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community Housing Land Trust

In November 2004, the Housing Network incorporated a state-wide land trust to coordinate and support the efforts of members and others to provide permanently affordable housing options in communities across Rhode Island. The state-wide land trust will work with local partners to standardize paperwork and streamline administrative procedures. The state-wide land trust is an important tool to counteract gentrification and escalating land values and to promote mixed income development throughout the state.

An affordable housing land trust offers a distinctive approach to ownership:

Land and buildings are treated differently: while the land is held permanently by the land trust, so that it will always benefit the community, buildings can be owned by those who use them.

When a land trust sells homes, it leases the underlying land to the homeowners through a long-term (usually 99-year) renewable lease, which gives the residents and their descendants the right to use the land for as long as they wish to live there.

When homeowners on land trust property decide to move out of their homes, they can sell them. However, the land lease requires that the home be sold either back to the CLT or to another lower income household, and for an affordable price.

In many communities today population growth and economic investment are driving up real estate prices so that fewer and fewer working people can afford to live in the communities where they work. Fewer still can afford to buy homes in those communities. Limited public funds are available to subsidize housing costs for lower income households, but the gap between the amount of subsidy needed and the amount of subsidy available continues to widen as housing costs soar.

The state-wide land trust:

The state-wide land trust is set up to encourage local ownership and local control wherever practical, while standardizing and centralizing only those services that are necessary to the efficient operation and stewardship of land trust housing.

The state-wide land trust is structured as a federation of organizations with active local community land trusts and it would also have the ability to act in instances where there is a local land trust.

Housing Network member organizations with active community land trusts:

Church Community Housing Corporation (CCHC)
50 Washington Square, Newport, RI 02840
tel: 846-5114, fax: 849-7930

East Bay Community Development (EBCDC)
150 Franklin Street, Bristol,  RI 02809
tel: 253-2080, fax: 253-6997

CommunityWorks RI
693 Broad Street, Providence, RI 02907 
tel: 273-2330, fax: 274-3670
www.communityworksri.org

Habitat for Humanity of South County (HSC)
25 West Independence Way, Kingston, RI 02881 
tel: 783-2480, fax: 783-6190
www.southcountyhabitat.org

Mount Hope Neighborhood Land Trust (MHNLT)
185 Camp Street, Providence, RI 02908
tel: 421-7925, fax: 421-2014

Olneyville Housing Corporation (OHC)
1 Curtis Street, Providence, RI 02909 
tel: 351-8719, fax: 351-0019
www.olneyville.org

Westbay Community Action Program Inc. (WBCAP)
224 Buttonwood Avenue, Providence, RI 02886 
tel: 732-4666, fax: 732-6965

NeighborWorks Blackstone River Valley (NWBRV)                                                                   40 South Main Street, Woonsocket, RI 02895 
tel: 762-0993, fax: 769-1010
www.wndc.org