Their aging landlord, who had long rented at affordable rates, was unable to continue overseeing the place. Instead a court-appointed conservator took steps to auction off the building.
Today, tenants of Pigeon Palace, a six-unit Queen Anne building, pay between $1,400 and $3,000 per month for spacious two-bedroom apartments in one of the pricey city’s most desirable neighborhoods. They share a bike room and garden with outdoor meeting space and make decisions together about building management.
Rather than just creating new affordable housing, community land trusts help stem the bleed of existing affordable housing being converted to units for wealthier residents. While the trusts are not new in California, concern about growingThe California Community Land Trust Network represents 50 established and emerging trusts across the state, with most of the newest ones springing up in working-class Black and brown communities, according to the network.
“Community land trusts could be a tool to help close the homeownership gap between Black and white individuals,” said Muhammad Alameldin, a policy associate at. The construction of condominiums has slowed nationwide in the past 15 years, he said, restricting options for entry-level homeowners who The movement took a hit this year when California lawmakers seeking to close a budget deficit scrapped a $500 million program that would have given tenants and community land trusts grants to buy properties at risk of foreclosure.this November would set aside $3 billion to preserve existing affordable housing, plus $6 billion for local communities to spend flexibly on priorities including preservation.
And the Wiyot Tribe in Humboldt County has set up a land trust focused on conservation as well as housing. “As housing prices are pricing our people out of the Tribe’s ancestral lands, this land trust is an attempt to make change in our community,” tribal administrator Michelle Vassel said by email. “Our intention is to take the profit margin out of housing development.”