Ethical action in the age of austerity: cases of care in two community land trusts

Abstract

As social housing diminishes in the U.S., community land trusts have tried to adapt to the age of austerity, growing in numbers and expanding their terrain. We argue their continued success and growth greatly depends on enacting—to borrow from Gibson-Graham et al. ( 2019)—matters of care. These include all ethical and experimental actions taken to repair worlds in crises. We study two community land trusts that emerged two decades ago and argue that their work is based on two braided strands of care: care for people and care for place. The efforts of these community land trusts are varied and evolving, as they work closely with their contexts over time, combatting displacement, and responding to place-based crises through experimentation and the nurturing of community ties. This article challenges mechanistic accounts which attribute the success of community land trusts not to the care they enact but to the shared-equity organizational model.