Community Land Trusts
Combining Two Models
In 2022, people with experience as board members and tenants at BCLiving came together with other community members to begin planning a new, volunteer-run organization that would build on BCLiving’s success.
Avalon Community Land Trust, for its first project, will combine the Community Land Trust model with that of group-equity cooperative housing. Group equity co-ops function similarly to rental housing, creating options for 1-year or long-term affordable and flexible tenancy, but without a landlord extracting profits from the rent. At the same time, the Avalon CLT owns the land and holds it, keeping it permanently affordable and outside the speculative real-estate market.
The first project of the ACLT is a new mini-cooperative house built to complement a long-time community garden of the site. Residents will live together and share the tending of the house and garden, with collective cpntrol over the maintenance of the house and property.
Our goal was to take lessons from BCLiving, but create a more flexible and scalable affordable housing model that also incorporates features of the traditional to community land trusts.
Traditional Community Land Trust Model:
Community Land Trusts are formed for many purposes and take many forms to enable the goals of their founders. A Community Land Trust (CLT) is an organization (usually non-profit) that owns and develops land, but separates the ownership of the land from the ownership of the buildings on it.
Individuals or organizations can own buildings on CLT land for various uses, including housing. Building owners or users sign a long-term (often 99 years) renewable land lease with the CLT, which limits the sales price of the buildings, thus allowing owners to build equity but also keeping the land (and buildings) permanently affordable.
At the same time, a community-representative board manages the CLT organization in the interest of the community. The Board is often divided into three voting blocks that include CLT land residents, CLT neighbors, and representatives of the broader public interest.
This model has historically been used to allow low-income residents to access home ownership, to build equity, and to ensure community control of equitable development and the permanent affordability of the properties.
In short:
The Community Land Trust acquires land and develops the property, usually housing.
A low-income resident applies to the land trust and purchases the house - but not the underlying land - which remains with the land trust.
Through the land-lease, the land trust and the buyer covenant the maximum sale price of the house, preventing speculative sales, and maintaining affordability in perpetuity.
Most importantly this process allows low-income home buyers to build equity - an important aspect of building wealth - and to ultimately enter the conventional housing market if they wish to do so.
