Starting a CLT: Organizational and Operational Choices

The community land trust is a model of great versatility, leading to wide variation in the ways in which the CLT is structured and applied. Starting a Community Land Trust: Organizational and Operational Choices is an introductory manual prepared by John Emmeus Davis. It describes those decisions that matter the most in the early days of planning a CLT – choices that every sponsor of a new CLT must make. It presents the range of options for making each decision and reviews the pros and cons that should be weighed in selecting one course of action over another. These are choices of purpose, program, and scope that precede more technical deliberations over bylaws, ground lease, resale formula, and the like – topics covered elsewhere in publications like the CLT Legal Manual and the many materials posted by Burlington Associates on its CLT Resource Center.

Starting a community land trust is not a process of lifting a box of pre-measured ingredients off the kitchen shelf and following a predetermined recipe that is guaranteed to produce the same cookie-cutter product every time. Different communities have different conditions, priorities, politics, and needs. The “right” process and the “right” decisions for starting a CLT in one community may not be right for another. But the list of decisions is mostly the same. This manual was prepared to support and to spur such decision-making.

Topics covered in Starting a Community Land Trust include: characteristics of the “classic” model and its many variations, the rationale for supporting a CLT, the choice of sponsor and service area, strategies for educating and organizing core constituencies, and options for funding the CLT’s projects and operations. Extra attention is given to five “special topics”: the type and tenure of housing developed by a CLT, condominiums, governance, donations of land and buildings, and property taxes.

A bound copy of Starting a Community Land Trust: Organizational and Operational Choices may be purchased for only $15.00 plus shipping and handling. Use the link above to have a copy delivered via surface mail.

Alternatively, a free copy of Starting a Community Land Trust: Organizational and Operational Choices may be downloaded from the CLT Resource Center by clicking on each chapter listed below:

The Diverse World of Community Land Trusts
Rationale
Sponsorship
Service Area
Education & Organizing
Development
Funding
Special Topics