In 2016, Meidan “Abby” Lin, her husband and his mother, and the couple’s young son left Fuzhou, China, a bustling coastal city at the mouth of the Min River, for another port half a world away on the Charles River in Boston.
During nights in a cramped space that they shared with another family, Lin started dreaming of a place she could call her own. But Boston’s soaring real estate prices seemed to put that dream out of reach.
Then a friend told Lin about the Chinatown Community Land Trust.
The organization, which was selling apartments at discount prices, was just getting its start, but maybe it could help.
Credit: contributed
Credit: contributed
Community land trusts, many of them recently founded, are pursuing a novel solution to the nation’s affordable housing crisis: They’re buying their own properties to preserve them as affordable housing in perpetuity and give residents more say over what happens in quickly changing neighborhoods.
Credit: contributed
Credit: contributed
That mission has gained new urgency over the past year as homeowners reap the rewards of a red-hot real estate market while renters are hit with steep rent hikes, deepening the divide between the housing haves and have-nots.
“As neighborhoods change and gentrify really fast, the idea of having community control and having more say about how neighborhoods are changing and who’s going to be able to live in the neighborhood over time, from an affordability perspective, I think becomes really important,” says Beth Sorce, who works with community land trusts nationwide at the Grounded Solutions Network, an affordable housing advocacy group.
‘Breathing space’
Community land trusts have been around for decades, but the trend really began to accelerate after the 2008 recession.
Basically, land trusts raise money from donations, grants and government funds to buy property. Then they lease the house or apartment to a buyer well below market value, but the trust retains ownership of the land.
This way, occupants typically get an ownership stake in their homes. They build equity over time, but at a rate that is often capped at 1% or 2% a year.
The trust, which is governed democratically by residents and neighbors, can decide to whom the dwelling can be sold and at what price, usually through a covenant in the lease. This ensures the property remains affordable.
When Susan Saegert, a professor of environmental psychology at the City University of New York, compared homebuyers and renters with land trust homebuyers in several U.S. cities, she found that the land trust buyers were more likely to be minorities, especially single mothers.
Moreover, she found that they received all the social benefits of homeownership – stability and a sense of home – without as many costs.
One of the most striking findings was in survey data from Minneapolis, Saegert says. Freed from the stress of constantly worrying about the next rent hike or eviction, land trust homeowners there reported they had more time to pursue their passions.
“They have breathing space,” Saegert says. “They can now imagine a better life than before.”
Big challenges
In California, justice is what drives Jacqueline Rivera and her fellow housing activists in San Jose. In the heart of Silicon Valley, where even high-paid tech employees struggle to find housing, development was pushing out vibrant Black, Hispanic and immigrant neighborhoods.
In community conversations that Rivera and her colleagues held around the city in 2018, land trusts kept coming up. Rivera grabbed hold of the idea, and by 2020 she was heading up the South Bay Community Land Trust.
Success has not come easily, though.
By definition, land trusts do not make profits, and fundraising is the biggest challenge they face.
To buy their first property, a fourplex in downtown San Jose, they need to fundraise at least $1 million, on top of the half million dollars they need to pay professional staff and make the organization run. Speed is a problem, too. Developers snap up properties with cash in a matter of days, while the land trust moves “at the pace of community,” Rivera says.
Advocates stress that land trusts are just one tool in a broader approach to the affordability crisis, but it could be a more effective one with government help.
Sorce, of Grounded Solutions, says state and local governments should invest money in land trusts and change appraisal policies so land trust properties aren’t paying taxes based on their speculative value.
With or without such help, land trusts must innovate to succeed.
A dream becomes reality
Home ownership is just one aspect of the land trusts’ focus, says Sheldon Clark, who recently served as president of the board of the Douglass Community Land Trust in Washington, D.C.
The Douglass Community Land Trust, for instance, organized food drives during the pandemic and helps connect residents to credit unions, as many are unbanked. In Boston’s Chinatown, the land trust helped save a local park.
As for Lin, one day in September 2021 the three-bedroom walk-up on Oak Street was finally ready. After their long wait since moving from China, Lin and her family opened the door and walked in. They could hardly believe what they saw: three cozy bedrooms, a living room with big windows and a spacious kitchen.
Most of the apartments on Oak Street in Boston are priced from $600,000 to well over $1 million, according to Zillow. Chinatown Community Land Trust sold Lin and her husband their apartment for about $220,000.
Homeownership in Chinatown, Lin said, would not have been possible without the land trust.
“I’m here with my husband and my kids. I have my own family. That’s all that matters,” Ms. Lin says.
And six years after coming to America, it finally feels like her family has a home.
This story first appeared in The Christian Science Monitor. It is republished through the Solutions Journalism Network.
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