Community Land Trusts

Acquiring Land for the Community.
Sometimes CLTs acquire vacant land and arrange for the development of housing or other structures on it. At other times, CLTs acquire land and buildings together. In both cases, CLTs treat land and buildings differently. The land is held permanently by the land trust so that it will always benefit the community. Buildings can be owned by those who use them.

Homeownership on Community Land.
Buildings on CLT land may serve different needs, but, when possible, CLTs help people to own their own homes on this land. When a CLT sells homes, it leases the underlying land to the homeowners through a long-term (usually 99-year) renewable lease, which gives the residents and their descendants the right to use the land for as long as they wish to live there.

Still Affordable for the Next Homeowners.
When CLT homeowners decide to move out of their homes, they can sell them. However, the land lease requires that the home be sold either back to the CLT or to another lower income household, and for an affordable price.

How do property taxes work?
Residents pay property taxes on their homes if they own them. CLTs usually pay taxes on their landholdings, with the cost usually covered by lease fees from those using the land. (CLTs and their residents can request reduced property tax assessments based on the resale value of the home as determined by the CLT’s resale formula rather than what would otherwise be the market value of the property.)

        How do CLTs relate to limited equity housing co-ops?
Co-op housing is owned by a corporation that is controlled by the people who live in the housing. Thus co-op residents do not own their homes individually, but each household owns a share in the corporation and has a "proprietary lease" to their own apartment. When a household wants to move away, they can sell their share — and their rights as co-op residents — to another buyer. In the case of "limited-equity" co-ops, the price for which shares can be sold is limited by the corporate bylaws to keep the housing affordable. (In "market rate" co-ops, shares can be sold for whatever the market will
bear.)

Some CLTs, like the Burlington CLT, have developed limited equity co-ops on land leased from the CLT. These CLTs can provide important support services to the co-ops, and the land lease can help to ensure long-term affordability by requiring that restrictions on the sale of shares remain in place.

How are CLTs different from conservation land trusts?
Both CLTs and conservation land trusts control land use for the benefit of people in the future as well as the present, but they are primarily concerned with different types and uses of land. Conservation trusts are concerned with controlling rights to undeveloped land to preserve open space, ecologically fragile or unique environments, wilderness, or productive forest or agricultural land. CLTs, on the other hand, are mainly concerned with acquiring developed or developable land for specific community uses — particularly residential use. These concerns are not mutually exclusive, and some land trusts, notably in Vermont, combine these purposes, preserving some land in a natural state while leasing other land for development.

                    Return to the Executive Summary of the Business Plan for
Prospective Homeowners Association

               References: Institute for Community Economics: Community Land Trust