Bloomington Cooperative Living

Building Community

Roots to Fruit

Our Roots

The Avalon Community Land Trust grows out of relationships and experiences rooted in Bloomington’s long history of collective living and community building. Our leadership team of volunteer board members brings skills, inspiration, and lessons from a diverse range of projects and organizations   

Experience organizing with and living in cooperative housing are a major inspiration for the creation of ACLT, which we created to complement BCLiving’s important work building community through low-cost housing.

Avalon Garden is a 15 year old community permaculture garden and gathering place that provides the site of ACLT’s first cooperative house. On our board includes community members who have tended the garden since the earliest days of the project.

Bloomington has many organizations created to advocate for a just climate transition, and their collaborative work culminated in a 2019 day long festival of marches, speakers that culminating in festive occupation of city hall, protesting sluggish and unserious response by the City and the country. Some of us first met during those shared meals and conversations that led to the 2019 festival.  

The Center for Sustainable Living (CSL) is a Bloomington institution of environmental community work started more than 20 years ago. For nearly a decade, several ACLT board members have led CSL projects and served on the CSL board. We bring experience from projects such as the Overlook Community Center, the Glenn Carter Memorial Toolshare Space and The Neighborhood Planting Project.

Our volunteer leadership brings professional skills in architecture and urban planning (in both the US and Brazil) as well as decades of Bloomington nonprofit work. We hope that we can combine these hard skills with many of our lived experiences as Bloomington residents who struggle to find adequate housing.  

 Making ends meet in Bloomington is a constant challenge that is only becoming more difficult. The relentless efforts of Bloomington communities to care for each other in spite of economic challenges is inspiring. We plan to use the lessons we’ve learned over the years to adapt to and shape our shifting housing landscape, and meet the challenges together.