning in the 1980's when senator and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders — then mayor of Burlington — introduced a land...