Pittsburgh Tries to Get Ahead of Gentrification with Community Land Trust

For decades, Pittsburgh has been a city more associated with decline than gentrification, but the city's Lawrenceville neighborhood has seen that tide turn. "It’d already been named a world-class 'hipster neighborhood' in 2014, and home prices have tripled there over the past 15 years," Malcolm Burnley writes in a story for Next City. To make sure that Pittsburgh has the affordable housing in changing times, a group of citizens is coming together to create a community land trust.

A community land trust, or CLT, is a tool used to slow down the forces that push residents out of gentrifying neighborhoods. "Essentially, CLTs are community-controlled nonprofits that acquire parcels of land — either through municipal land banks or other inexpensive means — and maintain them at an affordable price for people in the neighborhood, such as families looking to rent or buy homes at below-market-rate prices, in perpetuity," Brunley explains. While this is the first CLT in Pittsburgh, there are already "250 communities nationwide have a CLT," the article tells us.