Today, there are about 225 community land trusts in the United States. The model was pioneered by black farmers in the South and spread across the country as communities realized its potential for preserving access to land over many generations.
This Resource at a Glance
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22 Files
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44 Videos
Key take-aways
- The first community land trust grew out of the southern civil rights movement as a tool for establishing a new form of land tenure for black farmers and their families.
- The modern community land trust model was pioneered in North America in the 1970s and has inspired community land trust movements in Australia, Belgium, England, and France.
- Precursors to the modern CLT can be found in the Garden Cities of England, the Gramdan Movement of India, the moshav communities of Israel, and in many of the single tax colonies and planned, leased-land communities created in the US early in the 20th century.
This bundle of resources contains three items relating to the community land trust (CLT) model and movement.
“Roots and Branches: A Gardener’s Guide to the Origins and Evolution of the Community Land Trust” is a digital archive of historical materials tracing the origins and evolution of the community land trust, as both a model and a movement. It focuses on the United States.
The “Roots of the Community Land Trust” video series includes four videos and has a total runtime of 68 minutes. The video topics are:
- Introduction to the “Classic” Community Land Trust
- The CLT as an Innovative Model of Ownership
- The CLT as an Innovative Model of Organization
- The CLT as an Innovative Model of Operation
This bundle includes two website links. New Communities Inc. was founded in 1969 as a farm collective on 5,735 acres in Lee County, Georgia, and became one of the original models for community land trusts in the United States. Burlington Associates in Community Development is a national consulting cooperative founded in 1993 to support community land trusts and other shared equity homeownership strategies.
