TENURE ARRANGEMENT EXAMPLE ORGANIZATIONS ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES Fee Simple CCHC, DNI, Durham CLT, Madison Area CLT, Sawmill CLT, Southside CLT long-term security cost to acquire, property taxation, management obligations Ground Lease Athens Land Trust, Madison Area CLT, Southside CLT low-cost, high level of control legal complexity, transaction costs…
Conservation easements are voluntary restrictions that permanently limit types of allowable uses on land. They are held by entities external to the titleholder. These agreements are frequently used as a tax-planning tool. A landowner grants an easement to a public…
Deed restrictions (also known as “deed covenants” or “restrictive covenants”) are a common tool for placing limitations on the uses of land and are frequently required by grant funders.7 Funders are motivated to monitor these restrictions in order to protect…
Ground leases are a second tenure arrangement used by CLTs to secure land. A CLT can be the lessor or lessee under an agricultural ground lease. At times, the CLT can be the landowner, leasing land to an external entity…
Fee simple ownership allows a CLT to hold the greatest number of “sticks” in the bundle of ownership rights and provides a high level of land security, as long as all mortgage payments and tax obligations are met. In urban…
Urban Agriculture and Community Land Trusts This case study project of the National Community Land Trust Network (now Grounded Solutions Network) was led by Jeffrey Yuen, with assistance from Greg Rosenberg.
Holding farmland in trust serves as a potential complement for for-profit, entrepreneurial urban farming models. Foundation officials in particular are interested in the potential for the urban farming sector to move beyond nonprofit business models that are dependent on grants.…
NeighborSpace is perhaps the closest existing organization to what might be considered a central-server land trust model for urban agriculture. A closer look at the history and structure of NeighborSpace points towards how a central-server model for urban agriculture might…
