About
Land Trusts have been getting more attention recently. This past year, 221A announced its Cultural Land Trust proposal and the 2024 Community Land Trust Summit took place in Vancouver. Land trusts are a method for protecting private property in perpetuity by putting that land or property in a trust under the protection and management of a non-profit, charitable organization. Activists trace the origins of the Land Trust concept back to indigenous communal land ownership before colonization, but the first Community Land Trust in North America was a 6000 acre farm collective started by Black farmers in Georgia in 1969.
Land Trusts have become an important tool for organizations in Vancouver to try and protect local cultural heritage and community resources.
Four local examples
Hogan’s Alley Society is a Black-led non-profit organization that has worked to promote the well-being of communities of African descent. Hogan’s Alley was a Black neighbourhood formed in the late 1800s in Vancouver’s Stratchcona area that included Black-owned businesses and an African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) church. The Canadian government destroyed the neighborhood when it built a viaduct through the centre of the community. The City of Vancouver now plans to remove the roadway and redevelop the neighborhood. In response, Hogan’s Alley Society developed the Hogan’s Alley Block initiative, a Black-led Community Land Trust, to protect this neighborhood, ensure long-term affordability for residents, and prevent future displacement.
The BC Community Land Trust (CLT) is a social purpose real estate developer working to create permanently affordable housing. They do this by buying or leasing real estate and then holding it for the benefit of current and future residents. This allows them to take land out of the private real estate market and use it to generate community wealth and offer housing options for people from a broad range of incomes, backgrounds, and households. CLT’s first properties were owned by the Province of BC and CMHC. Now, CLT also builds new housing co-ops, preserves and redevelops existing co-ops, and works to build more housing.
The Cultural Land Trust that 221A is working on has identified the shrinking number of spaces for artists and cultural projects as a key problem affecting Vancouver due to rising real estate costs. Using a Land Trust model, they are now working to secure properties in BC to provide space for cultural and artistic purposes. Taking inspiration from other places like London, Scotland and San Francisco, this initiative is hoping to have secured 30 properties by 2050. In addition, they have a focus on Black Indigenous and People Of Colour (BIPOC) participation in governance and the assets of the land trust.
The Downtown Eastside Community Land Trust Association (DTES CLT), formed in 2020, is a non-profit organization that works to acquire private property and use it for community benefit through affordable housing and community spaces. With a community-elected board, people who live in the DTES are working “to steward local properties with the goal of maximizing neighbourhood prosperity rather than profit.”
Why on Top10
The most compelling reason for a land trust is to decommodify a piece of land, removing it from the market to be traded for financial gain. Instead, a governing organization with a social purpose can focus on that purpose and maintain use of the land for that specific social purpose while also maintaining a relatively stable level of rent. Its purpose and goal is not to gain from benefiting from the increase in the value of the land. For example, a land trust could ensure that affordable rental housing remains affordable rental housing, or that commercial properties for small local independent businesses are dedicated to small local independent businesses, or significant heritage properties are not demolished.
There are obviously challenges with securing funding to be able to purchase property and effectively governing and managing the asset, but the land trust is a way to deal with land commodification that is not a superficial band-aid solution.
Sources:
https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ijcs/2009-n39-40-ijcs3712/040830ar.pdf
Alliance of Canadian Land Trusts definition: https://aclt-acoc.ca/about-land-trusts/
https://thetyee.ca/News/2023/10/03/Secret-Affordability-Trust-Land/
https://thetyee.ca/News/2024/06/05/Can-New-Vision-Save-Vancouver-Arts-Spaces/
1) Hogan’ Alley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q62EpQ4mKg
https://www.broadbentinstitute.ca/community_land_trusts
2) Community land trust
https://www.chf.bc.ca/community-land-trust/
3) Cultural landtrust
https://221a.ca/project/cultural-land-trust-study/
4) Downtown Eastside
https://dtescommunitylandtrust.ca/
We acknowledge the financial assistance of the Province of British Columbia
