[00:00:18] Speaker A: Welcome to Uptown Chats, a podcast where we share stories about environmental justice by and for everyday people. I'm your co host Lonnie.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: And I'm your other co host Jaron.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: And today we've got our favorite WE ACT staff member Annie Carforo back on the show to talk about Community Land Trust. Don't know what they are? Stay tuned to find out. But before we get to that, Jaron, can you read WEAC's mission?
[00:00:40] Speaker B: I sure can. We ACT's mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and or low income residents participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Thank you for that. As we mentioned before, so today we'll be joined by Annie Carforo, WEAK's Climate Justice Campaign manager, to talk a little bit about Community Land Trust. Our conversation with Annie builds on one of our previous episodes earlier this year where we talked to Annie about one of WE act's housing related campaigns called Our Homes Under Our Control. If you haven't listened to that already, I recommend you check that out.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Annie's going to go into more detail, but at a really basic level, a Community Land Trust is just a nonprofit corporation that holds land on behalf of a place based community like a neighborhood or something like that, and serves as the long term steward for affordable housing, community gardens, civic buildings, commercial spaces and other community assets on behalf of that community. And they've been around for less than 50 years, so not very long. But there are much older precursors in different parts of the world that kind of were around before this concept of a community Land Trust kind of existed.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: The nonprofit organization generally credited with being the first CLT, New Communities Incorporated, was founded in Southwest Georgia in 1969, a product of the Southern civil rights movement. A decade later, only about a handful of CLTs were operational in the United States, all of them in rural areas. The first urban CLT did not appear until 1980, and another 20 years passed before a number, variety and dispersion of CLTs had reached the point where it was fair to speak of a CLT movement. Today there are over 260 CLTs in 46 states, the district of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The model has begun spreading to other countries as well, including Australia, Belgium, Canada, England and France.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: One last thing before we jump into our interview with Annie is defining a term she uses a few times, speculation. And you've probably heard that word used before, but it has a specific meaning when it comes to housing and Real estate Property speculation is an approach to real estate investment where anticipated profits are based on predicted changes in local market conditions rather than physical improvements or rents for that building. In some cases, real estate speculation won't provide homes for anyone at all. A real estate investor may buy a residential property with no plan to rent the units. Instead of investing the capital to renovate or manage a building, a speculator may decide that it's more profitable to simply hold onto that building until the neighborhood housing market heats up and just gain their profits from the property sale itself.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: Hopefully all of this background provides a little more context for our conversation that we're about to have with Annie, but we're going to dive into a little bit about what CLTs look like in New York City. So let's go ahead and jump in.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: Let's go.
All right.
[00:04:01] Speaker C: Thank you so much for joining us, Annie. This is your third appearance on the podcast. You know, I feel like it's sad that it's only three. I feel like it should be like 12 by now. We just have you on every episode. We are our honorary third member of the podcast.
[00:04:14] Speaker D: But either way, host invite. Is this how you're going to ask me to be a host?
[00:04:20] Speaker C: Maybe it is.
Maybe we'll put a vote in the show notes and let people vote on if we can officially bring you on as our third host. I would love that.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: But Friend of the Pod is a good title right now.
[00:04:32] Speaker D: I like Friend of the Pod, Friend of the Pod.
[00:04:35] Speaker C: Official title, Friend of the Pod. But either way, we're super glad to have you on this episode to talk about community land trust, which is a super important topic both in New York and just in general for folks that are thinking about housing and other things. So before we get in too far, I'm going to let you reintroduce yourself for folks who maybe haven't heard any of your previous episodes. And then we'll jump into maybe have you explain what this concept of a community land trust is.
[00:05:03] Speaker D: Yeah, definitely. Thank you for having me back on. Super happy to be here. My name is Annie. I am the climate justice campaign manager here at WE Act. I work on the New York policy team with lj and I'm here today to talk to you all about some of our advocacy we're doing around community land trusts. So a community land trust is. It's not an overly complicated idea, but for folks where it's a new idea, it might take a minute to kind of understand it. But basically it's a form of collective land Ownership that can meet a wide array of needs that communities have and can help communities, especially in urban settings like New York City, fight back against speculation and displacement. So essentially what a community land trust is, it's a nonprofit, 501C3 that is run by a. There's a lot of different models, but it's typically the traditional CLT is run by a triapartite board or democratically elected board that represents different facets of the community. And the nonprofit's job is to essentially rest parcels of land from the. Prof. The for profit market and hold them and steward them in perpetuity for uses that are more needed in the community. So for example, instead of if there is a vacant lot in your neighborhood and a private developer buys that lot, they're likely going to build market rate housing, luxury housing. In New York we're seeing a lot of these like luxury condos going up that are selling for 1, 2 million dollars that most people cannot afford versus if a CLT was able to acquire that land, then they can hold that in perpetuity. They are now stewards of that land and they offer 99 year leases to whatever entity wants to go on top of that land. And within that lease they typically have some principles or requirements that force whatever entity is on top of that land to meet the needs of the community. And it's not force, you know, it's more of like a working relationship. So, so instead of getting luxury condos, you might get affordable housing. And that housing is actually affordable in perpetuity. It's not one of these like regulatory agreements that the city gives to private developers to get them to build affordable housing that maybe expires in 30 years. But you can do a lot of other uses with CLTs. You can build green space on top of them, you can build community centers, you can build health centers, you can build commercial spaces for local businesses, mom and pop shops who can't afford the rent on their commercial spaces. And community land trusts essentially are a way for communities to bring resources in that they have long needed and have often not seen those investments. So it's, it's an organizing tool as much as it is in a physical entity.
And it allows communities to really do more long term planning and visioning and community development in a much more democratic way than our current system is set up to do.
[00:08:07] Speaker C: I feel like that was helpful for me because honestly, I know about this campaign and I know that this work exists, but have never quite fully understood what a community land trust is. So actually that's really helpful one, I guess, sub question to that. And you kind of touched on it a little bit. But what does that process look like? Is it a really long process for this to take place? Is it years in the making for a community land trust to be developed and put in place? Or is this something that is maybe more simple than it seems?
[00:08:38] Speaker D: Yeah, I think that CLTs they. Not that they're complicated, but I do think that it takes quite a bit of thought and organizing because they are democratically controlled nonprofits. So already we know democracy is messy, it can be lengthy, you know, build, you know, making decisions that way. But neighborhoods and in New York City, we've had an active clt, the Cooper Square clt. So the Cooper Square Committee acquired their first building in the 90s, and that was like the first, like active CLT in New York City. But now in 2024, there are over 20 community land trusts in neighborhoods across New York City. And that organizing took a long time. It didn't. You know, one day a neighborhood wakes up and says, I want a community land trust. There needs to be those connections, those roots, those conversations about, you know, we're seeing development that is not aligned with what our community needs, or we are constantly needing more investments than we're receiving.
And so it's. It's a lot of conversations, it's a lot of organizing. Obviously, people are not going to be on the same page. You know, we've even seen within the community land trust movement in New York City this tug of war between the need for more affordable housing and the need for other resources like green space in an area where we have very limited land. That is like a constant struggle. And so communities have to work through. Like, what are we actually advocating for? And building out a community land trust, building out the board. It does take a lot of organizing, but it is a tool for organizing and it is a tool for, as I mentioned, like, helping people envision what real participation in community development looks like. And so as much work as it is, I think what we've seen in New York is that there's a real appetite for it. And neighborhoods are all starting to form their own CLTs because they want that entity to be there, to be a opposing force to the private market, which has so much power in New York. Real estate is such a valuable asset for banks and corporations and investors that, you know, I think communities really are feeling that because they're on the ground seeing the impacts of investors that are making decisions that impact their day. To day lives from far away. And so forming the CLT and organizing is one thing, and that does take a long time. And then actually acquiring land in a neighbor in an area like New York City is very difficult because land in New York is incredibly expensive. I saw a recent, I think in like 2022 or something, new York City's land values just for Manhattan was more than Canada's gdp. So land in New York is insanely expensive. And a small community nonprofit cannot compete against a J.P. morgan Chase or against a Blackrock or a Blackstone. And so that is where the policies need to come in. The public fund investments need to come in to help these CLTs acquire land to then develop. So it is an incredibly long process. And especially in an area like New York City where the real estate market is so developed, there needs to be some public intervention to help these small non profits, you know, get ahead or get a leg in, get a hand in the market to compete. So it is not an easy process, but when it works, it works. And there are some great examples of how it works.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: I really appreciate that and I think, you know, it's, it's great that you're here talking about this because I didn't know anything about community Land Trust at all until I met you. And still you doing all the work that you do with housing and land use here at We Act. And I didn't realize that there was such a connection between the work that we, that we do and then things like community Land Trust. Because I'm also one of those New Yorkers who walks around just like everyone else and like, I'll see a vacant lot or I'll see a building of like, what could that be or what that could become? And then sometimes I'm like, highly disappointed. Then the weeks after, a month after you walk past it again, you're like, oh, it's a bank, you know, or it's something that like the community did not need at all. So can you explain a little bit the connection to environmental justice and community land trust?
[00:12:55] Speaker D: Yeah, definitely. I mean, at kind of the root of the environmental justice movement is this battle over the local land use, right? Land has been used to displace, to subjugate, to pollute. But policies like redlining. Let's just think about this. Policies like redlining, right? Where in the 1930s and 40s, the federal government literally said, if there are people of color living in a neighborhood that is an area that we should not invest in. And so that labeled that land where communities of Color existed as less worthy or less valuable of investments. And then the those same neighborhoods were targeted for all of these undesirable facilities that cities require to run like sewage treatment plants, wastewater treatment plants, power plants, the marine transfer stations, because they were seen as less worthy. So they became dumping grounds, right? And now the environmental justice movement was a response to that. It was an organizing effort on local land use issues to say our communities are worthy, we do deserve investments and we don't deserve to carry all of the burden of all of the pollution that a city needs to function. So a community land trust is for one thing in frontline and environmental justice communities saying like we are valuable and we deserve investment, but we want investment that community centered, right? We don't want to go through the constant and predictable cycles of speculation that we see happening in northern Manhattan, in Harlem, in the South Bronx where you know, the real estate market has been so maxed out in, you know, lower Manhattan that it's continuing to creep north. And so what a CLT can do again because it is giving community control over local land use decisions, it can say, and one of the best examples, I'm going to give a shout out to the Mott Haven Port Morris CLT that was formed under, with the support from South Bronx Unite. It's kind of like a branch off of South Bronx Unite, which is in fabulous environmental justice and community based organization founded in the South Bronx. It's a neighborhood that is heavily industrialized, has very little investment in the things that provide a good quality of life, like quality housing, open green space, access to the waterfront, et cetera. And the clt. The Mott Haven Port Morris CLT has worked for years, actually like decades, and came up with a waterfront community plan that would, the CLT would own the land that butts up against the Harlem river and would create a publicly accessible open green space for a community that has pretty much none. And so the city is not going to do that themselves because we have had city officials when we talk to them about, oh, you know, there's this vacant owned lot that the city owns that we would love to see turned into green space. It's in a neighborhood that has a very high heat vulnerability index. It flows, floods a lot, or you know, there's just, there's no other open green space accessible for people within a mile, a half mile. We'd love to see this turned into a park. And they've said to us like point blank, they're like, well, parks don't make money because the city's Interest is how can we make money off that land? Whether it's selling it or property taxes, whatever. A clt, when you take that profit motive out of the land, can like actually bring the things that people need so you can bring the open green spaces. There's a lot of really interesting work with CLTs happening in cities like Houston, where CLTs are actually trying to acquire land that floods repeatedly and return that to natural lands, to wetlands, to whatever they originally were, and to keep them there in perpetuity. One, to act as a natural barrier for the rest of the community, but also to make sure that we're not building low income housing in an area that is always going to flood, that, you know, is not safe to live in. And so community land trusts, again, they're like this opposing force to bring all of the resources that some communities have been deprived into a neighborhood through collective organizing. And that has huge implications for environmental justice because without any sort of community input, low income communities of color, instead of getting parks, they get power plants. I think that a community land trust is kind of like, it's a response to that and it's a solution to bring in these resources that maybe the city still doesn't see value in investing in.
[00:17:24] Speaker C: That's helpful, I feel like.
And you kind of touched on this a little bit. I feel like you did a great job of like alluding to all the questions we're going to ask you. So no, you're making our lives really easy because, you know, you're kind of setting us up for it, which is tying it into. Okay, clearly it seems like the community land trust is a great opportunity, is a great solution that could help benefit communities. But you mentioned there's some pieces around policy to help support it and make it more feasible to address some of those challenges that you mentioned. And my guess is that's where the campaign comes in. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about what some of those policy pieces are that are needed to help really move this community land trust idea for it as a real solution and how that ties into the campaign that you're working on with We Act?
[00:18:11] Speaker D: Yeah, definitely. So there is a coalition in New York City called the New York City Community Land Initiative. And this was started, I believe, back in 2011 by an organization called Picture the Homeless. That was an active advocacy group of homeless New Yorkers that were advocating for long term solutions for permanently affordable housing. And they had learned a lot about CLTs through some, you know, you know, research. But Also just like, and I think they had done some trips to kind of see the landscape of what CLTs could actually be and thought this is something we need in New York. And as I mentioned, there was already the Cooper Square clt, but there hadn't been any other development since then in terms of new neighborhood CLTs. And so the New York City Community Land Initiative has been an incredible organizing force that gives local neighborhoods and local groups like the organizing tools, the technical assistance to form their own CLTs. Because as we mentioned, it's like not an easy process. And through their help and support, there's now 20 over 20 community land trusts across New York City. And they're all at varying stages of development.
And I think as I've mentioned, what the real learning lesson has been is that acquiring land in an area like New York City, where land is very expensive and very rare to like just kind of fall upon is really hard. And so the Nicely, I'm going to call this the New York City Community Land Initiative. Nicely came up with this bill package which is aimed to try and level the playing fields between the for profit developers and the community land trusts that have been forming and growing. And so there's a couple of bills in it. I'm happy to go through a couple. And basically what this bill package is trying to do is build interventions into the typical land sale process to make sure that community land trusts get a fair chance to intervene where they're not entering into a bidding war against a bank, which they're almost guaranteed to lose. So one of the bills is called Community Opportunity to Purchase act, also known as copa, would give a list of qualified nonprofits which would be pre approved by the Department of Housing and Preservation Development. This could include nonprofit developers. It can also include CLTs. It would give them right of first refusal when a landlord wants to sell their building. So essentially they would have like a preset amount of time, I think it's about 60 days to make an offer on a building before it goes to the private market. And so as I mentioned, this helps a clt. It gives them a leg up to make sure that they're not bidding on a building against a bank or private equity that, you know, the odds are just heavily stacked against them. And it gives the CLT some time to also put together a financing package. So I think it's like I said, A 60 day period. A CLT says we want to bid on this building, they then have an additional 120 days to come up with a financing, like an offer. And that gives the CLT a little bit of time to look into like its funding and to, you know, look into like public funding, like public incentives that might be available to them and essentially try and buy that building, move it off the private speculative market and put it onto a CLT where now it is going to be affordable in perpetuity. The CLT will steward the land and then the CLT will work with the tenants in that building to decide what type of governance they want, whether that be, you know, limited equity cooperatives or they want to, you know, work with a nonprofit developer to have a management company come in and mutual Housing association. There's like lots of different models and this is much better outcomes, obviously for the people who live in that building. As we've seen in New York, there's like a horrible, horrible trend of buildings being sold from one developer to the next, who all they're trying to do is suck as much equity out of that building as possible. And so they, you know, cut maintenance costs, they raise rents, and the conditions in the building deteriorate while the rents go up. And people either are forced out because they can't afford it anymore, or, you know, they're forced out because the conditions get so bad. And that wouldn't happen on a mission driven CLT where there is actual invested interest in keeping that building as homes for the people that live there. So that's copa. The other bill in the bill package is called Public Land for Public Good. And what that would do is require that the city prioritize these qualifying nonprofits when they are to dispose of their own land. So little fun fact. New York City as an entity is the largest landowner in New York City. The city owns a lot of land and a lot of it is in use, but a lot of it is not. Or it's in, it's underutilized. Right? It's a parking lot. It's, you know, a building that's been closed for decades. The city had a trend that kind of started, you know, during the 70s in the financial crisis. The city acquired a ton of land because landlords were walking away from their buildings. They were burning them down for insurance claims. They were, you know, there was just. The real estate market was in a much different place. And so the city acquired a bunch of land, arguably too much land. They couldn't take care of all of it.
And so in the years following, the city would literally sell parcels of land to private developers for a dollar and they would give them land which is very valuable in New York, and allow them to build for profit housing or nonprofit housing through one of the regulatory agreements that wouldn't really be that affordable and also wouldn't be permanent. And that trend continued for far too long because New York's real estate market bounced back in a big way. But even like in de Blasio's administration, which was 2013 to 2020, 21, they were selling land to private developers for a dollar. And don't get me wrong, they were also selling some private land to nonprofits for a dollar, but heavily favored private developers because private developers could, I don't know, get the job done faster. That's just who the city preferred to partner with.
So this bill is very timely because we are hemorrhaging public land and we're putting it back into the private market where we've seen all of this not very helpful development happening. And also like maintenance of land being very bad, we want to see any public land that is sold going into CLTs or nonprofits. And we see this as one of the most direct ways to keep public land public and not privatized. Privatize public land further. So that is the second bill in the bill package.
The third bill is actually a resolution. So this is calling. This is what if it passed. A resolution essentially is like New York City Council saying to New York State, we like this bill and we want you to pass this bill. This is called Tenant Opportunity to Purchase, also nicknamed Topa, similar to copa. What it would do is if a landlord is selling their building, it would give the tenants, right, a first refusal to purchase that building. And this is a very exciting tool to have in the toolbox when we think about, like social housing and decommodified housing. You know, 70% of New York City are renters. But a lot of renters, especially who have absentee landlords, also become maintenance workers and supers and, you know, are taking care of their buildings because their landlords are not. And if the opportunity were to arise where they could become collective owners of their building, this is not going to work for every building by any means, but there are some buildings that are well organized that could take advantage of this. And this could look a lot of different ways. You know, those tenants or now owners could partner with the CLT to have some support and like, stewarding the land in the building. You know, there's like a lot of different options that are opened by this, but it is a law that needs to pass at the state level. The city does not have that power to pass topa. But in the bill package at the city level is this resolution saying, we like this bill, we want this to pass at the state.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: Wow. Thank you. Thank you for explaining that. I don't think I've ever actually sat and listened to you explain all of the bills. Can you give us an idea of kind of where the campaign is right now and like, what are the next steps that they have to take to kind of pass these bills?
[00:26:45] Speaker D: Yeah, so the bills I think are all moving at like different paces, but have also been around for quite a while. I think this is like year four, potentially of topa, maybe year three. So these are like well known bills at this point and they have had near super majority support in city council. I think they're like one or two sponsors away from having a veto proof majority.
So they're very popular among city council members.
The issue right now is we have not been able to get them to a floor for a vote. Even though they have enough votes to pass. We haven't gotten a lot of feedback from the current speaker of the council on her position on the bills.
And so there's been a lot of organizing that's been happening. You know, all of the CLTs that are involved nicely are involved. Many other groups like we act are involved. We see like a real benefit for Harlem and Washington Heights and Inwood through this bill package and through the expansion and strengthening of CLTs in our neighborhood. So, you know, more than just CLTs are involved in this campaign at this point. And the real goal right now is to get the speaker of the council to introduce these bills for a vote, to bring these bills to the floor for a vote. You know, there's lots of behind the scenes efforts that are going on to do that. We're having borough based town halls to have council members talk to constituents about these bills and like, you know, have clts also talk to people and talk about their work in very tangible and like physical ways. Like what are we actually organizing and what are some of the projects that we're pushing for and what could this look like in your neighborhood? And we are, you know, having meetings with our sponsors of the bills and really working on a strategy to get them passed out of city council.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: Thank you for that.
[00:28:35] Speaker C: As we're getting towards the end of our time, on that related note, what are ways that folks can plug into.
[00:28:41] Speaker B: The campaign and help move it along?
[00:28:43] Speaker C: For any listeners who are inspired and want to, you know, want to be a part of this campaign or help.
[00:28:48] Speaker B: Help move the work forward.
[00:28:50] Speaker C: How can they do that?
[00:28:51] Speaker D: Couple of ideas. If you want to work on this campaign through we act, you know, we're coming at this really from like a campaign and advocacy stance. Feel free to join our Climate Justice Working Group and you can reach out through our website and we can connect you. But that's where we talk a lot about these bills and some of the efforts. We also coordinate an Uptown Land Justice Coalition where we monthly meet with the local CLTs. Uptown. There's a Northern Manhattan CLT, there's a Central Harlem CLT, and there's an East Harlem El Barrio CLT. So we get all of them in a room, we all chat, we talk with other housing organizations in the space and make sure we're all staying on the same page about our mission and vision around land use Uptown. But that can all happen through the Climate Justice Working Group. If you don't live uptown, but you live in New York City, go to Nicely's website, it's nyccli.org and check out some of the other CLTs that exist in New York City because there are a lot and there's a lot of neighborhoods that have one. And I really encourage folks to reach out to their local clt. It's a, it's a great way to like, not only like, meet your neighbors, but also do like visioning and planning for your neighborhood and your community in a way that doesn't feel very exploitative and extractive.
[00:30:05] Speaker C: Thank you, Annie.
[00:30:05] Speaker B: And we'll make sure to include all those URLs that you mentioned, all those websites in the show notes for folks to access easily.
[00:30:11] Speaker C: So thank you for those.
[00:30:13] Speaker D: Cool.
[00:30:13] Speaker A: I get so excited every time you talk about Community Land Trust. It makes me want to just like, I wish I was an eccentric billionaire that can just like pull all of my money into helping people create land Trust. Because it is really a true way to combat what's going on in the private markets and again in our neighborhoods. Again, we all go through our neighborhoods and we have aspirations for the places that we live and the community that we, that we're a part of. And sometimes when those things don't get fulfilled in a way that you would like to, it just, it could be kind of demoralizing.
But, you know, having these, but having the knowledge of like Community Land Trust that they exist and that there's a movement behind it that actually has some policy attached to it as well can be really inspiring and kind of makes people a little bit more optimistic about their future and their community. Thanks for listening. If you like this episode, make sure to rate and review the show on whatever platform you listen on. If you have thoughts about the show, we encourage you to reach out to us with their thoughts and
[email protected] check.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: Out we act on Facebook at weact4ej. That's w e a c t f o r ej on Instagram x and YouTube at weact4ej. That's w e a c t number 4ej and check out our website weact.org for more information about environmental justice.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: Bye.
