A community land trust is a property trust which aims to benefit the surrounding community by ensuring the long-term availability of afforable
housing and access to land. Land is taken out of the market and separated from its productive use so that the impact of land appreciation is removed, this is a very peculiar aproach to ownership. Using this mechanism a community land trust, usually known as a CLT, attempts to meet the needs of residents least served by the prevailing market.
A community land trust is usually a private non-profit corporation that intends to be democratically controlled.
Community land trusts help people:
- Gain control over local land use and reduce absentee ownership
- Provide affordable housing for lower income residents in the community
- Promote resident ownership and control of housing
- Keep housing affordable for future residents
- Capture the value of public investment for long-term community benefit
- Build a strong base for community action
- Manage green spaces
The currently and most widely used community land trust model in north america was developed in the 1960’s by the Institute for Community Economics(ICE)[1]. Some say that the mechanism of the community land trust originated in 19th century in Britain and Ireland out of experiments in practical land reform and that it was replicated in the 50’s by Ghandian land reformers in India, later gaining attention in other parts of the world.
Community land trusts are flexible models, but being place-specific organizatios they have to be acomodated to the peculiarities of their location . Local legal structures, resources, and communities have to be taken into account in the formation of a community land trust.
- Other introductions to Community Land Trusts*
- Community Land Trusts: An Introduction by Tom Peterson. Taken From Issue 23 of the Planning Commisioners Journal, Summer 1996, this article provides a brief introduction with some examples.
- The Institute For Community Economics page on Community land trusts <http://www.iceclt.org/clt/> has a brief description with links to more specific aspects of CLT’s.
- The Community Land Trust Website from britain has a good introduction to CLT’s with some history, basic questions, and examples of CLT’s around the world.
For more resources visit the Community Land Trust Resources page.
Our local Land Trust is called The Beverly Vermont Community Land Trust.