Do Community Land Trusts Offer The Best Solution For Affordable Housing?

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy has published a new report of the community land trust movement that offers valuable insight into the use of these organizations to develop low- and moderate-income housing.

"The community land trust (CLT) is one mechanism that addresses [the] need for affordable housing, and it also can be considered an institutional mechanism for capturing socially produced land value. The CLT is typically a private, nonprofit corporation that acquires and parcels in a targeted geographic area with the intention of retaining ownership of the land for the long term. The CLT then provides for the private use of the land through long-term ground lease agreements. The leaseholders may own their homes or other improvements on the leased land, but resale restrictions apply. In theory, the CLT removes the cost of land from the housing price by separating ownership of the land from that of the house or other improvements."

"The CLT movement is relatively new. According to a national survey of CLTs, most were formed over the last 20 years, with the pace of CLT formation increasing in the last decade."