Laserfiche WebLink
10c. <br />amount of value — say, 2 percent for every year they owned the house — in addition to the cost of any <br />improvements they've made. Because the trust owns the land, its members can provide oversight to the deals, <br />reviewing the mortgages of those who are buying homes on the land and providing a defense against <br />predatory lending as well as foreclosure. A study by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policyfound that by the close <br />of 2010, homeowners who owned inside a community land trust were 10 times less likely to go into <br />foreclosure than homeowners who weren't part of a land trust. <br />� h�u� .;�b�rhood <br />One thing to remember is that just like no two communities are identical, no two trusts are exactly the same. <br />In Seattle, for instance, the Homestead Community Land Trust does not have the single community focus of <br />Dudley Neighbors and instead, owns units scattered across the city. There are even instances where an <br />organization only keeps its right to repurchase buildings at an affordable price, but doesn't hold on to the land <br />itself. <br />But while the world of land trusts is a diverse one, it remains small, with less than 300 trusts nationwide. <br />Despite widespread interest in the model, its spread remains slow due in large part to the difficulties of <br />obtaining the necessary levels of funding, staffing and political support to bring a land trust to scale. It is <br />especially challenging in the gentrifying cities that need permanent affordable housing the most. <br />_ ;;�reenhouse <br />A glimpse at the membership rolls of the National Community Land Trust Network demonstrates this <br />unfortunate paradox. There are around 25,000 affordable rental units and 13,000 to 15,000 affordable <br />homeownership units among its member organizations. The largest of them, Champlain Housing Trust, <br />centered in Burlington, Vermont, hosts the largest number of trust units in the United States, with 1,800 rental <br />units and 520 homeownership units. But Burlington is a city of only 42,000, and the land trust stretches over <br />three counties with a population a bit over 200,000 (a third the size of a Boston or Seattle). Land trust- <br />protected units in major economic centers are few. There is no foreseeable way to bring into land trusts the <br />tens of thousands of units that would be needed to seriously assuage the housing crisis in hot-market cities as <br />