[LCCH] Community Land Trusts and cohousing

[Marganne Meyer]

Hello all..

Just got this interesting post to the national cohousing list. I'll
follow the conversation and post back to this list if it gets more
interesting. Perhaps invite the fellow who wrote this to join us.

BTW, the national cohousing group had a call for volunteers to work
on a 2-year project to develop a plan for affordable cohousing. I
asked about it further but got no reply. Not sure if it's in the
works or not. Not sure what 'affordability' means to them either.

Here's the post:

The man who wrote the post headed a Community Land Trust (CLT) back
in the 1970s and still receives info from the Lincoln Institute for
Land Policy. Pointed out that current cohousing practices pretty much
priced out people in low and moderate income bracket.

His suggestion:
As someone who headed a CLT back in the 1970s, it occurred to me that
this approach would be one strategy for assuring that cohousing
remains
affordable. While the CLT approach has its limitations, they need to be
weighed against the loss of economic diversity in our communities, a
loss both to the community and to the people who want to join but who
are, in effect, locked out.


"Origins of the Community Land Trust (CLT)

The community land trust, where buyers can purchase homes
eclusive of the cost of land, occupies some interesting space in the
context of the housing meltdown: CLTs, it turns out, are good for
neighborhood stabilization and have negligible foreclosure rates.
What's even more fascinating is that this is an idea a hundred years
in the making. This month, a new collection of essays, assembled for
the first time, trace the roots, evolution, and prospects of the
community land trust: The Community Land Trust Reader.
The essays - many of which have never before appeared in print,
and others written expressly for the volume - trace the intellectual
origins of an eclectic model of tenure that was shaped by the social
theories of Henry George, Ebenezer Howard, Ralph Borsodi, and Arthur
Morgan, and by social experiments like the Garden Cities of England
and the Gramdan villages of India. The community land trust arrived
quietly on the American scene in the late 1960s, an outgrowth of the
civil rights movement in the Deep South to help African-American
farmers gain access to agricultural land. It soon found many other
uses, including affordable housing and neighborhood revitalization,
as it spread to urban, suburban, and rural communities throughout the
country. By 2005, there were more than 200 CLTs, with a dozen new
ones being organized every year. Today, CLTs are operating in 45
states and the District of Columbia, and they are being introduced in
other countries including Canada, England, Scotland, Australia, and
Kenya.
"Community land trusts are at a critical turning point, and many
opportunities lie ahead," said Gregory K. Ingram, president of the
Lincoln Institute, which maintains a partnership with the National
CLT Network to support training and research on community land
trusts. "This book aptly frames an approach that can counter today's
tumult in housing markets and provide sustainable affordable housing."
"We've recently seen an immensely damaging housing bubble that
was built on speculation suddenly burst, with disastrous results not
just for our national economy, but for individual homeowners and
renters. Homes that are needed by working families are too often
priced beyond their reach - or pried from their grasp - by dramatic
rises and falls in real estate prices. The Community Land Trust
Reader show us there is a more equitable way of keeping land-based
resources available, affordable, and secure for people who need them
the most," said Bernie Sanders, the U.S. Senator from Vermont.
The editor of the volume, John Emmeus Davis, will be at Lincoln
House in Cambridge June 15 for a special event including remarks
followed by a reception and book-signing."

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Low Cost Community Housing" group.
To post to this group, send email to low-cost-comm...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to low-cost-community-...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/low-cost-community-housing?hl=en.