Our History

Timeline of the International Center for CLTs

2009

An international study visit, organized by the Building and Social Housing Foundation, brought two dozen housing activists from around the world to Burlington, Vermont to learn about the CLT model from the Champlain Housing Trust, which had just received the World Habitat Award.  The delegation selected to visit Burlington, VT included future CLT Center board members Dave Smith and Geert De Pauw, joined by future CLT troubadours Louise Crabtree and Yves Cabannes. Featured speakers included John Davis and Brenda Torpy, who had helped to establish the Burlington Community Land Trust in 1984. The gathering inspired CLT efforts in Australia, London, and Brussels, and created the first informal international CLT network. 

2010

  • Inspired by the peer exchange in Burlington, Vermont, Dave Smith of the London CITIZENS Community Land Trust writes a paper entitled “Community Land Trusts: Towards an International Movement”, in which he proposes the establishment of an exploratory group to  identify “universals” to be found within the CLT movement, which in turn could be the basis of developing educational tools that could be woven into the upcoming National CLT Network conference in November in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
  • Greg Rosenberg, the Director of the National CLT Academy, staffs an International CLT Network Steering Committee, which develops a set of guiding principles that include mutual learning, respect for national umbrella organizations, creating opportunities for burning souls, and convening international meetings. Participants in steering committee Skype calls include Dave Smith, Geert De Pauw, Louise Crabtree, John Davis, Brenda Torpy, and Roger Lewis. The first in-person meeting of the steering committee takes places on November 11th at the National CLT Network annual conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
  • John Davis and Connie Chavez, President of the National CLT Network in the USA, are invited to San Juan Puerto, Rico. They meet with ENLACE and the Caño Martín Peña CLT, along with future Center board members Maria Hernandez Torrales and Lyvia Rodriguez Del Valle. 

2011

John Davis and Dev Goetschius, President of the CLT Network in the USA and a future CLT Center board member, attend the first AGM of the National CLT Network in the UK. Dave Smith is elected to the UK Network’s inaugural board of directors.

2013

  • Release of Roots of the Community Land Trust, a four-part slideshow tracing the origins and evolution of the CLT. It was produced and narrated by John Davis, expanding on a history that was researched and presented for the first time at the National CLT Academy in Seabeck WA in 2006. 
  • In an article titled “Building the Singular City: Land Tenure and Urban Planning in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas” published on September 19th by RioOnWatch, Theresa Williamson proposes the CLT as an innovative approach to secure collective land tenure in Rio’s favelas. 

2014

On April 22, 2014, Roots and Branches was launched. Created by John Davis and Greg Rosenberg with graphics produced by Bonnie Acker, this website was a digital archive of stories, photographs, videos, interviews, and documents from the world-wide CLT movement.  It expanded on the recorded slideshow, “Roots of the CLT,” produced by John Davis in 2013.

2015

The Roots of the CLT slideshow is translated into Dutch by the Brussels Community Land Trust under the supervision of Geert De Pauw.

2016

  • The Caño Martín Peña CLT in San Juan, Puerto Rico receives the UN World Habitat Award from the Building and Social Housing Foundation. Yves Cabannes was a member of the jury that selected award recipients, and John Davis assisted in submitting their award application.
  • Yves Cabannes and Greg Rosenberg participate in a United Nations Expert Group Meeting in New York City, where they advocate for the inclusion of community land trusts in the upcoming New Urban Agenda.
  • The third World Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) is convened in Quito, Ecuador by the United Nations. CLTs are endorsed as an effective strategy for housing low-income populations in the UN’s New Urban Agenda, adopted at this conference. The Caño Martín Peña Community Land Trustis featured at a side event called “people-powered housing” and is presented with their World Habitat Award trophy.  

2017

  • March 12th: A peer exchange in San Juan, Puerto Rico, hosted by the Caño Martín Peña CLT and sponsored by World Habitat, brings activists from around the world to learn how a CLT can be established in an informal community. Like the study visit in Burlington, Vermont in 2009, this exchange created an enormous amount of excitement about the potential for the expansion of the CLT movement — this time focused on the Global South. In attendance were future CLT Center board and staff members Lyvia Rodriguez Del Valle, Maria Hernandez, Line Algoed, Greg Rosenberg, and Mariolga Julia Pacheco. 
  • March 28th:  The first call was held between the Caño Martín Peña CLT and Catalytic Communities to talk about CLT efforts in Brazil. This led to an in-person exchange in Rio de Janeiro, which in turn played a pivotal role in establishing the Favela CLT Network.
  • May 11th:  A Skype call is organized to discuss possible collaborations to support the work of the Caño Martín Peña CLT and the potential establishment of the CLT model in Brazil. Participants included Lyvia Rodriguez Del Valle, Line Algoed, Malcolm Childress, John Davis, and Greg Rosenberg.  Additionally, there was a discussion about a Spanish translation of a second edition of The Community Land Trust Reader that John is interested in producing. Meeting participants also discussed a new document describing a number of activities for international collaboration entitled “New Directions for Community Land Trusts”. 
  • July 3rd:  The first Skype meeting of the International CLT Working Group is held, with new members Theresa Williamson and Yves Cabannes joining the conversation that began on May 11th.
  • August 31st:  John Davis develops an initial framework for a “Center for CLT Strategic Studies” to foster the growth of the worldwide CLT movement.
  • September: “Sustainable Housing for Inclusive and Cohesive Cities” (SHICC), funded by the European Union and housed within the Brussels CLT, is established to promote cross-national communication, research, and training among CLTs in Belgium, England, and France. 
  • October 28th: John Davis sends out the first proposed outline for a 2019 Spanish language edition of The Community Land Trust Reader.
  • November 3rd:  Theresa Williamson (Catalytic Communities, Rio de Janeiro) comes to Madison, Wisconsin to speak at the University of Wisconsin.  While she is in town, she participates in a hybrid working session that includes local participants Alberto Vargas, Martin Bailkey, Greg Rosenberg and Malcolm Childress, with remote participation by Line Algoed, Tarcyla Fidalgo and John Davis.

2018

  • February 2nd:  We announce the establishment of a new program under the umbrella of the Global Land Alliance, the Center for Community Land Trust Innovation, with John Davis and Greg Rosenberg serving as co-directors. According to the announcement, “the Center’s first priority will be to document and to support the work of ENLACE and the Caño Martín Peña CLT in Puerto Rico and the plan of Catalytic Communities to establish CLTs in the favelas of Brazil.” Link to archival website. We also announcement the establishment of our technical advisory committee, which is made up of the following people:  Pierre Arnold:  urbaMonde (France), Gautam Bhan:  Institute for Human Settlements (India), Yves Cabannes: University College London (Portugal), Louise Crabtree:  Western Sydney University – Institute for Culture and Society (Australia), Geert De Pauw:  Community Land Trust Brussels (Belgium), Devika Goetschius:  Housing Land Trust of Sonoma County (US), Arif Hasan:  Orangi Pilot Project (Pakistan), María Hernández Torrales:  University of Puerto Rico School of Law, Caño Martín Pena Community Land Trust (Puerto Rico/US), Stephen Hill:  C2O futureplanners, Churchill Fellow (UK), Tony Picket:  Grounded Solutions Network (US), Lyvia Rodriguez Del Valle:  Proyecto ENLACE, Caño Martín Pena Community Land Trust (Puerto Rico/US), David Smith:  London Community Land Trust, National Housing Federation (UK), Harry Smith:  Independent consultant (US), Brenda Torpy:  Champlain Housing Trust (US), Bea Varnai:  urbaMonde (Senegal), Mariangela Veronesi:  World Habitat (UK), Theresa Williamson:  Catalytic Communities (Brazil).
  • September 23rd:  John Davis notifies our 41 authors that our book is now entitled On Common Ground: International Perspectives on the Community Land, with a projected publication date of May 2020.
  • October 3rd: The first in-person meeting of the CLT Center’s technical advisory committee is held at the Grounded Solutions Network’s national conference in Pittsburgh, PA in October. In attendance, along with the CLT Center’s future Coordinator, Greg Rosenberg, were six future Center board members John Davis, Theresa Williamson, Dev Goetschius. Maria Hernandez, Bea Varnai, and Harry Smith.
  • A delegation from the Caño Martin Peña CLT in Puerto Rico visits Brazil, introducing the CLT model to community organizers working in Rio’s favelas. 

2019

  • January 11th:  At a meeting of the co-editors of On Common Ground (John Davis, Line Algoed, and Maria Hernandez Torrales), also attended by Geert De Pauw and Joaquin dos Santos, a decision was made to self-publish the book.
  • November 22nd:  The technical advisory committee is now the CLT Center advisory board.  At this meeting Geert DePauw presented his idea for World CLT Day, which was enthusiastically received.  A proposed name of our new publishing imprint, Terra Nostra Press, was also discussed and endorsed.
  • In November we will file articles of incorporation and bylaws, and launch a new website: cltweb.org (link to archival website). 
  • December 19:  We participated in a planning meeting for a spring 2020 international CLT conference to be held in Brussels, Belgium.  On the call were Thomas Dawance, Geert De Pauw, Line Algoed, Joaquin de Santos, John Davis, and Greg Rosenberg. Because of the COVID pandemic, this was later changed to an online conference held on December 4, 2020.

2020

  • In January we convened our first board of directors, which was made up of Maria Hernandez, Line Algoed, and John Davis.  Greg Rosenberg provided staff support as a part-time contractor. 
  • Throughout the year, we devoted considerable time to building our online resource library at cltweb.org, with new interviews with David Ireland, Jerry Maldonado, Gus Newport, Geert De Pauw, Brenda Torpy, and Tony Pickett.  We built the first global map and directory of CLTs.  And we collected news about CLTs from around the world.
  • Between June and November, we published four books:
    • On Common Ground
    • La inseguridad de la tenencia de la tierra en América Latina y el Caribe
    • Why Community Land Trusts?
    • Community Land Trust Applications in Urban Neighborhoods
  • In November, we applied to the IRS for tax-exempt status. 

2021

  • In January, the board of directors was expanded to include the following new board members: Geert De Pauw, Dev Goetschius, Gus Newport, Mariolga Julia Pacheco, Dave Smith, Harry Smith, Bea Varnai, Rev. John Whitfield, and Theresa Williamson.
  • Between January and December, we published the following books:
    • Impactful Development and Community Empowerment
    • Community Land Trusts and Informal Settlements in the Global South
    • ¿Porqué el fideicomiso comunitario de tierras?
    • En terreno común: Perspectivas internacionales sobre los fideicomisos comunitarios de tierras. This is a Spanish translation of On Common Ground, and the first in-depth publication about CLTs in Spanish. Maria Hernandez Torrales served as the lead editor for the Spanish edition, along with her co-editor Line Algoed.
  • On May 13th, we were granted tax-exempt status by the IRS, retroactive to our date of incorporation.
  • In collaboration with SHICC and CLT Brussels, we organized the very first World CLT Day on October 29th, as well as a series of educational webinars that made up the first International CLT Festival. [Insert an image of the logo from the first World CLT Day.]
  • WEBINARS:  We presented five webinars in 2021:
    • “CLTs and Community Organizing”
    • “Beyond Housing’ Applications of the CLT Model”
    • “Building the Beloved Community”
    • “Impactful Development and Community Empowerment”
    • “Combining CLTs and Other Models of Collective Ownership”

2022

  • July 16th:  CLT Center board member, and long-time CLT activist, Rev. John Whitfield dies.
  • On August 18th, we published Community Matters: Conversations with Reflective Practitioners 
about the Value & Variety of Resident 
Engagement in Community Land Trusts.
  • We organized the second World CLT Day, this time taking place on two days (October 28th and 29th), working with a planning committee representing CLTs from Belgium, UK (including Scotland), Germany, US, Puerto Rico and Brazil.
  • WEBINARS:  We presented two webinars in 2022
    • A launch event for Community Matters“Land Reform in Scotland”

2023

  • We added Lyvia Rodriguez Del Valle, Razia Khanom, Annabel Pidgeon, Ashley Allen, and Enrique Silva to the board of directors.
  • June 17th:  CLT Center board member and legendary civil rights activist Gus Newport dies.
  • On July 1st, Greg Rosenberg became the first employee of the CLT Center (Coordinator). He became Executive Director in June 2024.
  • In September we launched the CLT Legal Collaborative project, under the leadership of Kristin King-Ries, with a first-year goal of organizing a consortium of law school clinical faculty in the US and Puerto Rico.
  • On September 23rd, we published Reweaving the Tapestry of Tenure: Eight Elders of the CLT Movement Who Championed Community Ownership of Land [Insert a picture of the cover of the book, our most colorful and attractive book cover.]
  • On October 2nd, Ben Harris became the second employee of the CLT Center (Communications Manager).
  • On October 21st, Brenda Torpy represents the Center at the first AGM of the Canadian CLT Network.
  • We presented one webinar in 2023: “Land Trusts and Community-Based Agriculture”
  • We entered into an agreement with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy to write the second edition of The City-CLT Partnership, part of their Policy Focus Report series. to be published in November 2024. Entitled The Preservation Partnership:  Cities, Counties, and CLTs Collaborating to Create Homes That Last, the publication will be co-authored by John Davis and Kristin King-Ries, with contributions from Rick Jacobus and Greg Rosenberg.

2024

  • We added Eduard Cabré Romans to the board of directors and said goodbye to board members Maria Hernandez Torrales and Enrique Silva.
  • On January 22nd, Richard Kruger Delgado became our third employee (Education and Outreach Manager).
  • In March we changed our name to the International Center for Community Land Trusts. 
  • In April we had our first financial audit — and passed with flying colors.
  • We organized the third World CLT Day, this time taking place on May 17th and 18th, working with a planning committee that expanded representation to include Canada and Australia.
  • Also in May, CLT Center board member Annabel Pidgeon represents the Center at the first AGM of the European CLT Network in Berlin,
  • On May 30th we completed work on the manuscript for the Policy Focus Report project with Lincoln Institute,
  • On June 20th, the board of directors approved our first strategic plan.