Introduction to Using CLTs to Deliver Energy Renovation and Permanent Affordability to Existing Housing
The following contribution was written by Richard Kruger Delgado, Education and Outreach Manager for the International Center for Community Land Trusts, to introduce the upcoming webinar on 25 September.
“We’re in the ‘not-leaving-folks-behind’ business.” – John Davis, International Center for Community Land Trusts
The “business” that John Davis is referring to is the work of community land trusts. Emphasizing the role of a “community” in the ownership and stewardship of land for housing and other uses, the CLT has been, from its origins, a transformative method for securing the livelihoods and belonging of communities. In the CLT, the community is ever growing, flowering, and renewing the basis for providing the stability, security, and affordability of housing and tenure. While CLTs work with place-based communities, the greater community of CLT organizations continues to grow, finding renewed purpose in radically different contexts across the planet. Founded on principles of justice and equity in the pursuit of community-led development on community-owned land, the CLT, eminently adaptable, finds itself used to enable justice in a diversity of ways and responding to wildly different needs. Universal throughout its growth has been the use of the CLT to secure justice and equity in the face of exclusionary and unjust housing and tenure systems.
The growth of the CLT movement, particularly in the past two decades, has been explosive. The CLT is now established as a legitimate form of housing and tenure provision across 14 nations. It has been included in the most recent version of UN Habitat’s New Urban Agenda. The first CLT in the Global South, the Caño Martín Peña CLT, has enabled a nascent movement for CLTs in Latin America to begin to flower. Indigenous and First Nations groups in Australia, Canada, and the US increasingly look to the CLT as a complement to other strategies for decolonizing land and property. And increasingly CLTs across the world are experimenting with uses of land beyond affordable housing, to securing the tenure of “informal” urban neighborhoods to the community-led and -owned development of agriculture, infrastructure, civic, artist, and commercial uses. All of this is happening while a deep crisis in housing affordability, gentrification and displacement is being felt by vulnerable communities all over the world.
The crisis in housing is not the only one communities around the world are facing. Climate change and its effects have noticeably and rapidly increased in the past decade. Hurricanes, wildfires, extreme weather and heat, are all increasing the burdens faced by vulnerable populations. The existing inequalities faced by vulnerable populations are intensified and disproportionately felt. Alongside these threats however lies the risk that also comes with climate change mitigation and adaptation policies which do not center justice and equity in responding to climate change. As climate justice advocates state, “the transition (to a decarbonized economy) is inevitable. Justice is not.”
Given the inevitably of transition, but without guarantees for justice, where does the figure of the community land trust fit in within this picture of the future? How are CLTs already responding to concerns about environmental justice? How does the stewardship mission of CLTs make them the perfect partners for delivering a Just Transition? As the climate crisis has gripped the attention of much of the world and the many activists, organizers, policymakers, and planners who are desperately working towards just solutions, we at the International Center for CLTs (CLT Center) feel that now is the time to begin participating in a broader movement to address climate change, in ways which align with the primary mission of CLTs – securing housing affordability and securing tenure.
As the Education and Outreach Manager for the CLT Center, I want to welcome the global CLT movement in joining us as we begin a new chapter. The CLT2030 Just Transition Initiative comes out of a partnership with Community Land Trust Brussels (CLTB). Inspired by the work of CLTs like CLTB as well as the CLTs around the world which have taken the lead in embedding justice and equity into their efforts for environmental sustainability, circularity, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Guided by a core mission to showcase innovation in CLT practice, the Center is taking the lead in showcasing how CLTs are bringing the core principles of Just Transition to life.
What are those principles? Through a collaborative process with CLT practitioners from around the world, we came to see that CLTs are already demonstration projects for achieving justice and equity in the face of a transition to a decarbonized economy. How do CLTs embed justice?
Through practice, people, and property. What do we mean by this though?
- Practice – CLT practice is founded on core principles that enable community members to be represented and participate in CLT governance. Based on comprehensive community organizing, democratic participation and representation in governance, and long-term stewardship of community-owned assets for community benefit. These practices are critical for building trust and legitimacy with marginalized and vulnerable communities, creating the infrastructure for community decision-making and participation.
- People – CLTs are dedicated to place-based communities, centering underrepresented and under-recognized groups in their mission, valuing the health and well-being of people holistically. Guided by the practice of stewardship, CLTs enable multi-generational representation, connecting future generations and communities to the present day.
- Property – CLTs redistribute ownership of land to organizations governed by members and communities themselves. By separating the value of land from housing, and through practices of long-term stewardship, CLTs provide permanent affordability and secure tenure and support new community uses for land, including, agriculture, economic development, and uses that align with environmental sustainability and resilience. By enabling land justice through collective ownership, CLTs not only redistribute land but most importantly the power that comes with ownership
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the International Center for Community Land Trusts.