2026-03-30 Community Land Trusts: Affordable Housing Solutions
Community Land Trusts: Affordable Housing Solutions
The affordable housing crisis affecting communities across the United States and around the world is not merely a matter of supply and demand. It is a structural problem rooted in how land is owned, valued, and traded in market economies. When land is treated purely as a commodity, its value tends to rise beyond the reach of ordinary families, driving displacement, segregation, and instability that undermine the social fabric of entire neighborhoods. Community land trusts offer a fundamentally different approach, one that removes land from the speculative market and places it under community stewardship while allowing families to own their homes and build a measure of equity. This model, which has grown from a handful of experimental projects in the 1960s into a movement encompassing hundreds of organizations across the country, demonstrates that affordable housing can be created and preserved permanently without ongoing government subsidies. At the Rissover Foundation, we support community-driven housing solutions that recognize shelter as a basic human need and neighborhood stability as a foundation for thriving communities.
What Community Land Trusts Are
Community land trusts represent a distinctive form of shared ownership that balances individual homeownership with collective stewardship of land, creating a mechanism for permanently affordable housing that serves communities across generations.
A community land trust is a nonprofit, community-based organization that acquires and holds land for the benefit of a community, providing secure, affordable access to land and housing for community residents who might otherwise be priced out of their neighborhoods. The fundamental innovation of the CLT model is the separation of land ownership from building ownership, with the trust retaining ownership of the land while individual homeowners purchase the structures built upon it.
Homeowners in a CLT purchase their homes at below-market prices and hold them through long-term ground leases, typically lasting 99 years and renewable, that grant them the same rights and responsibilities as conventional homeowners. They can live in their homes, renovate them, pass them to heirs, and build a degree of equity over time. The key difference is that when they sell, the resale price is limited by a formula written into the ground lease, ensuring that the home remains affordable to the next buyer.
The governance structure of a CLT typically includes a tripartite board of directors composed of CLT residents, community members from the surrounding neighborhood, and representatives of the broader public interest such as local officials, housing advocates, or financial professionals. This governance model ensures that the interests of residents, neighbors, and the broader community are all represented in organizational decision-making.
CLTs hold land in trust for the community permanently, meaning that the affordability created through initial public or philanthropic investment is preserved in perpetuity rather than expiring after a set period as happens with many other affordable housing programs. This permanence represents one of the most significant advantages of the CLT model over conventional approaches to affordable housing.
The legal structure of CLTs varies by jurisdiction but typically involves incorporation as a nonprofit organization with tax-exempt status, combined with ground lease agreements that establish the rights and obligations of both the trust and individual homeowners. This legal framework has been refined over decades of practice and is now well-established in housing law across many states.
History of the CLT Movement
The community land trust movement has deep roots in social justice traditions and has evolved from a small number of experimental projects into a widespread movement that continues to grow and adapt to new challenges.
The intellectual foundations of the CLT model draw from diverse sources including the single-tax movement associated with Henry George, which argued that land values created by community activity should benefit the community rather than individual landowners. This philosophical tradition informed early thinking about how land could be held in trust for collective benefit rather than treated as a private commodity.
The first community land trust in the United States, New Communities Inc., was founded in 1969 in Albany, Georgia, by civil rights leaders including Charles Sherrod and Slater King, a cousin of Martin Luther King Jr. New Communities was conceived as a way to provide African American farmers with secure access to land in the segregated South, reflecting the deep connection between land ownership, racial justice, and community self-determination that has animated the CLT movement from its beginning.
Robert Swann and the Institute for Community Economics played a pivotal role in developing the CLT model during the 1970s and 1980s, publishing foundational texts, providing technical assistance to emerging CLTs, and refining the legal and organizational structures that define the modern CLT. The Institute’s work helped spread the model from its origins in the rural South to urban communities across the country.
The Burlington Community Land Trust, founded in 1984 with the support of then-Mayor Bernie Sanders, became one of the earliest and most influential urban CLTs. Its success in creating permanently affordable housing in a rapidly gentrifying city demonstrated the viability of the CLT model in urban contexts and inspired the creation of dozens of similar organizations in cities across the country. It later merged with another organization to form the Champlain Housing Trust, one of the largest CLTs in the nation.
International adoption of the CLT model has expanded the movement beyond the United States, with CLTs now operating in the United Kingdom, Belgium, Australia, Canada, Kenya, and other countries. Each adaptation reflects local housing conditions and legal frameworks while maintaining the core principles of community land ownership and permanent affordability.
The growth of the CLT movement has accelerated significantly in recent years as the affordable housing crisis has intensified and policymakers have sought proven solutions. New CLTs are being formed in communities of all sizes while existing CLTs are expanding their portfolios and diversifying their activities beyond single-family homeownership.
How CLTs Work
The operational mechanics of community land trusts involve a set of interconnected practices around land acquisition, home development, homeowner selection, ground lease administration, and resale management that together create and maintain permanently affordable housing.
Land acquisition is the foundational activity of any CLT, involving the purchase or donation of land that will be held permanently for community benefit. CLTs acquire land through market purchases funded by grants, public subsidies, or donations; through donations from government agencies, religious institutions, or private landowners; through inclusionary zoning requirements that mandate affordable housing in new developments; or through tax-foreclosure processes that allow communities to reclaim abandoned or tax-delinquent properties.
Home development on CLT land can take many forms, including new construction, rehabilitation of existing structures, and conversion of rental housing to CLT homeownership. CLTs may develop homes directly using in-house construction capacity, partner with private developers or housing authorities, or work with owner-builders who construct or renovate their own homes with CLT support.
Homeowner selection processes ensure that CLT homes are sold to households that meet income eligibility requirements and are prepared for the responsibilities of homeownership. Selection typically involves income verification, homebuyer education, credit counseling, and mortgage readiness assessment, with preferences often given to current neighborhood residents, first-time homebuyers, and households with connections to the community.
The ground lease is the legal document that governs the relationship between the CLT and individual homeowners, establishing the rights and responsibilities of each party. The lease grants the homeowner the right to occupy and use the land, build equity in their home, and pass the home to heirs, while requiring the homeowner to maintain the property, live in the home as their primary residence, and accept limitations on the resale price when they choose to sell.
Resale formula design is one of the most important and complex aspects of CLT operations, requiring a balance between affordability for future buyers and equity-building for current owners. Most CLTs use formulas that allow homeowners to recapture their down payment, the value of any approved improvements, and a share of market appreciation, while ensuring that the majority of appreciation remains with the home to keep it affordable for the next buyer.
Stewardship and ongoing support distinguish CLTs from programs that simply provide one-time subsidies and move on. CLTs maintain relationships with homeowners throughout their tenure, providing financial counseling, maintenance guidance, and assistance with challenges that might threaten homeownership stability. This stewardship role helps explain why CLT homeowners experience foreclosure rates dramatically lower than those of conventional homeowners.
Affordability Mechanisms
Community land trusts employ several interconnected mechanisms to create and maintain housing affordability, each contributing to a system that keeps homes within reach of working families over the long term.
The separation of land and building costs is the primary affordability mechanism, as homebuyers in a CLT purchase only the structure rather than both the structure and the land beneath it. Since land costs represent a significant and often growing portion of total housing costs, removing land from the purchase price makes homeownership accessible to households that could not afford market-rate housing. The homeowner pays a modest monthly ground lease fee to the CLT for use of the land, but this fee is typically far less than the mortgage payment that would be required to purchase the land outright.
Resale restrictions embedded in the ground lease ensure that the affordability created through initial subsidies or below-market land costs is preserved when homes are sold, rather than allowing individual homeowners to capture the full market appreciation and sell at prices that are no longer affordable. These restrictions represent the core innovation that makes CLT affordability permanent rather than temporary.
Initial subsidy retention means that public or philanthropic funds invested in creating affordable CLT homes remain working for the community indefinitely, rather than flowing to individual homeowners as windfall profits when they sell. This dramatically improves the efficiency of affordable housing investment, as each dollar invested continues to support affordability across multiple generations of homeowners rather than subsidizing a single household for a limited period.
Shared equity arrangements allow homeowners to build wealth through homeownership while sharing a portion of appreciation with the trust, creating a balance that supports both individual financial advancement and community affordability goals. Research shows that CLT homeowners build meaningful equity through their homeownership experience, though less than they would in unrestricted market conditions.
Pre-purchase counseling and financial preparation help prospective homeowners understand CLT homeownership, develop realistic budgets, improve credit scores, and secure appropriate mortgage financing. This preparation contributes to affordability by ensuring that homeowners enter into sustainable mortgage arrangements and are prepared for the financial responsibilities of homeownership.
Post-purchase stewardship helps homeowners maintain their homes and manage their finances effectively, preventing the deferred maintenance and financial distress that can lead to foreclosure and loss of affordable housing. CLTs often provide access to home repair programs, financial counseling, and intervention services that help homeowners navigate challenges before they become crises.
Community Governance
The governance structures of community land trusts embody democratic principles that give residents and community members meaningful voice in decisions about land use, housing policy, and neighborhood development.
The tripartite board structure that characterizes most CLTs ensures balanced representation by dividing board seats equally among three constituencies: CLT homeowners and residents, community members from the surrounding neighborhood, and individuals representing the broader public interest. This structure prevents any single constituency from dominating organizational decisions while ensuring that the perspectives of those most directly affected by CLT activities are always represented.
Resident participation extends beyond board representation to include community meetings, resident committees, and input processes that give CLT homeowners and tenants opportunities to shape organizational policies, development plans, and community programs. Active resident participation builds community cohesion while ensuring that CLT activities reflect the actual needs and priorities of the people they serve.
Neighborhood engagement connects the CLT to the broader community, building support for CLT activities while ensuring that non-resident neighbors have voice in decisions that affect their neighborhood. Community engagement might include neighborhood planning processes, public meetings, partnership with neighborhood associations, and participation in local civic activities.
Democratic decision-making processes within CLTs model the kind of community governance that the CLT movement seeks to promote more broadly. Transparent budgeting, open meetings, accessible communications, and inclusive decision-making processes demonstrate that complex housing organizations can be governed democratically while maintaining operational effectiveness.
Membership structures allow community members to formally affiliate with the CLT, gaining voting rights and participation opportunities that strengthen organizational accountability and community connection. Membership often includes both CLT residents and community supporters who share the organization’s mission but do not live in CLT housing.
Community organizing activities conducted by many CLTs go beyond housing to address broader neighborhood concerns including economic development, public safety, environmental quality, and civic engagement. This community organizing role reflects the CLT movement’s origins in social justice activism and its understanding that affordable housing is one component of broader community well-being.
CLT Success Stories
Community land trusts across the country have demonstrated remarkable success in creating affordable housing, stabilizing neighborhoods, and empowering communities, providing models that other communities can learn from and adapt.
The Champlain Housing Trust in Burlington, Vermont, has grown into one of the largest and most comprehensive CLTs in the country, managing over 700 homes and 2,300 rental units while providing a wide range of community services including homebuyer education, financial counseling, and energy efficiency programs. Its success over four decades demonstrates the long-term viability and scalability of the CLT model in an urban context.
Dudley Neighbors Inc. in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood represents a powerful example of community-led land trusting in a historically disinvested neighborhood, with residents using eminent domain authority to reclaim vacant land and create affordable housing, community gardens, and public spaces in a community that had been devastated by arson, abandonment, and disinvestment. The Dudley Street neighborhood’s transformation demonstrates the potential of CLTs to drive comprehensive community revitalization.
The Sawmill Community Land Trust in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was created by residents of a neighborhood threatened by industrial contamination and gentrification, demonstrating how CLTs can address environmental justice concerns alongside affordable housing needs. The trust has developed affordable homes, a community center, and open spaces while advocating for environmental cleanup and protection.
Proud Ground in Portland, Oregon, has developed a robust CLT program that serves a diverse population of first-time homebuyers while building a portfolio of permanently affordable homes across the metropolitan area. Proud Ground’s emphasis on homebuyer preparation and ongoing stewardship has resulted in very low foreclosure rates and strong homeowner satisfaction.
The South Florida Community Land Trust has demonstrated the adaptability of the CLT model to rapidly appreciating markets where affordable housing needs are particularly acute. Operating in one of the most expensive housing markets in the country, this CLT has created and preserved affordable homeownership opportunities for families who would otherwise be priced out entirely.
These success stories share common elements including strong community engagement, skilled organizational leadership, supportive public policy, and sustained commitment to the principle that housing is a basic need that should not be left entirely to market forces.
Commercial and Community Space
While community land trusts are best known for residential housing, many CLTs have expanded their activities to include commercial properties, community facilities, and other non-residential uses that contribute to neighborhood vitality and economic opportunity.
Commercial CLT properties provide affordable space for small businesses, social enterprises, and community-serving organizations that might otherwise be displaced by rising commercial rents. By holding commercial land in trust and leasing it at below-market rates, CLTs help maintain the small businesses and service providers that contribute to neighborhood character and economic diversity.
Community facilities including community centers, child care facilities, health clinics, and cultural spaces can be developed on CLT land, ensuring that essential community services have permanent, affordable homes in the neighborhoods they serve. These facilities provide gathering spaces that strengthen social connections and community identity.
Urban agriculture and community gardens on CLT land provide opportunities for food production, environmental education, and community building while preserving open space in densely developed neighborhoods. CLTs can ensure that community garden space is protected from development pressure and remains available for community use permanently.
Mixed-use developments that combine affordable housing with ground-floor commercial or community space allow CLTs to create vibrant, walkable neighborhoods where residents can access services, employment, and social opportunities without leaving their communities. These developments reflect the understanding that healthy neighborhoods require more than housing alone.
Creative economy spaces including artist studios, maker spaces, and performance venues can be preserved through CLT ownership, protecting the cultural assets that contribute to neighborhood identity and creative vitality. As gentrification displaces creative communities from urban neighborhoods, CLTs offer a mechanism for preserving affordable creative space.
Nonprofit facility ownership through CLTs provides community organizations with permanent, affordable homes that protect them from displacement and allow them to invest in their facilities with confidence. This stability supports organizational effectiveness while maintaining the community services that these organizations provide.
Racial Equity and CLTs
The community land trust movement has deep roots in the struggle for racial justice, and contemporary CLTs are increasingly intentional about addressing the racial dimensions of housing inequality and neighborhood disinvestment.
Historical context is essential for understanding the relationship between CLTs and racial equity. Centuries of racially discriminatory housing policies including slavery, sharecropping, redlining, restrictive covenants, urban renewal, and predatory lending have systematically denied communities of color access to land ownership and wealth building while concentrating poverty and disinvestment in neighborhoods where people of color live. CLTs were conceived in part as a response to these injustices.
Wealth-building opportunities for communities of color are created through CLT homeownership, which provides families who have been historically excluded from homeownership with access to stable, affordable housing and the opportunity to build equity. While CLT resale restrictions limit the amount of equity homeowners can accumulate, they also protect against the predatory lending and market volatility that have disproportionately harmed homeowners of color.
Anti-displacement strategies are critical in neighborhoods where communities of color face gentrification pressure, and CLTs provide one of the most effective tools for ensuring that long-term residents can remain in their neighborhoods as property values rise. By holding land in trust and maintaining affordable housing, CLTs help stabilize neighborhoods against the displacement that gentrification typically produces.
Community control of land represents a form of self-determination that has particular significance for communities whose relationship to land has been shaped by dispossession, forced removal, and systematic exclusion from property ownership. CLTs return a measure of community control over land use and neighborhood development to communities that have historically been subject to decisions made by others.
Culturally responsive programming recognizes that effective outreach, education, and support services must be designed to meet the specific needs and preferences of the communities being served. CLTs committed to racial equity ensure that their programs are accessible, culturally appropriate, and responsive to the historical experiences and current realities of communities of color.
Organizational diversity and inclusion within CLTs themselves, including diverse staff, leadership, and board membership, helps ensure that organizational cultures, priorities, and practices reflect the communities being served. CLTs committed to racial equity invest in recruitment, training, and organizational development practices that build diverse, inclusive organizations.
Challenges and Growth
Despite their demonstrated effectiveness, community land trusts face significant challenges that must be addressed to enable continued growth and impact, ranging from financing obstacles to public understanding gaps.
Financing challenges arise because the CLT model does not fit neatly into conventional real estate financing structures. Lenders may be unfamiliar with ground lease arrangements, secondary market investors may be reluctant to purchase mortgages on CLT properties, and the resale restrictions that create permanent affordability can be perceived as limiting collateral value. While significant progress has been made in developing CLT-compatible financing products, continued work is needed to ensure that CLT homebuyers have access to fair and appropriate mortgage options.
Scale limitations affect many CLTs that operate with small staffs and limited budgets, restricting their ability to acquire land, develop homes, and provide stewardship services at a scale commensurate with community need. Growing to scale requires investment in organizational capacity, staff development, and operational systems that enable CLTs to manage larger portfolios while maintaining their community-centered values.
Public awareness and understanding of the CLT model remains limited in many communities, creating challenges for both political support and homebuyer recruitment. Many potential homebuyers are unfamiliar with the CLT concept and may be skeptical of arrangements that limit their equity accumulation. Public education campaigns that explain the benefits of CLT homeownership and the track record of existing CLTs are essential for continued growth.
Policy support at local, state, and federal levels is critical for CLT growth but varies widely across jurisdictions. Some communities have created supportive policy environments including dedicated funding streams, land donation programs, inclusionary zoning requirements, and tax exemptions for CLT properties. Others lack these supports, requiring CLTs to operate without the institutional backing that enables their most effective work.
Land acquisition costs in high-demand markets present particular challenges, as CLTs must compete with private developers for available land while relying on subsidies and donations that may not keep pace with rising land values. Creative land acquisition strategies including public land disposition, land banking, and community fundraising are essential for CLTs operating in expensive markets.
Climate resilience and environmental sustainability are emerging priorities for CLTs as climate change creates new challenges for affordable housing. CLTs are increasingly incorporating energy efficiency, renewable energy, and climate-resilient design into their housing developments while developing strategies for protecting CLT homes and communities from climate-related hazards.
The Path Forward
Expanding the reach and impact of community land trusts requires concerted action by policymakers, funders, community organizations, and advocates to create conditions that enable this proven model to serve more communities and address the affordable housing crisis at a meaningful scale.
Federal policy support could dramatically accelerate CLT growth through dedicated funding for CLT land acquisition and development, favorable treatment of CLT properties in federal housing programs, and support for CLT capacity building and technical assistance. Legislative and regulatory changes that recognize and accommodate the unique characteristics of the CLT model would remove barriers that currently limit CLT growth.
State and local policy innovation should include dedicated funding streams for CLT activities, community land banking programs that channel publicly owned land to CLTs, inclusionary zoning requirements that create CLT homeownership opportunities in new developments, and tax policies that support CLT affordability while maintaining public services.
Philanthropic investment in CLTs should include both project funding for land acquisition and development and capacity-building support for organizational development, staff training, and systems improvement. Long-term, flexible funding that allows CLTs to grow strategically is more valuable than short-term project grants that address immediate needs without building lasting capacity.
Research and evaluation must continue to document CLT outcomes and impacts, providing evidence that supports advocacy and policymaking while identifying best practices for CLT operations and governance. Research should examine both the housing outcomes achieved by CLTs and the broader community impacts of CLT activity.
Technical assistance and peer learning networks connect CLTs with the expertise and shared experience needed to operate effectively while adapting the model to diverse community contexts. National and regional networks provide training, consulting, and peer exchange opportunities that strengthen individual CLTs while advancing the movement as a whole.
Community education and outreach must build understanding of and support for the CLT model among potential homebuyers, community members, policymakers, and the general public. Storytelling that highlights the experiences of CLT homeowners and the impact of CLTs on neighborhoods can build the popular support needed to expand the model.
The Rissover Foundation supports community land trusts because they represent a proven, community-driven approach to one of the most pressing challenges of our time. The affordable housing crisis will not be solved by market forces alone, nor by government programs that create temporary affordability without lasting structural change. Community land trusts offer a different path, one that treats land as a community resource rather than a speculative commodity, that empowers residents to shape their own neighborhoods, and that creates affordable housing that endures across generations. The family that purchases their first home through a CLT, the neighborhood that resists displacement through community land ownership, and the young person who grows up in a stable, affordable home all demonstrate the transformative potential of this model. When we invest in community land trusts, we invest in the principle that every family deserves a stable, affordable place to call home, and that communities themselves are the most reliable stewards of that promise.
Learn More
To learn more about community land trusts and affordable housing solutions, visit: