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3 Questions with the City of Lakes Community Land Trust

The City of Lakes Community Land Trust (CLCLT) is a community-driven organization, affordable homeownership organization serving households seeking to purchase homes affordably and responsibly in the City of Minneapolis. Specifically, the CLCLT:

• Creates opportunities for low-income households who otherwise might not able to purchase a home to be able to do so

• Ensures that the homes remain affordable for future households in the event the first household decides to sell, and

• Provides ongoing support (post-purchase trainings, events, community information) to homeowners ensuring successful homeownership

We recently asked Jeff Washburne, CLCLT’s executive director, to respond to a couple of quick questions regarding their work for our blog.

Nexus: What's the easiest way for someone to understand how the land trust model works?

Jeff: The CLCLT makes affordability investments (ranging from $30,000 to $100,000 - depending on household income), assisting low-income buyers move into homeownership. In consideration for this investment, homeowners agree to return the investment and to share a percentage of any increase in property value if and when they decide to sell. The resulting agreement has the effect of creating and perpetuating housing affordability now and into the future.

Nexus: Three years ago you coined the term "homeowner centric" to describe your thoughtful and strategic approach to homeownership? Can you describe this?

Jeff: For CLCLT, viewing every aspect of our work through a homeowner-centric lens acknowledges that successful homeownership goes beyond the homebuyer closing and the physical structure they purchased. While housing production and preservation are essential components to community development, CLCLT believes that a people focused approach to housing will best strengthen neighborhood recovery efforts and advance social, economic and racial equalities in Minneapolis.

This unique approach, one of the only kinds in the country, is a win-win-win for the homeowner, the community, and for the CLCLT.

Nexus: There are a lot of ideas about how "housing recovery" should look in the Twin Cities as we look to come out of the recent foreclosure and economic crisis. Why won't the "same-previous-housing-crisis-response-fits-all" approach work today to rebuild neighborhoods devastated by the housing crisis?

Jeff: We need a people-approach to solving housing problems versus a housing approach to solving people issues.

For all too long, housing policy has applied old ways of doing things to familiar problems -such as distressed housing markets - without getting to the root of the problem. Community Land Trust homeownership not only provides affordable housing to low-income households, but does so in a way that provides a keystone of stability in communities through a "homeowner centric" approach to housing that assures the community that the home remains an asset of the community and that resid ents will be involved, owner-occupants. The CLCLT has and will continue to take a homeowner centric approach to creating perpetually affordable housing that advances the social, economic, and racial equity disparities that exist across the neighborhoods of Minneapolis.

To learn more about the work of the City of Lakes Land Trust, you can visit their website at http://www.clclt.org or visit their Facebook fan page.

 

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