Deepening stewardship: resident engagement in community land trusts

Abstract

Community land trusts (CLTs) are gaining ground as a model that effectively creates community control of property for permanently affordable housing and community development. Resident engagement, however, is crucial for the success of CLTs. In this study, we examine six well-established CLTs to gain an understanding of how their resident engagement practices reproduce stewardship that challenges the conventional private market approach to property ownership. While broadly sweeping resident awareness and explicit buy-in to the cause of disrupting the neoliberal paradigm of property ownership may be optimal, it is not necessary in order for the CLT to provide a transformational alternative to private market prescriptions for land use, tenure arrangements, and individualized property ownership. Transformation can be achieved through pursuit of three inextricably-linked objectives (resident betterment, community control of land, and asset preservation) for intensifying stewardship.