Could Non-Profit Land Trusts Save Culturally Significant Communities Again? The Answer Is Yes And Black Coral Inc Investigators Say Its Working Now Just Like It Did In The 60's!
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From Boston's Chinatown To New York's Harlem Land Trusts are making a comeback as a way to solve climate inequities and the economic devastation of gentrification! The first community land trust (CLT) was organized primarily by civil rights activists in the late 1960s for Black sharecroppers who had lost their homes and jobs for registering to vote. It was an experiment in cooperation and collective resilience in the face of endless challenges. It is also one of the main reasons Black Farmers were under attack in the latter half of the 2oth century. Land Trusts are a formidable tool against corporate injustice.
The first community land trust, New Communities was created in 1969 to support black farmers. This pioneering initiative was the result of a collaborative effort among farmers and civil rights activists, including members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Real property owners in Chicago, Illinois, figured out in the late 19th century that land trusts would be a great vehicle for buying, holding and developing real estate.
Gentrification is making it harder for some people to stay in their neighborhoods. One solution: community land trusts, which buy up properties and then keep the homes there affordable. Community Legacy real estate investors discovered they could privately and confidentially acquire real estate in a land trust and economically empower themselves. This is why moving migrants in those areas is seen as an attack on culture and ownership of communities and a betrayal by those politicians put in office to protect the communities that law enforcement historically either harassed or overlooked in terms of protection of property completely, even city maintenance including roads and parks were overlooked in these communities who were still expected to pay taxes on their property consistently undervalued. Put simply where blacks or other ethnic groups owned property the powers that be either over-policed to spin narratives of criminality or under policed to encourage actual criminality!
Land Trusts through non profits allow the community to acquire land and manage it as they see fit to benefit the community at large. This is a way communities could stop the building of migrant camps or "suspiciously militarized" police training facilities such as Cop City proposed in Atlanta! Even Boston's Chinatown is actively engaged in a community land trust to stop corporate takeover of traditional and historical Asian businesses. With each new property purchased the community land trust gains a larger voice in how the community should progress. They can stop things like Walmart's and highways that disrupt businesses or the destruction of community centers, elderly facilities or even playgrounds decimated to benefit corporate greed!
Land Trusts allow changes that benefit the community not displace it. In the United States, Land Trusts also protect nature that is owned by private landholders, where the land is protected under a conservation easement. As of September 2023, there are 462 accredited land trusts in 46 U.S. states and territories. This number is expected to double in the next few years as corporate interests and billionaires make land grabs in communities they helped economically disenfranchise such as small milk producers, chicken farms and organic farmers.
Land trusts become powerful tools for researching and voicing what is actually best for communities they become bastions of soft power focusing public opinion on its own best interests. Some of these interests could include net zero communities. Land trusts are bringing innovative new tools to tackle the myriad problems created by climate change. Land trusts are building corridors of open space along the Appalachian ridges all the way from Georgia to Maine and beyond to New Brunswick and Quebec. These corridors create continental scale vectors, allowing plants and animals to migrate over time to places where the climate treats them more kindly, just as their native environments are getting too hot.
Land trusts can help in drought mitigation and, if water shortages make things like agriculture untenable, they help identify the best places to convert to other uses. We’re seeing a great deal of that happen today in California, Arizona, and New Mexico. The Land Trust Alliance, which is an umbrella group for most of the land trusts in the United States, reports that its member land trusts can account for the protection of some 61 million acres of land since the 1970s—that’s an area equivalent to the state of Oregon.
According to an Article released By Yale written by James Leavitt "Whether the desired impact is carbon sequestration, buffering from sea level rise, biodiversity protection, clean drinking water, or flood mitigation, we have to protect large areas of land systematically. That involves crossing geographic boundaries. To get to that scale, to finance such projects, we also have to cross sectoral boundaries. We need to involve the public sector, the nonprofit sector, the private sector, and the academic sector. And increasingly not only in the United States, but across the world, it is particularly important to involve indigenous communities in this effort."
Some may ask what the downsides are to land trusts? And yes, there are downsides to a property trust. Firstly, if you purchase the property under a land trust, any redemption rights are lost—that is, the right to reclaim the property just before (or after) foreclosure. Second, most land trusts are automatically disqualified from secondary market loans.
The funding for these land trusts can seem difficult to come by so many and multiple tools are used to accomplish the Land Trust's goals. Among these tools are affordable housing grants, community donations, vendor take back mortgages, private loans, city forgivable loans, there are literally no shortcuts. It takes work and solidarity and one of the most effective ways of showing that solidarity is through offering community bonds.
Community bonds are defined as: A social finance tool that can be used by charities, non-profits and co-operatives to finance socially and environmentally impactful projects. Similar in many ways to a traditional bond, they are an interest bearing loan from an investor, which has a set rate of return and a fixed term. For example, an artist co-operative might issue community bonds to purchase a building. They will have revenue streams from operating a storefront, leasing studio space to their members, and renting out their event venue.
"One of the benefits of community bonds is that people in the community know that they're getting both a financial return and a social return, because of this most people are willing to take a slightly smaller financial return if they know that it's having a huge impact on the quality of life where they live." Says J. Lynda Blake Treasurer and co-founder of Black Coral Inc.org a non profit based in Boston MA.
In the classic community land trust model, membership is comprised of those who live in the leased housing (leaseholders); those who live in the targeted area (community members); and local representatives from government, funding agencies and the nonprofit sector (public interest) (Burlington Associates 2003). A lease within a community land trust also includes a resale formula intended to balance the interests of present homeowners with the long-term goals of the community land trust—balancing the interest of homeowners and the interest of the community land trust to provide affordable housing for future homeowners.
An example of this is at work is the Sawmill Community Land Trust, located near downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico. In partnership with the City of Albuquerque, the predominantly Mexican American Sawmill Community Land Trust's has created a permanent stock of affordable housing in the neighborhood with housing units as well as a plaza, park, community center, commercial space and open space connected with trails. Located in Albuquerque’s historic Sawmill District, Sawmill Market also has an artisanal food hall that celebrates culinary traditions and emerging trends alike with a diverse mix of local food vendors. The plan calls for expanding the Sawmill Community Land Trust model to other neighborhoods to ensure a permanent stock of affordable housing and a mixed-income community for the long term.
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