Month: April 2019

From this week’s readings, “¡Viva Loisaida Libre!” by Bill Weinberg was the most reactive piece I have read all semester. To me, it was by far the text that exemplified the problematic mindset of many authors throughout this course. I completely disagree with this type of structure in which Weinberg tries to present. Rather my complaints aren’t in the moral aspects of his vision, nor the shock of such goals, but rather the plausibility in his “utopia”.

 

For Weinberg, the ideal societal structure when it comes to land and property is that of a self-sustained “green” community that resists large corporate’s glutinous, detrimental, and abusive behavior onto the said land. His plan of achievement is the, “banning of absentee landlords. All buildings not owned by neighborhood residents will be expropriated without compensation and turned over to the tenants to be run cooperatively.” (Weinberg, 39). Here he wants to strip land from owners who don’t utilize it for the community. However, this is an extreme action, and its probability and plausibility are close to none in the modern day.

 

Not only that, his plan to make the area into a revolutionary green and virtues zone consists of other extreme ideas. Weinberg’s vision for the community is that of: “The bicycle will become the predominant mode of transportation” (Weinberg, 40), “The police will be replaced with neighborhood watch groups and rotating block patrols of local residents.” (Weinberg, 41), and “… a program of total recycling will be instated.” (Weinberg, 41). Here he wants to have an area that operates with man-powered transportation, no policing, and 100% recyclable waste. When handling problems that would arise, he states that, “… neighborhood’s sense of community will evaporate the climate of fear and alienation in which violent crime thrives. The young, strong, and healthy will take responsibility for protecting the backs of the elderly, infirm and disable” (Weinberg, 41). Any violators would be, “… escorted to the neighborhood’s borders – or thrown into the East River.” (Weinberg, 41). Indeed an utterly valid view on how a structure of society can operate, the problem that truly bothers me is the process in which Weinberg attempts to obtain such a community.

 

Weinberg pushes an agenda of secession and breaking away from the status quo in the metaphoric as well as the literal sense. This agenda ultimately entails the vilification of the norm. The current is terrible, Weinberg progressive idea is good, choosing good seems to be the logical idea; thus, to support the standard makes you a supporter of the detrimental. He makes his end goal seem sustainable and logical however his agenda holds reliance upon the foundation of people being righteous. There is no accountability in acknowledgment that society operates the way it does because of people. Instead, he dismisses the innate bad within all by blaming a system, following that his stance stems from a focus of the end goal. Hence my biggest complaint, plausibility. Never would his end goal be achieved due to his end goal being the problem. Its innate vilification of the current doesn’t provide any incentive for the current to move towards Weinberg’s society. For a better community to realistic, there must be an operation of compromise in which Weinberg lacks.

When so much about today’s world, shaped by the neoliberalism that has plagued us since the 1980s as mentioned in Gray’s piece, is focused on the individual experience, making private the social and economic struggles faced by the working class and people of color at the hand of capitalist forces, community land trusts provide alternative means through which we can develop our relationship to property. 

At this point,  the centrality of property ownership to one’s overall generation of wealth has been established– it’s why we witnessed an organized effort to block Black and Indigenous people from owning valuable plots of land/ property, as it would seem to dilute the ability for white people to maintain this distinction of wealth accumulation from marginalized groups. Yet rather than indoctrinating individual families or people into this system of wealth accumulation via home ownership, which only serves to reinforce the system’s validity, CLTs allow for the regeneration of not just the self, but the community as well. Unlike a few weeks ago, we’re not talking about property managers or landlords taking advantage of the people who need it most, but the community reinvesting in itself over generations. 

Through my work at Right to the City, I’ve been lucky to come into contact with a number of CLTs, from Miami to Baltimore, and while affordable housing is obviously a central point of their projects, what is also revealed in their plans reflects a responsibility to attend to the needs of its community in a way that the surrounding government has failed to  over generations. Just as the decay of a community takes place over decades of neglect, so too does its regeneration require rehabilitation over a long period of time, recalling the closing point of Angiotti’s piece.

The housing crisis is the defining characteristic of many metropolitan areas. In the Lower East Side, market-based housing costs doubled in just one decade in New York’s Lower East Side (Angotti 12). Everyone is impacted by the high cost of housing. One-third of the nation are unable to pay for basic necessities because the cost of housing is too high (Gray 66). Low-income people are particularly negatively impacted, as speculation increases the costs of the land itself. They marketplace preferences the interests of high-income people over lower-income individuals. Simultaneously, because of the large amount of equity held in the land through this process, homeownership has been prefered over rentership. To encourage these equity holdings, for the past four decades, federal housing policy has favored promoting homeownership over rentership. Yet, because of the rising land values, homeownership is largely inaccessible in expensive housing markets. Even in the most expensive American neighborhood, the Upper East Side, 70 percent of people rent (Angotti 2).

Community land trusts present an interesting way to change how land is owned and make it more accessible for low- and moderate-income people. Community land trusts combine individual and collective land ownership. The community land trust purchases own the land, individuals then lease the land from the community land trust. Most community land trusts are based on providing stable and affordable for people who are not served by the marketplace. Thus, they create leases at low rents (Gray 69). This makes homeownership more accessible for people, who would not afford or qualify for loans, even with government assistance. Because the land is leased from the community land trust, instead of truly owned by the individual, the costs remain low over time. This process removes the housing from the marketplace. Instead of renting or buying as an individual, you are part of a compact. The residents are responsible as stewards for the land. Lease-holders make up the majority of the land trusts board. This makes the people living in the housing the proprietors of their own housing costs and quality (Gray 71). In doing so, it takes away the competitive and antagonistic relationship between tenants and landowners. This encourages the collective interest of the community over any one individual’s interests.

Community land trusts provide an alternative to the default laissez faire housing market. They can, therefore, help stabilize neighborhoods facing exponentially increasing rents due to speculative land development. Because of skyrocketing rents in cities across the country, it is not surprising that community land trusts are increasingly popular, with half starting this century and increasing most rapidly in the past decade (Gray 73). They provide the stability that is difficult for low-income renters. Yet they also remain within the marketplace, as a small-scale solution of collective within the greater sea of market-based housing. As a result, community land trusts are not a whole-scale solution, but part of a patchwork of different housing systems for different community groups. For most renters in expensive housing markets, rents will continue to rise, as the local economy grows and new highly paid people move into the community. Community land trusts have begun to create a more equitable system, but expanding quality affordable housing remains difficult for the vast majority. Moving forward, community land trusts beget the question would an equitable system have one form of land and property or use several interlocking systems?

 

One of the greatest challenges with affordable housing, aside from creating affordable units, has always seemed to me, to be maintaining units in affordable programs. New York City’s rent stabilization policies, I have always felt, are too relaxed, as allowing units to return to market rate simply through turnover, seems to unfairly advantage those who took advantage of the program when it began. Similarly, the Mitchell-Lama program widely utilized in post Second World War development and redevelopment projects in New York City, also unfairly advantage original owners who took advantage of the program at its inception. The Mitchell-Lama program was a subsidized home ownership program, which aimed to make middle class home ownership in urban areas viable and desirable. The program was undoubtedly very helpful to the many families who took advantage of this in the 1950’s and 60’s. The program, in my opinion, however, had a major flaw. After a period of time, the shareholders of the cooperatively owned buildings could vote to leave the program, allowing them to sell their units at market rate, thus removing the unit from affordability. The flaws in both rent stabilization, and Mitchell-Lama type affordable housing programs, seem to be addressed by community land trusts. The community land trust model’s emphasis on long term sustainability and affordability, through the assertion of greater control over land use than traditionally seen, provides great benefit over the traditional affordable housing programs. Their combination of private, non-profit structure, with their eligibility for government subsidies also makes for an intriguing model. As Karen Gray explains in “Community Land Trusts in the United States”, the practice of using collective land ownership and leasing ground to the individual tenants offsets the costs of home ownership, allowing people to own or rent what is important, a home, without having to pay for the ground on which it sits. Development on the basis of ground leasing is a popular practice outside the United States, and has been particularly important in the development of England for hundreds of years, however, the land is typically controlled and developed by for-profit entities. By capping profits, CLT’s protect the interests of both current and future homeowners. The nuanced, well thought out, and delicately balanced structure of community land trusts seem to improve on the most obvious shortcomings of more traditional affordable housing programs, providing low and middle income people with the security and stability of truly affordable housing.

In this week’s readings, we saw the potential of community focus towards residential empowerment and long term affordability through CLT’s, contrary to traditional narratives of personal ownership and economic development. Community land trusts differ from historical land trusts as they focus not solely on the conservation and protection of the land but actively promoting affordability and continued communal ownership/responsibility. In many ways, CLT’s function through shared equity while maintaining control on the value and growth of said equity for the continued sustenance of its residents. Karen A. Gray in “Community Land Trusts in the United States, refers to how commonly CLTs can be misjudged as Non-governmental organizations or corporations due to their alternative approaches and prioritizing of their stakeholder’s needs. However, in terms of the sustainability and productivity of such a model at scale, The example of Cooper Square trust offers valuable insight into the foundations necessary for conscious and sustained development.

Seemingly Harkening to the commonality of land and Ownership discussed earlier by Henry George, CLTs seem to treat property through collective forms of value. Though I’m sure, their often tax-exempt status aided in continuing such a philosophy. The classic models of CLT’s focus on united self-governance promoting a collective responsibility to the maintenance and use of the communal land. The notions brought up in in the ‘classic tenants’ p of CLT’s seem to resemble the George Caffentzis and Silvia Federici article on how communal ownership and governance can function counter to the market in securing sustainable housing.

Throughout the reading, I found myself increasingly interested in the model of the CLT as a means to engage in positive communal growth through ownership and value. However, I saw concern with how such a system would function at scale, operating in contrast to competitive markets, the model itself requires a cornucopia of government, financial, and public support. Without the assured stability and protection from predatory capital systems, as the case with Cooper Square Trust, many of these organizations may fall prey to the danger of prioritizing expansionary economic practices in hopes of providing greater affordability at scale. As the Karen A grey article points out on p.69-70 from (Davis,2004)
“This tripartite boards leaves two-thirds of the control with residents; (9) CLTs are committed to expanding their acquisitions, thereby increasing their community development role; (10) While affordable housing is the most common community development tool of CLTs, they are flexible enough to promote other forms of community development such as providing sites for neighborhood businesses, social services, and community gardens.”

Though unlike CDC’s which seemed to maximize value as forms of communal profit, CLT’s seem to fall in line with a standard ‘Trust.’ Its goals to focus on the development of the community as a means of maximizing persistent affordable engagement. Though some of the tenants of the “basic CLT Model”(p.69) seem hilariously Roman in their reference to a tripartite government and expansionary market practices. Their willingness to invest in alternative forms of development through business and social services could hold complications with its current NGO tax status. At scale, it seems that without a greater philosophical and or political revolution, the responsibility and power of creating a large CLT in a contemporary urban environment would inevitably conflict with goals of the surrounding political and economic markets. Though CLT’s hold a unique tripartite board in regards to discussing creating an open dialogue to resolve issues that could arise between internal and external stakeholders, they lack impartiality in prioritizing the ‘common good’ of their tenants vs. some of the private interest that would inevitably be steamrollered in utilitarian property management, ironically much like a would be the Roman empire of old the majority of bureaucratic say would fall upon the residents of CLT, further enforcing a divide between tenants and market stakeholders.

Perhaps in a Capitalist dystopian Herngy George inspired nightmare Large CLT’s roam the free market bringing all private landowners into a hegemonic system of land valuation and supplying affordable housing too all in demand! Unfortunately, as we see contextually, CLT’s have been unable to compete within competitive housing markets and so have largely been ignored in mainstream conversations on the housing issue. Though seemingly political CLT offers a unique alternative to contemporary deficient markets and should be once again looked at by state actors as a viable means of continued protection and empowerment for and residential communities.

            In Karen A. Gray’s article about Community Land Trusts in America, many opinions and facts about the pros and cons of Community Land Trusts are presented. The further I got into this article, the more I was pro-CLT’s. With the massive increase in homelessness and overpriced housing, “one-third of our nation is ‘shelter poor,’ meaning individuals and families are unable to pay for non-shelter needs because their cost of housing uses too much of their incomes” (Gray 66). This large number of shelter poor people is not shocking due to the nonstop increase in pricing for everything. Housing and rent prices have skyrocketed due to gentrification, and basic human needs, such as food and clothes, cost the equivalent of multiple hours of work at a minimum wage job. What is most frustrating about this situation is that this issue is “still described as an ‘affordability crisis,’” instead of a problem caused by high taxes, gentrification, inflation (Gray 66). While there are some cons to CLT’s, the benefits are far better and make it worth the minor downfalls. With the stability and better future CLT’s offer their residents, people have a better chance of increasing their financial stability and overall well-being. Being able to afford a home is a basic human right, and with the massive influx of housing prices, it is only a matter of time before more than half of the American population cannot afford descent living conditions. While CLT’s are increasing in areas such as “California, the Northwest, and Florida,” there needs to be at least a dozen CLT’s in every major city/county (72). By helping low income families acquire stable housing, they are more likely to increase financial stability and be able to afford housing on their own in the future. This leads to taking more people off of the “shelter poor” list and makes room to move on to helping others in similar situations. While CLT’s are mainly controlled by state officials and nonprofit organizations, there is a need for the government to get further involved in this situation. Instead of budgeting money towards unnecessary causes that benefit a small percent of the population, the government should dedicate its time to helping the poor and underrepresented. Community Land Trusts seem like a successful and logical way of helping citizens have better living conditions and quality of life. This article has made me extremely supportive of this cause and has led me to seek solutions to spreading awareness, funding, and support of CLT’s.

            While I may not know all of the details that go into CLT’s, it is fairly obvious that money is a key player in the success or failure of CLT’s and their homeowners. I am sure that CLT’s are trying their best to advocate for donations in any form, but some further advocacy ideas include government support and influencer support. I believe one of the main issues as to why CLT’s are not as popular is because of a lack of awareness of these causes and what their true goal is. It was only until I read this article that I truly started to understand this topic, and if it were not for this class, I may have never known. If more people were educated on the topic of affordable housing, community land trusts, and gentrification, I truly believe a difference can be made. While CLT’s are mainly handled by states, this cause should be funded by the government. The amount of unnecessary spending and unjust budgeting by the government could easily create or fund numerous land trusts and help further the quality of life for homeowners. I am not sure of all of the specific actions required to present a cause to higher government officials, but with the support of just one influential person of power, the impact could be huge. Furthermore, there has been a tremendous increase in awareness of social justice issue over multiple social media platforms due to promotion by people with mass followings. One influencer with even a million followers could raise a substantial amount of donations to multiple CLT’s. While there are more details and nitty gritty specifics to be tackled, the ultimate goal of promoting CLT’s could be life changing for citizens and for the country as a whole. The main issue is raising awareness and we as a society need to figure  out how to do  just that.