How do CLTs relate to limited equity housing co-ops?
Co-op housing is owned by a corporation that is controlled by the people who live in the housing. Thus co-op residents do not own their homes individually, but each household owns a share in the corporation and has a proprietary lease to their own apartment. When a residents want to move away, they can sell their share - and their rights as co-op residents - to another buyer. In the case of limited-equity co-ops, the price for which shares can be sold is limited by the corporate bylaws to keep the housing affordable. (In market rate co-ops, shares can be sold for whatever the market will bear.)
Some CLTs, like the Burlington CLT, CATCH ( Concord, New Hampshire), and the New Columbia CLT (Washington, DC) have developed limited equity housing co-ops on land leased from the CLT. These CLTs can provide important support services to the co-ops, and the land lease can help to ensure long-term affordability by requiring that restrictions on the sale of shares remain in place.
How are CLTs different from conservation land trusts? Both CLTs and conservation land trusts control land use for the benefit of people in the future as well as the present, but they are primarily concerned with different types and uses of land. Conservation trusts are concerned with controlling rights to undeveloped land to preserve open space, ecologically fragile or unique environments, wilderness, or productive forest or agricultural land. CLTs, on the other hand, are mainly concerned with acquiring developed or developable land for specific community uses - particularly residential use. These concerns are not mutually exclusive, and some land trusts, notably in Vermont, combine these purposes, preserving some land in a natural state while leasing other land for development.
