Supporting the Global CLT Movement

Manuals and Guides

The Australian CLT Manual

By Louise Crabtree, Hazel Blunden,  Peter Phibbs,  Carolyn Sappideen,  Derek Mortimer,  Avril Shahib-Smith,  Lisa Chung

This Manual was funded by the Western Australian Department of Housing, the City of Port Phillip, the City of Sydney, Inner Melbourne Action Plan, St Kilda Community Housing Ltd and Mount Alexander Community Land Ltd. The authors wish to thank the funding agencies for supporting the Manual and the Steering Committee for their dedication, time and effort in helping bring this Manual to completion. The team wish to especially thank Grace McCaughey (Mount Alexander Community Land Ltd) and Gary Spivak (City of Port Phillip) for their efforts in supporting the Manual’s creation.

Download the Austrian CLT Manual
Manuals and Guides Graphic

Creating Community Controlled, Deeply Affordable Housing:  A Resource Toolkit for Community Activists and Allied Community-Based Housing Developers

By Peter Sabonis and Zachary Murray, Partners for Dignity and Rights, Spring 2021

This report examines a number of CLTs that have negotiated these stages successfully to reach extremely low-income levels, and provides specific “case study” information on each. Like any ELI housing, these CLTs have utilized government subsidies at one or all three stages of development. In a time where federal help at each stage is becoming scarcer, these CLTs also have been activists in creating new state and local policies and resources to reach deeper levels of affordability.

Download Creating Community Controlled, Deeply Affordable Housing

Community Control of Land and Housing:  Exploring Strategies for Combating Displacement, Expanding Ownership, and Building Community Wealth

By Jarrid Green with Thomas Hanna, Democracy Collaborative

As communities and policymakers alike consider ways to confront these threats—especially within the context of the urgent need for community and economic development—there is an emerging opportunity to develop strat- egies related to land and housing that can help create inclusive, participa- tory, and sustainable economies built on locally-rooted, broad-based own- ership of place-based assets. This report provides an overview of strategies and tools that, as a group, represent an innovative and potentially powerful new approach—one that establishes, in various ways, community control of land and housing.

Download Community Control of Land and Housing

People Powered Homes: How London CLT and Citizens UK Organize to Access Land for Affordable Homes

London CLT grew out of the community organizing efforts of London Citizens, who have been building the capacity of people to participate in public life since the early 1990s. We continue to work hand-in-hand with organizers, community leaders and member organizations of London Citizens. Our shared approach is rooted in traditions of broad-based organizing which remain central to all our strategies. Most of our CLT campaign groups are supported by a paid organizer, employed by Citizens UK, as well as London CLT staff. However, we believe that the relational way we work and the attention we put into the politics of CLT campaigning are relevant and useful to all community-led housing groups, including unstaffed campaigns.

Download People Powered Homes

SHICC Financial Guide:  Tools to Boost CLT and OFS Financing in Europe

The regional cooperation programme SHICC (Sustainable Housing for Inclusive and Cohesive Cities) seeks to promote the model of the Community Land Trust (CLT) and of the Organisme de Foncier Solidaire (OFS) in Europe. As part of this project, Fonds Mondial pour le Développement des Villes (FMDV) is in charge of analyzing and supporting sustainable financial models with a view to their dissemination.

This Financial Guide has been designed to act as a practical tool. It is based on a mapping of funding sources mobilized by CLT and OFS in Europe, which highlighted the barriers and funding gaps that must be overcome to help spread the model. It is available in both English and French versions.

Download Tools to Boost CLT and OFS Financing in Europe
Download des outils pour soutenir le financement des CLT et OFS

Starting a Community Land Trust

Written by John Emmeus Davis in 2007, Starting a Community Land Trust:  Organizational and Operational Choices, is a manual that seldom says what the “right” decision should be. Starting a community land trust is not a process of lifting a box of pre-measured ingredients off the kitchen shelf and following a predetermined recipe guaranteed to produce the same cookie-cutter product every time. Different communities – large or small, urban or rural, prosperous or poor – have different conditions, priorities, politics, and needs. The right process and the right decisions for starting a CLT in one community may not be right for another. But the list of decisions is mostly the same. To support and to spur such decision-making, this manual points out those choices that matter the most in the early days of planning a CLT. It presents the range of options for making each decision and reviews the pros and cons that should be weighed in selecting one course of action over another.  Starting a CLT starts with basic questions of why, where, when, and who. The how comes later.

Download Starting a Community Land Trust

The Community Land Trust Handbook (UK)

Edited by Catherine Harrington, National CLT Network, and Rose Seagrief, Wiltshire CLT, National CLT Network (2012)

Setting up a Community Land Trust (CLT) is an exciting opportunity but it can be a daunting task, especially once you start delving into the more technical aspects of governance, funding or development. This handbook provides a helping hand throughout the process. It provides up to date and essential information on the stages of setting up and running a successful CLT, from engaging with the community and the initial stages of formation right through to managing and stewarding the homes, workspaces, community hall or community pub. The chapters refer primarily to the process of forming a CLT with the purpose of providing affordable housing but they do also provide information for CLTs set up for other purposes and there are chapters on community energy generation, community food and farming.

Download the Community Land Trust Handbook (UK)

US CLT Technical Manual

The National CLT Network (now Grounded Solutions Network) published this 482 page manual (edited by Kirby White) in 2011.  This remains the most current edition of the CLT Technical Manual, replacing the predecessor Legal Manual published by the Institute for Community Economics.  The manual provides a comprehensive, practical guide for the ongoing operation of CLTs, as well as for future CLT start-ups. And it contains the model CLT ground lease, which has been utilized by CLTs around the US (and around the world).

Download the US CLT Technical Manual

INDIVIDUAL CHAPTERS