76\u00a0 bar falls 29.85\u00a0 1mph ESE dew-point 60\u00a0 Summer, sunny headed toward hot<\/p>\n
Waning Crescent of the Flower Moon<\/p>\n
“Over 200 LEED-certified new homes are being built by the Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation under the auspices of…Dudley Neighbors Inc., Boston’s two-decade-old community land trust — a burgeoning affordable housing strategy where residents buy the homes but not the land underneath, thus reducing the price.”\u00a0\u00a0 This from the Land Institute website yesterday.<\/p>\n
Another memory jogger. \u00a0 25 years ago I worked in a small University of Minnesota and hospital dominated neighborhood of Minneapolis called Cedar-Riverside.\u00a0 A grand plan for very dense housing proposed by Keith Heller, a UofM economics professor and Gloria Segal, a Minnesota DFL heavyweight would have buried the community with housing for more than 25,000 people.\u00a0 That would have meant fitting a city the size of Andover on a plot of land that is a small neighborhood by Minneapolis standards, a plot of land those 25,000 + would have shared with Augsburg College, St. Mary’s Hospital, Fairview Hospital, and the University’s West Bank campus which included the Wilson Library, two towers of classroom space and a performing arts center.<\/p>\n
Citizens of the neighborhood fought back, filed an environmental impact lawsuit, a notion then in its infancy, and won.\u00a0 The settlement of that lawsuit provided the neighborhood with several million dollars to use in developing the community at a level consistent with the residents wishes.\u00a0 We pursued several innovative community development strategies in those days.<\/p>\n
Among them was a land-trust.\u00a0 This was well in advance of the land-trust referred to in the Land Institute quote.\u00a0 It worked like this.<\/p>\n
We developed different housing options, mostly townhomes, all as co-operatives, that is, resident managed and jointly owned. \u00a0 These were limited-equity co-ops, meaning you paid a small fee up front to join the co-operative, usually around a $1,000 and when you moved you sold your unit back to the co-op and received your fee back in return.\u00a0 This idea had two positives from a community development perspective.\u00a0 First, it allowed low-income people entree to a self-governing living situation (no landlord or they became the landlord).\u00a0 Second, it discouraged speculation in the individual units which would make the units affordable over time.<\/p>\n
The land-trust was a guard against a problem that had occurred in the 70’s in some cities. Community based developers would build low-income housing units as co-ops, then turn the whole project over to the co-operative.\u00a0 As time went by and the property values increased, the co-op and its land would become more and more valuable.\u00a0 Eventually, a for-profit developer would make the co-op and offer they couldn’t refuse and the co-ops would sell out. \u00a0 This removed the housing from the ranks of affordable housing, defeating the original purpose in its construction.<\/p>\n
The landtrust prevented that in two ways.\u00a0 First, the land was\u00a0 held in trust by a third party, usually a land trust corporation controlled by a community development corporation or the community development corporation itself.\u00a0 This made every transaction for the whole a three party negotiation with the land-trust holding veto rights.\u00a0 Second, a clause in the contract stipulated that if the land ever was sold, it triggered a penalty which equaled the interest on all the years since the projects completion.<\/p>\n
A secondary aspect of the land-trust was its ability to lower the overall cost of the housing by taking land out of the total development equation.<\/p>\n
No good deed goes unpunished, however, and I imagine the good folks in Boston will find similar problems to those that have developed in Cedar-Riverside.\u00a0 Turns out everyone wants a piece of the increase in home value pie.\u00a0 Tenants became incensed when all they got back was their original fee instead of an inflation or value multiplied amount.\u00a0 Co-ops also vary a good deal in the people who come to share responsibility for them.\u00a0 Sometimes general management was an issue, too.\u00a0 Still, in my mind, the land-trust remains a sound tool for developing and maintaing housing affordable to all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
76\u00a0 bar falls 29.85\u00a0 1mph ESE dew-point 60\u00a0 Summer, sunny headed toward hot Waning Crescent of the Flower Moon “Over 200 LEED-certified new homes are being built by the Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation under the auspices of…Dudley Neighbors Inc., Boston’s two-decade-old community land trust — a burgeoning affordable housing strategy where residents buy the … Continue reading Trust in the Land<\/span>