The community land trust experience explained through geography
Date
2023
Authors
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The creation and promotion of community land trusts (CLTs) have become an increasingly popular tool for localities to utilize in their pursuit of providing housing to their low-income residents. CLTs are non-profit affordable housing companies that provide below-market-rate housing to low-and moderate-income residents. The lessee of the CLT is offered affordable homeownership in exchange for a promise to resell the home at an affordable price for the next owner. The community land trust system endeavors to create communities with perpetually affordable housing. In turn, this model aims to build more stable residential environments for disadvantaged groups who have been historically excluded from quality homeownership opportunities. ☐ The experiences of those working in the affordable housing market (CLTs, for example) differ by geographic location; historically, affordable housing organizations located in coastal cities like Miami, New York, and San Francisco are known to have experienced more difficulty expanding their affordable housing stock than more inland localities. CLTs have historically been financially feasible in only niche situations, where developable and relatively affordable land sites are still available, but the private affordable housing industry is underdeveloped. Whether or not these “niche situations” are defined by geography is undetermined. ☐ My project endeavored to discover to what extent geographic location plays an impact on community land trusts ability to create, protect, and preserve affordable housing. I distributed a survey to the 242 community land trusts in the United States. I requested that each CLT has a management-level member of their staff complete the survey in its entirety. The questions of the survey were related to the geographic prevalence of the following trends and their impact on CLTs ability to create and protect affordable housing: tourism, short-term rental properties, gentrification, restrictive land use policies, financial support, and future confidence. Of the 242 land trusts, I designated 77 as “Coastal Area CLTs” (CLTs that are located within 62 miles of the coastline) and 165 as “Non-Coastal Area CLTs” (CLTs that are located over 62 miles from the coastline). ☐ 22 Coastal CLTs (29% response rate) and 42 Non-Coastal CLTs completed the survey (25% response rate). Coastal CLTs generally indicated higher rates of tourism, short-term rental properties, gentrification, and restrictive land use policies in their geographic service areas than Non-Coastal CLTs. Coastal CLTs also indicated that these factors inflict a negative impact at a higher rate than Non-Coastal CLTs. However, the extent to which those differences can be attributed to geographic location is quite minimal. Most all the variances between the results of Coastal CLTs and Non-Coastal CLTs was statistically insignificant. The results differ from much of the existing literature that cites that creating and protecting affordable housing in coastal geographies is more difficult than non-coastal geographies. However, the report brings awareness to the notion that the affordable housing crisis is not exclusively a coastal issue, and that community land trusts need the tools and networks to expand the affordable housing stock in localities across the country.
Description
Keywords
Affordable housing, Climate gentrification, Coastal area, Community land trust, Survey