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• Who governs a community land trust?
• What does "community" mean in a community land trust?
• How do residents have a say?

Who governs a community land trust?

In the classic model, a CLT is governed by a board in three equal parts: people who lease land from the CLT, people who live in the area the CLT serves, and public-interest members such as local officials, funders or professionals. Members (leaseholders and community residents) elect most of the board.

This structure is common, but not a rule. Many CLTs adapt it: some are programs of larger nonprofits, some were created by cities, and some use different board structures that fit their place. What matters is that the people who live on the land, and the wider community, have a real voice in how it is used.

How common is it? In a 2022 survey of U.S. shared equity programs, 54 percent of responding organizations reserved at least one board seat for their own residents, and most of those reserved about a third. Members typically vote to elect the board and on changes to the bylaws, and often on selling land and changing the resale formula.

Sources

• CLT Center, What Is a Community Land Trust?
• 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, Starting a Community Land Trust: Organizational and Operational Choices (Burlington Associates, 2007).

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What does "community" mean in a community land trust?

Each CLT defines its own community, usually a geographic area: a neighborhood, a city, a county, a region or an island. Anyone who lives in that area can typically become a member, whether or not they live on CLT land.

That is the difference between a community land trust and other affordable housing programs. A CLT is meant to answer to the people who live in a place, not just to its own residents or its funders. In some CLTs the community is a few blocks; in others it is a whole region, or a set of neighborhoods with a shared history, as in San Juan’s Caño Martín Peña.

That is what puts the “C” in CLT. When England and Wales defined CLTs in law in 2008, the definition required that a CLT be controlled by members of the local community it serves and that its assets be used for that community’s benefit.

Sources

• John Emmeus Davis, Starting a Community Land Trust: Organizational and Operational Choices (Burlington Associates, 2007).
• John Emmeus Davis, Line Algoed and María E. Hernández-Torrales, eds., The Growth of Community Land Trusts in England and Europe (Terra Nostra Press, 2021).

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How do residents have a say?

In most CLTs, residents and neighbors are members who elect the board, and leaseholders hold seats on it. Many CLTs also involve residents in planning, in deciding what to build and in running community programs.

How well this works depends on the CLT. Keeping residents engaged takes ongoing effort, and the CLT Center’s book Community Matters gathers practitioners’ experience of what works.

In Community Matters, John Emmeus Davis identifies five ways that CLTs connect with residents, each a different meaning of “community.” Solidarity: organizing residents, groups and businesses across the CLT’s area around a shared vision and the power to win it. Constituency: enrolling residents as members with a formal vote in electing the board and changing the bylaws. Mutuality: the everyday social ties among neighbors, such as shared meals, celebrations and helping hands. Consultancy: asking residents for advice and following their guidance when planning projects and services. Reciprocity: a relationship of shared responsibility between the CLT and the people who live on its land, kept up over many years.

These forms of engagement overlap and change over time. Brussels CLT, for example, found that building a region-wide voting constituency was not achieving what it hoped, and shifted more of its effort to building connections among residents inside its apartment buildings. CLTs in Brussels and Houston also learned that support won from government can be withdrawn, so organizing has to continue after a CLT is established. As Ashley Allen of the Houston CLT puts it, satisfied homeowners are a CLT’s “best advocates.”

Formal rights matter too. Under the model ground lease used by most U.S. CLTs, every homeowner automatically becomes a voting member. In a 2022 survey of U.S. programs with a membership, members most often voted on the board of directors (92 percent) and the bylaws (75 percent), and many also voted on selling land (62 percent) and on the resale formula (59 percent). Leaders of CLTs in places such as San Juan’s Caño Martín Peña note the obstacles: residents with two or three jobs have little time for meetings, so CLTs have to meet people where they are, at times and in ways that fit their lives.

Sources

• John Emmeus Davis, ed., Community Matters (Terra Nostra Press, 2022).
• 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, ed., Community Matters: Conversations with Practitioners about Resident Engagement (Terra Nostra Press, 2022), introduction and conversations with CLTs in Brussels, Houston, London, Boston and San Juan.
• Kirby White, ed., The CLT Technical Manual (2011), chapter 11-A, section 14.1 (homeowner membership).
• 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).

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