Why Use it?

Even in disinvested neighborhoods, concern about gentrification may be a major factor in the choice of the CLT model.  For low-income communities suffering from disinvestments, the primary goals are to sustain owner-occupancy and prevent a return to absentee ownership. For communities where property values are rising, as in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Burlington , Vermont , the primary goal is to limit resale prices so the homes will continue to be affordable for lower income households.

• CLTs can provide affordability protections in growing communities:
  
  In many communities today, population growth and economic investment are driving up real estate prices so that fewer low- and modest-income workers can afford to buy homes or rent in the communities where they work.  Limited public funds are available to subsidize housing costs for lower income households, but the gap between the amount of subsidy needed and the amount of subsidy available continues to widen as housing costs soar.
  
  To address this problem, community land trusts are being developed in a growing number of communities - in expanding metropolitan areas from Cleveland, Ohio to Portland, Oregon ; in university communities from State College, Pennsylvania, to Boulder, Colorado; and in expensive resort communities from the Florida Keys to the San Juan Islands of Washington State . These CLTs control housing costs by permanently limiting land costs and "locking in" subsidies so that they benefit one homeowner after another and do not need to be repeated each time a home is sold.
• CLTs can build community control in disinvested neighborhoods.
  
  As homeownership declines, older buildings are likely to be bought by absentee investors who allow the buildings to deteriorate while charging high rents. The rent paid to these absentee owners leaves the community. It is not saved by the residents, not spent in local stores, and not used to improve the housing or the community. When residents organize themselves to improve their neighborhood, the absentee owners then benefit from increased property values.
  
  Through a CLT, however, residents can capture the value they create to benefit their own community . When residents of Boston 's Dudley Street neighborhood organized to rebuild their community, they established a CLT so they would not lose control of what they worked to build. Their slogan was "Take a Stand, Own the Land."

CLTs provide flexible community development options
Many land uses are possible- from facilities for community services such as food banks, Legal Aid, Technology Centers , to local businesses, parks, and plazas, to gardening and fuel wood production in the case of some rural CLTs. 

Communities at both ends of the economic spectrum have established CLTs. Today a number of CLTs are being developed in areas characterized by new investment and rapid growth, where there is strong demand for housing and rapidly rising real estate prices.  These include both large metropolitan areas such as Portland , Oregon , where an ambitious citywide CLT is being launched, and many smaller areas of active economic growth. The Burlington , Vermont CLT has preserved more than 500 units of permanently affordable housing.  CLTs also reflect a noteworthy trend toward CLT development in prosperous university towns.

In many resort communities, the development of vacation and retirement homes on highly desirable but limited land is pricing local people out of the housing market.  A dramatic example exists in Wyoming , where the Jackson Hole Community Housing Trust is producing permanently affordable homeownership units in a community with an extreme scarcity of developable private land. Much of the workforce is forced to commute long distances from outside the area.  Another place where limited land supply increases the value of land trusts are island communities. 

Communities characterized by high-priced housing markets and gentrification are not the only ones that have organized CLTs to address their problems.  CLTs have been established in low-income neighborhoods that have suffered from disinvestment, absentee ownership, and the physical deterioration that results from these trends.  In these situations the most immediate goals involve fighting absentee ownership, promoting homeownership for lower income residents and improving the physical condition of neighborhoods.  The CLT model gives such communities long-term control over new or rehabilitated homeownership units, assuring that when the units are resold they will not revert to absentee ownership and deteriorate once again.  These efforts stand in marked contrasts to public redevelopment efforts that utilize eminent domain to funnel land and housing into university or private commercial enterprises that frequently displace longtime residents. 

CLTs relevant in diverse applications

Dudley Neighbors, Inc., holds all of the land redeveloped as a result of the organizing and planning efforts of Bostons Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative.
The Durham Community Land Trustees developed a community-controlled organizing and redevelopment effort in a low-income neighborhood adjacent to upscale areas around Duke University.
In the District of Columbia, New Columbia Community Land Trust has worked for a decade to develop affordable resident controlled housing in areas of northwest Washington where qentrification interminqles with disinvestments.

Environmental concerns can also inspire the development of land trusts. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, activists in the Sawmill Neighborhood struggled for a decade to eliminate the industrial pollution that was undermining the health of their working class community.  When the community won the opportunity to control the redevelopment of 27 acres of previously industrial land adjacent to their neighborhood, they formed a community land trust to make sure that the affordable housing they developed would remain affordable for low-income residents.  Economic development opportunities created on this land benefit local residents.