What is a Community Land Trust?
Community land trusts (CLTs) are powerful and enduring structures for land protection and land justice. New Communities, Inc. in Georgia was the first CLT, born from the visionary work of civil rights organizers as a strategy for Black liberation. Inspired by Indigenous challenges to private land ownership; radical thinkers like Henry George, Mildred Loomis, and Ralph Borosodi; and Vinova Bhave’s work with the Indian Gramdan (“land gift”) movement, the CLT structure balances values of collective accountability and individual freedom to take land out of the market permanently and ensure its long-term use and access for community benefit.
Community Land Trusts are built on the innovative idea of separating the ownership of land from the ownership of buildings and other “improvements.” The land itself is owned by the member-run land trust (in our case, Land in Common) as part of a shared commons, removing it permanently from the market. This land is then leased to residents via an inheritable, renewable, 99-year, “ground lease.” Buildings on the land are owned directly by the residents themselves and may be sold only at values that assure fair compensation (not high profits) for owners and long-term affordability for future residents. Long-term protection of the land for agriculture, conservation, affordable housing, and other community-based purposes is achieved; while security, autonomy, and participation in key land-related decisions by land residents is also ensured.
Land in Common’s Board is made up of two groups of people: those who live on or use the land (Land Steward Members) and those from the wider community (Allied Members) who are committed to holding us to our wider mission and values. This structure ensures that both the direct interests and needs of land residents and the organization’s wider purpose are placed equally at the heart of all of our work.
Central to all of our work is a commitment to manifesting our values at every level of the organization, from the work we do to the ways we do it. Our core leadership comes from an all-BIPOC leadership council to which our Board has committed accountability and ongoing work on structural change. Our staff is organized as a horizontal collective (we do not have an executive director) and we are in the process of developing an exciting new staff compensation structure centered on living wages and upward adjustments for those directly impacted by structural oppression.
Most broadly, we are actively centering a culture based not on bureaucratic procedures and institutional roles, but on deep trust, mutual care, and ongoing transformational learning and relationship-building. We are continuously inspired by long traditions of Indigenous relationality and reciprocity, feminist and queer mutual care practice, and radical, anti-racist, anti-colonial community-centered movement building traditions.
You can learn more about the community land trust movement here:
CLTs and transforming conservation
Conventional land conservation has had some important successes in protecting crucial ecological communities and creating spaces for (some) humans to connect with more-than-human wild places and beings. But it also has serious limitations and challenges. It has tended to reproduce a harmful separation of humans and others– setting aside “nature” as a place people visit, distinct from the “social” places where we actually work and live. It has continued the colonial dispossession of Indigenous people by erasing their histories, restricting their access and use, and refusing return in the name of long-term “stewardship.” And it has often created spaces in which only people marked as “white” can feel safe and welcomed in wild places, or imagine themselves with real, long-term access to life-sustaining land.
Land in Common is one small part of a much larger movement to transform conservation in the face of these three harms: first, by thoughtfully integrating human habitation and livelihood into the protected landscape; second, by centering the return of land to Indigenous holdership as key conservation strategy; and third, by prioritizing land and livelihood access for BIPOC and other marginalized communities.
As a community land trust, Land in Common holds the dual goals of protecting land and supporting land-based livelihoods. We offer a model of conservation where people can see themselves as part of the land, rather than its owners, and live with it in mutual care and interdependence. Large portions of our land are forever kept wild through deed restrictions, while other portions are reserved for low impact housing and regenerative farming through 99-year ground leases stipulating responsible use and care of the land. For a perspective on how the community land trust structure can serve as a powerful alternative to traditional conservation easements, see our article here: Community Land Trust Ownership as a Long-term Land Protection Strategy.
All of the land we now call “Maine” is Wabanaki land, but after centuries of land theft, only 1% of Maine’s land remains in Wabanaki hands. Wabanaki have cared for this land since time immemorial, and have always been at the forefront of efforts to protect Maine’s land and waterways. To advance conservation and land justice, Indigenous land return is central to our work. We are in the process of returning a large portion of the wildlands we hold to Bomazeen Land Trust, an organization dedicated to protecting Wabanaki lands, ancestors, and future generations. Bomazeen will care for this land over the long term, using it for ceremony, subsistence gathering, and community education. We also serve as a member organization on the Conservation Community Delegation to the Wabanaki Commission on Land & Stewardship, and we are helping to catalyze and support the emerging Wabanaki Self-Determination Fund along with other First Light community members.
Finally, and absolutely central to our work: we prioritize land access for communities who have been excluded from land ownership through racial and economic injustice. Non-Wabanaki BIPOC own less than 1% of Maine’s land. We collaborate with BIPOC-led groups to find, acquire, and protect permanent land tenure, allowing people to sustain themselves and their communities, to build culture rooted in place, and maintain health and food security.