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• What do CLTs hold land for besides housing?
• How do CLTs help urban farms and community gardens?
• Can a CLT protect farmland?
• Can CLTs own shops, offices and other commercial buildings?
• Can CLTs hold land for community centers, cultural spaces and Indigenous land return?
• What are the risks of going beyond housing?

What do CLTs hold land for besides housing?

A great deal. Most CLTs began with affordable homes, but the model started on farmland, and CLTs now hold land for community gardens and urban farms, farmland, orchards and greenhouses, shops and offices for local businesses, community centers, cultural spaces and parks. Because the CLT owns the land permanently, any of these uses can be protected from rising land prices, just as homes are.

When the CLT Center’s executive director, Greg Rosenberg, and Jeffrey Yuen surveyed U.S. CLTs for the Lincoln Institute in 2012, 37 of the 56 that responded were involved in farming or gardening, and 30 in commercial development. Their working paper, Beyond Housing: Urban Agriculture and Commercial Development by Community Land Trusts (2012), looks at 13 of them in depth.

Sources

• Greg Rosenberg and Jeffrey Yuen, Beyond Housing: Urban Agriculture and Commercial Development by Community Land Trusts, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy working paper (2012).
• CLT Center, What Is a Community Land Trust?
• 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.

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How do CLTs help urban farms and community gardens?

Mainly by securing land. Growers rarely earn enough to compete with developers, so gardens and farms are often treated as temporary uses and lost when land values rise. A CLT can buy the land and hold it permanently, lease it to growers or a garden group, or protect it with a deed restriction or conservation easement. Some CLTs also run farming programs or grow food themselves.

Examples include Dudley Neighbors Inc. in Boston, which holds land for a community greenhouse, gardens and an orchard, and Troy Gardens in Madison, Wisconsin, which combines a working farm, community gardens and a restored prairie with 30 mixed-income homes. Our guide Land Tenure for Urban Farming explains the options, including the central server model, in which a CLT holds land for many growers across a city.

Land insecurity is the biggest barrier facing urban agriculture: growers rarely earn enough from the land to compete with other uses, so gardens are often treated as temporary. Leases for farms and gardens need care. At Troy Gardens, Wisconsin law limited agricultural leases to 15 years, and the CLT and the farm’s operator had to work out how long a lease to sign and what performance standards to set. Baltimore and other cities have used conservation easements to protect community gardens.

Sources

• Greg Rosenberg and Jeffrey Yuen, Beyond Housing: Urban Agriculture and Commercial Development by Community Land Trusts, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy working paper (2012).
• Nate Ela and Greg Rosenberg, Land Tenure for Urban Farming (University of Wisconsin–Madison research project, on cltweb.org).
• Jeffrey Yuen, “City Farms on CLTs,” Land Lines (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy), April 2014.

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Can a CLT protect farmland?

Yes. The first CLT, New Communities, Inc., was a farm, and CLTs today hold farmland for new and beginning farmers who could not otherwise afford land. In Rhode Island, the Southside Community Land Trust has leased a 20-acre state-owned farm and subleased it at low cost to new farmers. The Athens Land Trust in Georgia protects farmland and runs market gardens.

Farmland brings its own challenges. Some states limit the length of agricultural leases, and farmers often need to own land to borrow against it for equipment and seed. A CLT that is new to farming does best working with farmers and agricultural groups from the start.

Kulshan Community Land Trust in Bellingham, Washington, offers a lesson. It launched a program to lease rural farmland to local farmers, but found land more expensive than expected and learned that farmers needed to own land to use it as collateral for loans. After a two-year pilot, it refocused on urban agriculture, where it had stronger relationships.

Sources

• Greg Rosenberg and Jeffrey Yuen, Beyond Housing: Urban Agriculture and Commercial Development by Community Land Trusts, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy working paper (2012).
• CLT Center, New Communities (history and timeline, 1960–2020).

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Can CLTs own shops, offices and other commercial buildings?

Yes. Some CLTs develop and own commercial space so that neighborhoods have the businesses and services they need, and so that local businesses are not priced out. The Anchorage Community Land Trust in Alaska worked only on commercial development: by 2012 it owned nine properties with 24 tenants in the Mountain View neighborhood, including a credit union that opened the only full-service bank in the area. The Champlain Housing Trust manages one of the largest commercial portfolios in the CLT field.

CLTs use both ground leases and ordinary commercial leases. Some let business tenants buy their building later while the CLT keeps the land beneath it.

Within two months, that credit union enrolled 350 members who had relied on pawnshops to cash checks. The Champlain Housing Trust also develops commercial space and lets some business tenants buy their buildings while it keeps the land. CLTs that develop their own offices gain secure, predictable space in the neighborhoods they serve.

Sources

• Greg Rosenberg and Jeffrey Yuen, Beyond Housing: Urban Agriculture and Commercial Development by Community Land Trusts, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy working paper (2012).
• Kirby White, ed., The CLT Technical Manual (2011), chapter 16, “Non-Residential Ground Leases.”

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Can CLTs hold land for community centers, cultural spaces and Indigenous land return?

Yes. CLTs hold land for community buildings of all kinds. In Denver, the Urban Land Conservancy bought a burned-out shopping center, planned its future with neighbors, and leased part of the site to the Boys & Girls Club for a community center, keeping the land in trust at the community’s request.

Across the United States and Canada, Indigenous Nations and communities are using CLTs to bring land back under Indigenous stewardship and to house their people on their own terms. See Indigenous-led Community Land Trusts.

Two examples show the range. In Denver, the Urban Land Conservancy bought a 2.6-acre shopping center site that had burned down, worked with neighbors on a plan for it, and leased part of the land to the Boys & Girls Club, which built a 28,000-square-foot community center. The club brought $5 million to the project in exchange for a below-market ground lease, and at the community’s request the land stays in trust. In Lexington, Kentucky, the transportation agencies that formed the Lexington CLT to protect the Davis Bottom neighborhood also paid for a community center with office space for the CLT.

Indigenous-led land trusts are using the model to restore land to Indigenous stewardship for housing, ceremony, food and conservation. In 2022, the City of Oakland granted the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, a women-led Indigenous land trust, a permanent easement to use land at Sequoia Point for cultural practices and public education; in 2023, the Berkeley city council voted to give it a two-acre parcel believed to be part of the first human settlement in the San Francisco Bay area. Our page on Indigenous-led CLTs maps thirteen Indigenous-led and Indigenous-guided land trusts in the United States and Canada.

Sources

• Greg Rosenberg and Jeffrey Yuen, Beyond Housing: Urban Agriculture and Commercial Development by Community Land Trusts, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy working paper (2012).
• CLT Center, Indigenous-led Community Land Trusts.
• John Emmeus Davis and Kristin King-Ries, Preserving Affordable Homeownership (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2024), chapter 3.

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What are the risks of going beyond housing?

Commercial and agricultural projects carry different risks from housing. A single vacant storefront can strain a small CLT’s budget in a way one empty home would not, and losing an anchor tenant early on has put more than one CLT in financial trouble. Commercial projects rarely make money, especially in low-income neighborhoods, and both farming and commercial real estate call for skills that housing CLTs may not have.

The CLTs studied in Beyond Housing: Urban Agriculture and Commercial Development by Community Land Trusts offered three lessons: involve the community before deciding what to build; partner with groups that have the expertise you lack; and limit financial risk, for example by combining shops with housing so that rents from the homes can carry the building through a vacancy.

Sources

• Greg Rosenberg and Jeffrey Yuen, Beyond Housing: Urban Agriculture and Commercial Development by Community Land Trusts, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy working paper (2012).

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