A brief intro: Private homeownership is still touted as a cornerstone of the “American dream” and a primary pathway to financial wealth and security in the United States, but discriminatory public policy, violent displacement, and institutionalized biases have structurally excluded Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color as well as low-income, disabled, queer and trans, and immigrant communities from homeownership for centuries. Secure, long-term housing has only become increasingly inaccessible for many folks who have been priced out or pushed out of their communities. Meanwhile, rising sea levels, extreme weather, and more frequent and intense climate-related catastrophes are expected to increase pressure on land and housing options, particularly for those who have been most structurally excluded.

→ Community land trusts (CLTs) emerged from the Civil Rights movement as Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizers, Black farmers, and allies explored strategies for Black economic and residential in(ter)dependence in the rural South amidst staggering rates of Black land loss. They looked to ancestral ideas and global models of common ownership and collective land stewardship for inspiration. In 1969, they created the first community land trust (CLT), New Communities Inc., a safe haven for Black farmers on 5,735 acres in Lee County, Georgia. Since then, CLTs have become the most common model of community-controlled housing and have proliferated in urban, suburban, and rural areas around the world. As of 2021, there were more than 260 CLTs in the so-called United States serving over 12,000 residents. (A directory of CLTs and CLT coalitions across Turtle Island can be found here). 

Community land trusts are structured as community-based nonprofits and are run by staff, community members, and a board made up of CLT residents, community residents, and public representatives. Swaths of land are purchased by the trust via a 99-year ground lease, on behalf of the community, typically with external funding from other nonprofits, local businesses or banks, government funds, institutions or individuals. Income-qualified individuals and families (usually low- to moderate-income folks) can then buy homes on the land at a pre-determined, relatively affordable price. When they’re ready to sell their home, resale restrictions ensure that the homes on the land will remain affordable for the next residents. 

At their best, community land trusts allow folks to secure long-term, affordable housing, resist displacement, and build modest amounts of wealth outside of the speculative economy. A 2011 study conducted by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy found that CLT residents were ten times less likely to face foreclosure and eight times less likely to fall behind on mortgage payments during the foreclosure crisis! Community land trusts also offer flexibility; housing is generally a core component, but the trust can also choose to conserve green space, generate renewable energy, farm, develop affordable commercial spaces, create civic spaces to foster community, and more. 

There are challenges that come with the community land trust model, though. Olivia R. Williams, a community-controlled housing champion who conducted her PhD research on CLTs, notes that many CLTs have drifted from their radical roots. After conducting hundreds of interviews in the CLT field, she reflected, “It became clear that the CLT model is increasingly being perceived and promoted by housing advocates and practitioners as an economically efficient affordable housing strategy, rather than an organizational approach that empowers poor, working-class, and marginalized people to take control of the land they occupy… Advocacy for affordable housing should always be coupled with grassroots movements for community control of land. Somewhere along the road, the CLT movement largely abandoned this vital piece of its legacy.” Community land trusts are dependent on external funding, making them vulnerable to the whims of funding trends and susceptible to becoming absorbed into the nonprofit industrial complex, and having an engaged membership base is not a given. 

→ Housing cooperatives range in structure, size, and mission, though they share a few common tenets, including some form of democratic governance and collective housing ownership. Some are not at all justice-oriented— in fact, the first known cooperative-like housing community in the country was created as a luxury home club for high-income folks in Manhattan who didn’t want all of the responsibilities of individual home ownership (this brand of cooperative culture has persisted in New York City; most cooperatives in the city sell units at full market-rate and discriminatory practices are rampant). Other cooperatives have emerged directly from the grassroots struggle for justice. For instance, in the mid-1920s, Eastern European Jewish immigrant garment workers banded together to create the 740-apartment United Workers Cooperative Colony in the Bronx. The democratically-governed, nonprofit cooperative was developed to reject squalid living conditions, decommodify housing, cultivate social and political cohesion, and be a safe haven from antisemitism. 

There are several different types of cooperatives, including: 

• Market-rate housing cooperatives: Shares are sold at full-market rate, without resale restrictions, so they are geared towards middle-income and high-income folks, and developers make a profit. Each owner pays a monthly fee and then controls a share in equity of the entire housing stock. Decisions around maintenance, membership criteria, amenities, disputes, and more are made democratically, either by residents directly or elected representatives (like a board), and sometimes both. 
• Limited-equity housing cooperatives (LEHCs): LEHCs are similar to the above but are incorporated as democratically-governed non-profit entities and units are subsidized by grants and/or government subsidies to make co-op shares more affordable, so they are geared primarily towards low-income to moderate-income folks (oftentimes there’s a set income limitation). Like CLTs, there are resale restrictions to ensure that affordability is maintained, so owners are capped at making modest equity gains (but likely won’t take a serious loss, either!). LEHCs are a fantastic tool to resist displacement. Some projects have combined the LEHC and CLT models to both ensure long-term affordability and stability and maximize cooperative residential participation (i.e. the San Francisco Community Land Trust). 
• Leasing or zero-equity housing cooperatives (ZECs): In a ZEC, members don’t build any equity. In practice, ZECs are similar to affordable rental housing but with democratic governance. In some ZECs, members pay a lower-than-normal rate and forgo accumulation of any equity. With leasing cooperatives, the cooperative leases the property from an outside investor (sometimes another nonprofit) and therefore isn’t in a position to build up any equity. ZECs are sometimes used as a stepping stone until the cooperative can purchase the property and become an LEHC. 

→ Permanent real estate cooperatives (PRECs) are a new community-controlled housing model developed by the Sustainable Economies Law Center. Like community land trusts, PRECs permanently take land off of the speculative market and into community stewardship, and like both CLTs and limited equity housing cooperatives, PRECs enforce rate of return restrictions upon resale in order to keep housing affordable for generations to come. However, unlike CLTs or LEHCs, PRECs are not structured as nonprofits, so there are more financing options, they can provide housing to folks all along the income spectrum, and there is no charitable component. PRECs are also explicitly liberatory and justice-oriented, with the goal of transforming systems of finance, land ownership, and community. They are designed to remove landlords, wealthy speculators, large developers, and big banks out of the equation. 

East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EBPREC), incorporated in 2017, is currently piloting this housing model in the so-called East Bay, California. The autonomous, multistakeholder cooperative offers four pathways to membership ownership; staff collective owners, resident-owners who live in properties purchased by the cooperative, community owners who oversee projects and ensure accountability, guidance, and transparency, and investor-owners who purchase one or more shares at $1,000 per share. While housing is a core focus of EBPREC, the cooperative is also working to revive and preserve cultural and commercial spaces in West Oakland’s historic Black Arts Community. (To get involved in EBPREC, consider making a donation, becoming an investor-owner, joining their mailing list, or attending one of their gatherings). 

→ Resident Owned Communities (ROCs) apply the tenets of housing cooperatives to manufactured or mobile home neighborhoods. In commercially-owned mobile home neighborhoods, residents own their homes but not the land beneath the neighborhood. Therefore, they are vulnerable to steep lot rent increases, landlord-imposed rules that they don’t necessarily agree with, neighborhood disrepair, and even eviction if the lot is sold to a developer. In an ROC, however, homeowners own and manage the neighborhood land together as a nonprofit cooperative. In ROCs, monthly lot fees are typically much lower and more stable than in commercially-owned communities, and a portion of the fees go towards community repairs and improvements that residents agree upon. ROCs are a great way to resist displacement, create permanently affordable housing, and build community cohesion- particularly in the face of the climate crisis. (A directory of ROCs around the so-called United States can be found here). 

→ Intentional communities (ICs) are not by definition a form of community-controlled housing, but many ICs are community-controlled. The Foundation for Intentional Community defines ICs as “a group of people who have chosen to live together or share resources on the basis of common values.” They typically prioritize social cohesion and values like interdependence, cooperation, and shared abundance. ICs can include eco-villages (which generally have a strong emphasis on sustainability), cohousing (which generally incorporate both private and shared spaces to support connection), communes (which generally are 100% income sharing), student co-ops (which generally house college or graduate school students and are expense sharing), religious communities, and more. ICs that fit our definition of community-controlled housing are exploring how to democratically govern, decommodify land and housing, and take care of housing and shared facilities, the land, and one another. (A directory of ICs around the world can be found here). 

→ Squats refer to buildings that are occupied by people who do not own or pay rent on the property, and the squatting strategy is often utilized as a stepping stone towards more permanent community control- and perhaps planning and policy changes, too. For instance, in so-called West Oakland in 2019, a group of mothers experiencing housing insecurity (known as Moms 4 Housing) began occupying a home that was owned by a large home-flipping company and had been vacant for years. They bravely resisted eviction and eventually were able to purchase the home in partnership with the Oakland Community Land Trust. Their activism also sparked national conversation around housing injustice and led to the passage of laws meant to limit speculative homebuying.