Backers of Community Land Trust Seek to Broaden Support
City Limits
By Abigail Savitch-Lew
The community land trust movement is gaining momentum across the city, in part buoyed by the de Blasio administration’s announcement last month that it will consider proposals from community land trusts groups to develop public parcels in several boroughs.
A community land trust is a non-profit, community-governed entity that obtains land, taking it out of the speculative market, and ensures the entities on that land (whether subsidized housing, community gardens or commercial enterprises) remain affordable in perpetuity.
With the February 28 deadline to respond to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD)’s Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEI) quickly approaching, community land trust organizers met last Thursday to discuss their responses. Some of those planning to respond, such as the Mott Haven-Port Morris Community Land Trust and the East Harlem Community Land Trust, are grassroots groups already incorporated as 501c3s that have been advocating for control of city-owned properties over the past couple years and now see the RFEI as their opportunity to take another step toward realizing their missions.
