What Is a Community Land Trust?
A Community Land Trust, or CLT, is a nonprofit that acquires and holds land for the long-term benefit of a community. Homes, apartments, businesses, gardens, community facilities, or other projects can exist on that land, but the land itself remains under community stewardship.
A CLT challenges the idea that land should be treated as a commodity — something to be bought, sold, and repeatedly resold for profit — and holds it in trust for the future. By taking land out of the cycle of speculation and runaway price increases, a CLT reframes land as something we steward, protect, and design to meet the needs of the communities who live on it.
How Does it work?
The nonprofit acquires the land and retains ownership of it.
It can then enter into long-term agreements with the people or organizations that own, occupy, or operate buildings on the land. These agreements can last for decades and are often renewable. The agreements can be with all kinds of organizations or people. For example, a family can own their home but leases the land beneath it from the CLT. So could an art space, coop, grden, or business. But the land itself remains under long-term community stewardship.
Why CLT?
A building may receive subsidies or tax benefits that require apartments to remain affordable for a certain number of years. But when those restrictions expire, rents or sale prices increase.
A CLT is designed to create a more permanent structure. Because the organization continues to own the land, it can place long-term affordability requirements into its agreements with homeowners, cooperatives, building owners, or others. For example, residents can still build equity but with limits on how much the home can be resold for. The goal is to strike a balance between individual and collective benefit.
Who runs a Community Land Trust?
This is one of the features that makes a CLT different from a conventional nonprofit housing developer. CLTs are generally designed to include the people most affected by their work in their governance. The traditional model uses a “tripartite board,” with roughly equal representation from 3 groups:
Residents or leaseholders: People who live in housing or otherwise occupy property connected to the CLT. They have direct experience with how the land trust's decisions affect everyday life.
Members of the broader community: People who live in the neighborhoods served by the CLT but may not live in a CLT property themselves. This recognizes that decisions about land affect an entire neighborhood.
Public-interest representatives: People who bring relevant expertise or represent broader public interests. Depending on the CLT, this might include people with experience in affordable housing, finance, law, planning, community development, or other areas.
The purpose of this structure is to prevent any one group from controlling the organization. While the exact governance structure varies from CLT to CLT, the underlying idea is that people who are directly affected by decisions should have a meaningful role in making those decisions.
Many CLTs also have a broader membership structure. Community members can join, participate in meetings, elect representatives, serve on committees, and help determine the organization's priorities.
How do you create a Community Land Trust?
Build a community base. Who is the organization accountable to? Who should be able to participate? What communities and neighborhoods does it serve? Who is represented from the start?
Develop a mission and priorities. Will the CLT focus on rental housing, homeownership, tenant-owned buildings, vacant land, commercial space, green space, or a combination?
Create a governance structure. Who can become a member, how is leadership elected or appointed, how are residents represented, and how are decisions made?
Form the nonprofit and build capacity. This includes legal incorporation, bylaws, financial systems, fundraising, staffing or volunteer capacity, and partnerships.
Identify potential properties and acquisition strategies. A CLT might receive publicly owned land, acquire a distressed or vacant building, work with tenants seeking to purchase their building, partner with a nonprofit developer, or purchase property on the private market.
Put together the financing. The CLT model does not eliminate the cost of land or construction. Projects often require a combination of public subsidy, grants, philanthropic capital, loans, tax benefits, and partnerships.
Create the long-term stewardship system. A CLT has to be able to monitor affordability requirements, support residents, oversee ground leases, manage governance, and make sure the property continues to serve its mission decades into the future.
Examples
Cooper Square Community Land Trust: The Cooper Square Community Land Trust (CSCLT) is the oldest community land trust in New York City still in active operation. Born out of the struggles in the 1950s and 1960s against Robert Moses and his troubling urban renewal plans, we own and steward the land under 23 buildings in the Lower East Side in perpetuity. Our success has been possible through decades of political organizing and support from the local government.
East Harlem/El Barrio Community Land Trust: The East Harlem/El Barrio Community Land Trust (EHEBCLT) works to develop and preserve community-controlled, truly and permanently affordable housing, commercial, green and cultural spaces in East Harlem/El Barrio that prioritizes households of extremely low to low incomes.
East New York Community Land Trust: The ENYCLT is a membership organization that stewards the built, social and natural environment through community organizing, planning, education, and democratic control of community-owned land. Our mission is to protect, stabilize and expand the stock of affordable homes, locally-owned small businesses, worker co-ops and green spaces in East New York and Brownsville for the benefit of longtime low-income and working class Black, Latine, Asian and other communities of color.
Interboro Community Land Trust: Interboro Community Land Trust is a new model for permanently affordable homeownership in New York City that creates a pathway to financial stability for families while preserving economic and racial diversity in spite of gentrification.
Western Queens Community Land Trust: Western Queens Community Land Trust (WQCLT) is a non-profit organization made up of activists, small business owners, professors, artists, students, and community members who fight for democratic and equitable land use in Western Queens. We’re working on establishing a multi-site, multi-focus community land trust (CLT) to slow gentrification and act as a stabilizing force across Western Queens, from Hunters Point to Flushing.
Coalition for Affordable Housing: The Coalition for Affordable Housing is an early project inviting Queens residents and community members to be part of building a CLT for Queens.
