Community Land Trusts (CLTs) are nonprofit organizations that own land on behalf of a community to keep housing permanently affordable. The CLT model allows lower-income households to build wealth through homeownership while providing the community with a growing supply of homes that will remain affordable for generations. CLTs work best as part of a comprehensive housing strategy. They are complementary to, and should be paired with, other affordable housing solutions WALC supports, including reforming zoning to allow for a greater variety of housing types, as well as policies that provide incentives for builders to include affordable housing units in their projects.
Here’s how the CLT model works:
- A CLT will acquire and retain ownership of land and sell the housing on the land to lower-income households at a below-market price.
- The homeowner signs a long-term (often 99-year) renewable lease to use the land.
- In exchange, the homeowner agrees to sell the home at a restricted price to keep it affordable in perpetuity.
- However, the homeowner may be able to realize appreciation from improvements they make while they live in the house. This ensures the community’s investment stays in the neighborhood indefinitely.
- CLTs are governed by residents and community members, ensuring long-term stability, preventing displacement, and encouraging environmental stewardship. This local demographic control is what distinguishes a true CLT from a government-run land trust or deed restriction program, though all of these models can play compatible roles in a city’s affordable housing strategy.
By taking the expensive cost of land out of the equation, a CLT makes it possible for a family to buy a home they otherwise couldn’t afford. In exchange, that family agrees to pass that same opportunity on to the next family at an affordable price.
Policy Goals to Achieve Strategy:
Policy 1: Preserve Permanent Affordability Through Shared Equity
Many cities are caught in a cycle of subsidy: because incomes have not kept pace with rising housing costs, even down payment assistance loans aren’t enough to help the next family of similar means purchase a home. CLTs break this cycle by using shared equity agreements to ensure that a single public investment serves household after household, in perpetuity.
Under this framework, resale prices are governed by a formula that limits appreciation to keep homes accessible to low- and moderate-income households at every resale. Each seller captures a portion of the home’s value growth, while the next buyer pays an affordable price, without any new public subsidy.
In Utah, the UCLT utilizes ground leases with resale restrictions to help families achieve stable homeownership while ensuring the next moderate-income buyer can enter the market affordably. NeighborWorks Salt Lake has also established its own CLT to combat the affordability crisis in Salt Lake County. Early projects in the Fairpark and Poplar Grove neighborhoods are specifically designed to provide family-sized workforce housing that remains affordable for generations. Finally, the Moab Community Land Trust creates opportunities for permanent affordable housing in the Moab area and Southern Utah Community Land Trust does the same in St. George.
Policy 2: Establish Land Banking and Public Capital Investment for the Development of CLTs
Local governments can accelerate affordable housing by using land banks to acquire blighted, tax-delinquent, or underutilized properties toward CLTs through legally compliant disposition processes. Instead of letting these lots sit empty or selling them to the highest bidder, cities can dedicate public funds (such as local housing trust funds or federal grants) to help CLTs renovate or build new, affordable homes on this land. Pennsylvania serves as a prime example of this strategy. The state allows municipalities to form land banks that strategically “capture” properties before they hit the market. This ensures that neighborhood revitalization focuses on the people who live there, creating permanent affordability rather than driving up prices for profit.
Policy 3: Integrate CLTs with Subsidy and Incentive Programs
Local governments can update their subsidy programs (like down payment assistance and rehabilitation grants) to explicitly include CLT homebuyers and homeowners as eligible participants. Additionally, adjusting property tax policies can significantly lower the cost of living. When taxes are based on the home’s restricted affordable price rather than its higher market value, the savings stay with the homeowner. Cities like Portland, Chapel Hill, and Chicago have already paved the way by opening their public resources to CLT households. In Chicago, for example, the city officially changed how it assesses taxes for these homes, ensuring that financial policies support, rather than undermine, the goal of long-term affordability.
Policy 4: Acquire and Preserve Multifamily Housing Through CLTs
While CLTs are best known for affordable homeownership, they can also use their land for affordable rental housing. Local governments can partner with CLTs to acquire and renovate existing apartment buildings, protecting renters from rising costs by keeping the land, and thus the housing, out of the speculative market. By prioritizing buildings where tenants are at risk of eviction, and providing enough upfront funding to avoid heavy bank debt, cities can keep rents permanently stable. For example, Los Angeles County’s CLT Partnership Program invested $14 million to preserve eight multifamily properties with 43 units, protecting 110 residents (95% of whom were people of color) from displacement during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Utah, the Utah Housing Preservation Fund is the leading local practitioner of this work, preserving naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH), and represents a strong model for how public and philanthropic capital can stabilize existing affordable rental stock, even outside a formal CLT structure.
Policy 5: Establish Long Term Stability Through Community Ownership
By launching CLT programs in neighborhoods facing gentrification, cities can provide a safety net for long-time residents. Placing land into a community trust protects the neighborhood’s cultural identity and ensures that legacy residents aren’t priced out as the area develops. Several urban CLTs demonstrate the power of this approach in high-pressure markets. The Cooper Square Community Land Trust (New York City) has preserved affordable housing in the Lower East Side for decades, protecting residents from some of the most intense gentrification pressure in the country. The East Harlem/El Barrio Community Land Trust was established by and for longtime Latino residents facing rapid displacement, centering cultural preservation alongside housing stability. The Interboro Community Land Trust operates city-wide across New York City’s five boroughs, demonstrating that the CLT model can function at a scale beyond a single neighborhood.
Policy 6: Collaborate with Nonprofits of CLTs for Local Control
Cities should empower residents by supporting community-led coalitions and independent, nonprofit CLTs, ensuring that the people living in the neighborhood have meaningful control over how their housing is stewarded and managed. The CLT’s tripartite governance structure—with leaseholders and community members holding two thirds of board seats—is the mechanism for this democratic accountability. Chicago’s “Here to Stay” CLT illustrates this model: formed by a coalition of four local organizations as an independent nonprofit, it manages a growing portfolio of rental and owner-occupied homes that will remain affordable to the community in perpetuity.
Policy 7: Develop a Toolkit to Guide Implementation
To help CLTs grow from idea into reality, state and local agencies should develop a toolkit that will provide clear resources, educational guides, and easy-to-use tools to help residents and potential homeowners navigate the CLT process. Local governments can fund and coordinate training, technical assistance, and organizational development for CLTs to improve governance, compliance, and community engagement. It typically takes about two years to move from exploratory community conversations to a first home closing—state investment in capacity building can significantly reduce that barrier for emerging CLTs.