Keeping "Community" in a Community Land Trust

Abstract

This instrumental case study examined the role of grassroots community in a community land trust (CLT) in a southern U.S. city. Twenty-nine homeowners, renters, board members, community members, and current and former CLT employees were interviewed. addition, two focus groups of 11 and six participants composed of CLT residents and other neighborhood residents were conducted. All comments were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using NVivo software. Analysis revealed that community was helpful if not necessary for community building in the subject CLT. This study enhances our knowledge of CLTs and the ways they contribute community change and offers lessons learned other, especially budding, CLTs. KEY WORDS: affordable housing; community land trusts; community ********** The primary focus of community land trusts (CLTs) is affordable housing for individuals and communities. the classic CLT model, a low-income individual or family becomes a member of the CLT, buys a house in the CLT, and leases the land on which the house sits from the CLT. A primary concern of the CLT is ownership for the common good rather than what is best for individuals (Krinsky & Hovde, 1996). Thus, CLTs offer a unique form of community development. Although the primary focus of CLTs is affordable housing, it is important understand that they are also meant meet other core principles outlined by the National Community Land Trust network, including to increase long-term community control of neighborhood resources [and] empower residents through involvement and participation in the (National Community Land Trust Network, n.d., para. 2). An article-length overview of CLTs is available (Gray, 2008), as is a book-length document (Davis, 2006) for readers who wish learn more about CLTs. There have been very few empirical studies of CLTs, and there is even less in the literature on the role of community in CLTs. The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative used community quite effectively build its organization and empower its residents; most notably, the city of Boston granted them the authority of eminent domain, and they remain the only nonprofit in the country hold this power (Medoff & Sklar, 1994). Other research on CLTs has not specifically discussed community (Angotti, 2007; Davis & Demetrowitz, 2003; Davis & Stokes, 2009; Krinsky & Hovde, 1996; Packnett, 2005). A 2007 survey of CLTs asked one question regarding community organizing, framed as organizing (Sungu-Eryilmaz & Greenstein, 2007). Three of 120 CLTs reported anti-crime as a major component of their program activities, and 23 reported it was a minor component. Also examined was the involvement of the CLT in advocacy, which was not defined (and policy advocacy may or may not involve community organizing). More CLTs than not were involved in policy advocacy: 23 reported it as a major component, and 58 reported it as a minor one. There are nonempirical accounts of CLTs using community organizing. For example, the Sawmill CLT in Albuquerque, New Mexico, formed out of a long history of community against nearby factory pollution (Davis, 2006). Although community is not the only means achieve the core principles of long-term community control and empowerment of residents that the National Community Land Trust Network endorses, it is certainly a proven model for doing so. Community has a long, solid history of teaching people how gain power achieve the changes they want and need (Rubin & Rubin, 2008). Community builds leaders and relationships, empowers individuals, and creates organizations that act for social change (Bobo, Kendall, & Max, 1991; Kahn, 1991; Rubin & Rubin, 2008). In the United States community development stands in stark contrast community organizing (Stoecker, 2003, p. …