WHAT IS A COMMUNITY LAND TRUST?

A community land trust is a nonprofit organization that acquires and stewards land in trust for the permanent benefit of low-income communities. This community-controlled land can be put to a wide variety of uses, including homeownership, rental, and cooperative housing, food production through community gardens and urban agriculture, commercial space, and more.

WHY A CLT IN OAKLAND?

Oakland-Fremont MSA: Land v. Housing Structure Values, 1984Q4-2014Q1

Community land trusts take a long view of community change and development. Just as conservation or open space land trusts aim to preserve wilderness forever, CLTs seek to ensure that our cities permanently support equitable housing opportunities and access to land for low-income residents, Black residents, and other communities of color that have been historically and systematically deprived of such access, ownership, and control.

By removing land from the market and holding it in perpetuity, a CLT buffers its housing and other land uses from the volatility of economic, environmental, and political crises that often disproportionately impact low-income residents and communities of color. Likewise, CLTs preserve affordability and access when rising rents and home prices in hot markets threaten the stability of vulnerable families.

In Oakland and the Bay Area, research shows that the value of land, rather than housing, is the primary driver of real estate booms and busts.

OakCLT BELIEVES IN THESE EQUITABLE DEVELOPMENT PRINCIPLES

Development without displacement, investment without disenfranchisement

Residents, not investors, should determine the future of their neighborhood. Redevelopment should not be synonymous with the replacement of low-income residents and uses with higher income ones.

Public action and public investment for public benefit

Development requires public approval and assistance and results in hidden and indirect costs for the public. The public should benefit from development for which it provides public assets or bears cost.

Public assets are the people’s assets

Residents have a right to the City. Cities are public assets and should be managed so that their burdens and benefits are distributed equitably.

Housing is a Human Right

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of [her]self and [her] family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood….”  —Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25

Community control of land use under resident leadership

Residents should not only have access to decision makers, they should become decision-makers. Residents should develop their understanding of land use and development so they can effectively represent community interests

Harness reinvestment as an engine for community health and development

Development should be a tool for achieving regional justice and equity. Development projects should be evaluated by asking: development of what, by whom, and to what end?

Long-term community vision and stewardship of community assets.

Work towards a long-term community vision and plan for stewardship of community assets. Adjust land control tools as contexts change so that they continue to serve the community.

CLT RESEARCH & RESOURCES