The Pigeon Palace covered in scaffolding and tarps in San Francisco on Aug. 1, 2024. The housing complex operates through a community land trust, or a non-profit that buys land and then sells or rents the buildings to low-income residents to create permanently affordable housing. The Pigeon Palace tenants, who co-manage the building, are renovating the space.
The number of community land trusts – non-profits that buy up land and then sell or rent the buildings on top of it to low-income residents — has tripled in California since 2014, according to the Meanwhile, the San Francisco Community Land Trust has grown to oversee 150 units, including two larger buildings in the Tenderloin district that primarily house Spanish- and Mayan-speaking service workers. Last year, philanthropistCommunity land trusts can oversee single-family homes or multi-unit buildings, and residents can rent or own.
But he said community land trusts also have to navigate a financial and legal system that doesn’t tend to favor cooperative ownership.