Community land trusts are quite important in preserving affordable housing stock in a given area. A community land trust (CLT) is an independent nonprofit organization that is created to oversee affordable housing and preserve it for future generations.
The CLT owns the underlying land and sells the houses to individual homeowners at affordable prices. The CLT also leases land to affordable rental housing developers and restricts the rents they charge through a ground lease.
RSG works with land trusts to assist with financial and market analysis and to help further our clients’ missions. Clients seek to have enough affordable housing to enable people to live and work in the city.
One specific client that we work with is the Irvine Community Land Trust. Currently the ICLT is leasing many units for affordable rental housing and is working with its current partners to develop many rental units.
According to the ICLT website, the CLT model of homeownership is growing rapidly. There are more than 5,000 CLT homes under stewardship by nearly 200 different land trusts in the United States today. More and more communities are turning to CLTs as a means of providing permanently affordable homeownership. The CLT model balances the interests of individual homeowners in housing stability and equity generation with the public interest in preserving public resources. CLTs also address the needs of renters by ensuring permanent affordability of rental housing units.
Written by Andrew Gee, a Senior Associate at RSG.