CLTs around the world

Frequently asked questions · 11 questions

CLTs around the world

Where community land trusts are, how they differ from country to country, and the national networks that support them, from the United States and Europe to Latin America, Africa and Asia.

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How many CLTs are there, and where are they?

The CLT Center’s CLT Map and Directory counted 627 community land trusts worldwide as of November 2024, in at least 14 countries. For the first time, there were more CLTs outside the United States than within it. Most are in North America and Europe, and CLTs are taking root in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Counts vary because there is no single registry and networks use different definitions. Some studies also count CLTs together with other kinds of shared equity housing. The Map is the most complete listing we know of. If you know of a CLT that is missing, tell us.

The Map includes organizations that are legally incorporated, identify as a CLT or operate like one, hold land or have a project close to acquiring it, and hold that land in trust for people of modest means. It also includes France’s organismes de foncier solidaire. National networks keep their own directories using somewhat different criteria, so their counts do not always match ours.

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How do CLTs differ from country to country?

The core idea travels: a community-based organization holds land for the long term and separates its ownership from the buildings on it. Almost everything else adapts to local law, history and need. Some countries have written CLTs into national law, as England and Wales did in 2008 and France did with its organismes de foncier solidaire. Elsewhere CLTs use whatever legal forms are at hand, such as charities, cooperatives, foundations or trusts.

Who starts them differs too. In England many began in villages; in Belgium, with city and regional governments; in Canada, with housing cooperatives; in Puerto Rico and Brazil, in informal settlements. Some CLTs mainly sell homes, others rent them, and others hold land for farms or community buildings. On Common Ground describes CLTs in every region, and the questions below give a short guide to each.

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What are CLTs like in the United States?

The United States has the longest history and several hundred CLTs, in cities, suburbs, small towns and rural areas. Most focus on permanently affordable homeownership, often in partnership with local governments, and many also own rental housing or hold land for gardens and community buildings. The largest is the Champlain Housing Trust in Burlington, Vermont.

Grounded Solutions Network is the national network, and there are state and regional networks in California, Greater Boston, Minnesota, New York City and the Northwest. See CLT Networks, our Case Studies and the US State Law Database.

A 2022 census of U.S. CLTs and other shared equity programs found them in 46 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., with the most in California, Washington, New York, Florida and Massachusetts. About 70 were founded in the 2010s alone.

Sources

  • Ruoniu (Vince) Wang and others, “The 2022 Census of Community Land Trusts and Shared Equity Entities in the United States,” Lincoln Institute of Land Policy working paper (2023). Covers shared equity programs generally, not only CLTs.
  • John Emmeus Davis and Kristin King-Ries, Preserving Affordable Homeownership: Municipal Partnerships with Community Land Trusts (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2024). See Joint Publications.
  • CLT Center, CLT Networks (reviewed November 2026).

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Are there CLTs in England and Wales?

Yes, in large numbers. The first, the Stonesfield Community Trust in Oxfordshire, began in the 1980s to house local people priced out of their village. Most English CLTs are still rural, but there are urban CLTs too, such as London CLT, which grew out of community organizing around the 2012 Olympics. In 2008, England and Wales wrote a definition of a community land trust into law, emphasizing that a CLT must be controlled by and benefit its local community.

By 2021 there were more than 300 CLTs in England, with about 200 more forming, supported by the Community Land Trust Network (England and Wales), founded in 2010. See The Growth of Community Land Trusts in England and Europe and the CLT Networks page.

By 2021, English CLTs had built about 935 homes, had more than 5,000 in the pipeline, and had more than 17,000 members. London CLT’s first homes, at St Clements in east London, came out of a community organizing campaign by London Citizens around the 2012 Olympics.

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What about Scotland?

Scotland has its own, larger tradition of community land ownership. Over 80 percent of Scotland is privately owned, much of it by a small number of landowners. Since the 1990s, Highland communities and others have bought the land they live on, helped by a 2003 law that gives communities the first chance to buy land when it is sold. Around 230,000 hectares are now in community ownership, held by democratically run community trusts.

Community-led housing on the CLT pattern is growing as well. South of Scotland Community Housing works with communities to bring empty buildings and land into community ownership as affordable homes. See CLT Networks.

Scotland’s community land movement grew from the 1990s, when communities in the Highlands and Islands, facing population decline and little say over the land they lived on, raised money to buy it. The Scottish Government created the Scottish Land Fund in 2001 to help communities buy land, and in 2003 the Scottish Parliament gave communities a legal right to buy land and buildings in certain circumstances. These rights were extended to urban areas in 2016. To use them, a community needs a suitable organization, usually a company limited by guarantee, and must show support for community ownership in a local ballot.

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Are there CLTs elsewhere in Europe?

Yes, and the number is growing quickly. The first on the continent was Community Land Trust Brussels, founded in 2012 with strong support from the Brussels regional government. Ghent and Leuven followed in Belgium. France created its own version, the organisme de foncier solidaire (OFS), by law; the first opened in Lille in 2017, and by 2021 there were 64, supported by the national association Foncier Solidaire France. The first German CLT, Berlin’s Stadtbodenstiftung, was founded in 2021, and groups are forming in the Netherlands, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Italy.

A European Union-funded partnership, Sustainable Housing for Inclusive and Cohesive Cities (2017 to 2021), linked CLTs in London, Brussels, Ghent and Lille and helped start others. The European Community Land Trust Network now connects them. See the Community Land Trust Bruxelles case study and The Growth of Community Land Trusts in England and Europe.

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Are there CLTs in Canada?

Yes. Canada’s first CLTs, formed in the 1980s, grew out of the cooperative housing movement: Colandco in Toronto and Communauté Milton-Parc in Montreal, which governs a downtown neighborhood of some 600 cooperative and nonprofit homes, the largest cooperative housing neighborhood in North America. A newer generation of community-led CLTs began with the Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust in Toronto in 2014, followed by others in Toronto, Hamilton, Vancouver, Halifax and elsewhere.

Canadian CLTs work around charity laws that are stricter than U.S. rules, sometimes by pairing a charity with a nonprofit. Indigenous communities are also using land trusts to bring land back under their stewardship; see Indigenous-led Community Land Trusts. The Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts brings them together.

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Are there CLTs in Australia?

A few, and interest is growing. Australia’s CLTs are small and mostly linked to community housing organizations and local councils. The Australian CLT Manual, funded by state and local governments and community housing groups, explains how the model can work under Australian law. You can find it on our Manuals and Guides page. The Australia Community Land Trust Network supports new groups.

Interest in Australia grew after a 2009 international study visit to Burlington, Vermont, which included the Australian researcher Louise Crabtree and helped inspire CLT efforts in Australia, London and Brussels. Crabtree and colleagues then wrote the Australian CLT Manual, funded by the Western Australian Department of Housing, the City of Port Phillip, the City of Sydney, the Inner Melbourne Action Plan, St Kilda Community Housing and Mount Alexander Community Land, a community group in regional Victoria. Because Australian land and tax law differ from those of the United States and Britain, the manual explains how the model can be adapted, whether through community housing providers, local councils or new community organizations.

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Are there CLTs in Latin America and the Caribbean?

Yes, and they have taken a distinctive path, mostly in informal settlements. The Caño Martín Peña CLT in San Juan, Puerto Rico, showed how a CLT can secure land for residents who have lived on it for generations. In Brazil, the Favela Community Land Trust project is bringing the model, called the Termo Territorial Coletivo, to Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. There is also work in Honduras and growing interest in Argentina; see Exploring the Potential for CLTs in Buenos Aires.

For readers in Spanish, Terra Nostra Press publishes En terreno común and La inseguridad de la tenencia de la tierra en América Latina y el Caribe. See also the section on CLTs in informal settlements.

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Are there CLTs in Africa and Asia?

The first CLT in the Global South was the Tanzania-Bondeni Community Land Trust in Voi, Kenya, created in the 1990s. There is growing interest in South Africa, research on adapting CLTs to Indian cities, and community efforts in Bangladesh, among others. Most of this work focuses on securing land for people in informal settlements.

See CLTs in Africa, CLTs in India and the CLT Center’s Global South CLT Initiative.

In Voi, Kenya, residents of the Tanzania-Bondeni settlement chose a CLT over individual titles or a housing cooperative when their settlement was upgraded in the 1990s. Because Kenyan law did not provide for a CLT, they needed both a legal entity to run it and a separate trust to hold the land. In Bangladesh, Urdu-speaking communities living for decades in the country’s “Bihari camps” are exploring how to combine a CLT with the community-led upgrading methods of Pakistan’s Orangi Pilot Project, to secure their land and improve their homes. In India, researchers have examined how CLTs might fit Indian property, cooperative and planning law; the CLT Center’s India page gathers that work, including the working paper CLTs for India?

South Africa. The legacy of apartheid, which stripped Black South Africans of land rights, left more than 60 percent of the population holding land outside the formal property system, and informal settlements grew quickly from the early 1990s. In 2025, the Development Action Group (DAG), a Cape Town nonprofit, began a three-phase initiative with the Philippi Economic Development Initiative, Beautiful Gate South Africa and the CLT Center, with support from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, to explore collective land ownership as a way to upgrade informal settlements without displacing their residents. It began in two settlements in Philippi, Cape Town: Sesikhona and Winnie Madikizela Mandela.

In June 2026, a four-day learning exchange in Cape Town brought residents of three Cape Town communities together with practitioners from Brazil, Puerto Rico and Uganda. Its main conclusion was that the model is worth exploring further, but only if the next phase is community-led, honest about uncertainty, and focused on building trust and governance before formal structures are created. Days later, DAG and the CLT Center held a workshop for 14 officials of Stellenbosch Municipality on how CLT approaches could secure tenure for informal settlement residents and keep inclusionary and social housing affordable.

The project’s first-phase report is frank about the obstacles. After a history of dispossession, many households understandably want individual ownership. South African property law generally treats a permanent building as part of the land, which makes it harder for a CLT to own the land while residents own their homes; long leases and other alternatives can give weaker rights. Each possible landholding entity, whether a nonprofit company, trust, cooperative or communal property association, carries its own legal and reporting burdens. And a CLT’s governance has to remain legitimate and resilient in settlements where authority is often contested.

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What are CLT networks, and how do I find the one in my country?

National and regional networks bring CLTs together to share knowledge, train new groups and speak up for community ownership of land in public policy. They are often the best first contact for anyone starting a CLT. National networks include Grounded Solutions Network (United States), the Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts, the Community Land Trust Network (England and Wales), Foncier Solidaire France, the Australia Community Land Trust Network and Brazil’s Termo Territorial Coletivo. The European Community Land Trust Network works across Europe.

Our CLT Networks page lists them with links, along with state and regional networks in the United States. If your country has no network yet, the CLT Center may be able to connect you with people doing similar work; contact us.

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