Community land trusts use communal ownership of land to ensure permanent affordability of individual housing units. iStock illustration
The mission of community land trusts is right in the name: community.
By acquiring land and leasing it to other parties that align with the goals of that community land trust, their proponents say, CLTs not only help preserve property as affordable, but they prioritize a community’s voice in its own evolution.
But they require new funding sources to expand beyond small-scale projects.
“CLTs remain involved in the stewardship of the land once it’s leased to other users, ensuring that the community governance and oversight does not end upon the land getting developed,” said Minnie McMahon, program director for Greater Boston CLT Network, a consortium of CLTs that meet to share resources and coordinates on lobbying efforts to promote CLT-friendly policies.
CLTs go beyond a simple land lease, differing from traditional affordable housing models and community development corporations which work with deed restrictions that don’t necessarily protect affordability for future owners.
A CLT may lease its land for housing or commercial spaces, for example, which are typically owned by homeowners, businesses or nonprofit organizations. In the case of individual homeowners, they can buy homes on CLT-leased land while agreeing to limit the property’s resale price. This reduces the upfront cost of homeownership and keeps the home affordable for future owners.
A Chronic Challenge in Finding Funding
To make a sizable impact on the amount of affordable housing available in Greater Boston, CLTs require a variety of resources. The most pressing is, unsurprisingly, capital.
“The funding issue never goes away,” said Ben Baldwin, executive director of the Somerville Community Land Trust. “The city obviously has an interest in supporting affordable housing in Somerville, but there are only so many resources available. We need money at the city level, the state level, and support at the federal level for continuing the programs we have in place and for projects to flourish.”
While funding is required to buy tracts of land, CLTs often have a dearth of operating funding, which can be used to pay staff. Currently, the six-year-old Somerville CLT has a staff of two, plus a group of volunteers.
Some money can be generated from leasing, but for younger CLTs that haven’t completed many projects, it’s an uphill battle.
“We’re sort of patching together grants and individual donations that create an annual budget,” Baldwin said. “We don’t have a strong endowment or something that’s allowing us to plan many years into the future of our operating budget.”
In the meantime, smaller CLTs like Somerville’s work on smaller-scale projects that don’t require large amounts of state or federal funding upfront. Baldwin points to the Somerville CLT’s first project at 7 Summer St. in Union Square, which created five income-restricted condominiums. It’s those kinds of properties on the market – modest ones that can be acquired and renovated – that CLTs can work to stabilize before graduating to larger developments.
This month, the land trust and Cambridge-based nonprofit Just A Start announced plans to develop 50 affordable apartments at 297 Medford St. in Somerville. The vacant property was previously an auto body shop, which partially collapsed in 2021. The two groups hope to acquire the property in September, following zoning approval for a 7-story building.
For younger community land trusts, even annual budgeting can be an uphill battle that relies on stitching together individual donations and one-time grants to keep the groups growing. iStock illustration
Can Municipalities Fill the Gap?
Another path to further success is forging partnerships with municipalities, which can set goals for moving public land into CLTs. It’s a strategy that’s gaining momentum with CLTs across the country, according to a new report from Cambridge’s Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
“Public resources invested in helping to expand homeownership were once routinely allowed to leak away when assisted homes resold. Today, a growing number of public officials are prudently committed to preserving those subsidies – and the hard-won affordability of the homes themselves – for many years,” said John Emmeus Davis, the report’s co-author and a longtime city planner, in a statement.
CLTs “have proven their effectiveness in making that happen,” he said.
New CLT-municipality partnerships are helping CLTs in different ways. Some cities and towns are prioritizing lasting affordability in their distribution of federal funds, according to the report, meaning they’re allocating more money toward CLTs. Others grant funding directly to CLTs, and some do so indirectly by giving grants to homebuyers of CLT properties.
Further, the report said municipalities are increasingly making regulatory concessions and offering regulatory bonuses that reduce the cost of construction and lower the selling price of CLT homes.
Aside from capital and partnerships, the Greater Boston CLT Network’s McMahon underscored the importance of higher operational capacity for existing CLTs – in other words, people power – and generally more CLTs in more communities.
And beyond collaboration with city and state agencies, McMahon suggested expanded education for lenders.
“Banks can offer more mortgage lending services to CLT homebuyers. But because of the mixed ownership model in which the homeowner does not own the land under the house, banks shy away,” she said. “More education to lenders about CLTs would support homebuyers and CLTs.”
The proof?
“CLT homeowners fared better during the Great Recession due to having lower monthly mortgage payments as well as oversight support from CLTs,” she said.
