Author: asj310

The interest of community land trusts in the Unites States appear to provide many under-served, marginal groups with a reprieve from the constant pressures of mere survival. At its best, community land trusts are supposed to empower members of the community by preserving affordable housing, through rental or ownership, thus relieving many households of exposure to at market housing rates, unaccessible loan terms, and homelessness. At its worst, these partnerships can be maintained at high operating costs born both by the City and the renters, with the owners using invariably low costs to increase his or her return as the property is sold at a high market rate. While a spectrum of possibilities exist for how CLTs can manifest, these questions remain: Why are there so few CLTs in existence? Why isn’t there a greater push towards adopting the CLT model in other metropolitan areas?

Tom Angotti presents a number of potential reasons why CLTs have had varied degrees of success in a given area. Many conditions apply to the preservation of affordable housing in a given community, Angotti cites a number of them. Primarily, a community’s predisposition to single-family homeownership versus multi-family leases provided a great consideration for the purpose of a CLT. If a population was more inclined to single-family dwellings, as is the case in Burlington, VT, providing resources for low-income homeownership seems to be the greatest opportunity to remedy plight beset by the community. However, in the case of Cooper Square, the densely populated Lower East Side created conditions under which renting was the only option, as many community members were accustomed to living in multi-family buildings and did not have the means to satisfy mortgage minimums. Additionally, many families at risk of being displaced by city intervention were historically excluded from the existing low-income co-op buildings once championed by the labor unions. Therefore, the purpose of the Cooper Square CLT lay not in subsidizing homeownership but in providing below-market housing to community members in need, indefinitely. 

Learning from unintended consequences of previous partnerships between the city and shared-equity co-ops, the Cooper Square CLT was born out of a resistance to land banking by those who opted to sell their property to at-market buyers during times of speculation or development. This process generated immense wealth for many previously impoverished community members, and the programs that supported it had forsaken intentions to preserve affordable housing(in perpetuity). By concentrating its efforts on rental opportunities, the Cooper Square CLT removes a layer where speculative incentive entices owners into selling because it places a ceiling on rent born by households. Angotti believes this model to be superior for other densely-populated metropolitan areas because it releases the pressure of exorbitant housing costs by keeping the rent prices well below market. In theory with lower housing costs, members of this community will have greater access to disposable income, which will consequently be recycled within the community. This ideal closed loop is an intended consequence of rental-based CLTs. Additionally unlike other CLTs that rely heavily on government subsidies to balance development and operating costs, the Cooper Square CLT limits its exposure to government subsidies or integrates loan repayment into its structure. This narrowed relationship between the city and the CLT lends itself to being a relatively better investment for the city (opposed to ownership-based CLTs), thus can and should be used as a successful example of socially controlled land in the interest of preserving affordable housing in densely packed metropolitan city (where a great proportion of the low-income community rents). Hopefully, in the age of rampant and aggressive gentrification, community members can rally themselves together as in the case of Cooper Square to delineate safe haven boundaries. As affordable housing continues to disappear as if it was never there in the first place, CLTs offer a means for a community to mobilize against corporate community renewal and exert their own control over their space. What are the barriers for entry for CLTs? And how can we get other communities on board?

Neil Smith in his chapter, “New City, New Frontier”, explores the contrived duality between aggressive urban development and taming the wiles of the frontier. Despite historically ruinous consequences, rapid urban development has been seen by many as necessary for ushering in a new, “controllable”, or appropriate population of people. Acting exclusively in the interests of the power elite, urban development is likened to frontier explorations of white men “discovering” and subsequently taking land to which they were convinced they were entitled. This paradigm acts as a means to both justify mass urban “renewal” and legitimize the authority pursuing its interests. The myth that European settlers conquered the New World is substantiated by few general assumptions: that Europeans are civilized men looking to tame the uncivilized, that white men are the ultimate authority of all things, and that existing or indigenous ways of living were wrong and in need of correcting. That these assumptions are communicated and reinforced in the ways in which individuals identify themselves indicates how pervasive they are in our culture and society.

The European settlers of the ‘New World’ assumed a divine right to the land they encountered. The further assumption that the native people of the land had no means to claim it drove the settlers to a greed-fueled land grab, wholly justified by the simple fact that they were white men. The pursuit to develop the untamed urban jungle is inextricably linked to the pursuit to tame the American frontier. Smith uses the fight for Tompkins Square Park as an example of how the interests of powerful white men are used as the means to justify claiming ownership of spaces where the question of ownership isn’t even addressed. According to Smith, Tompkins Square Park was “unremarkable” in its form but that’s what made it a “fitting locale for a ‘last stand’ against gentrification and the new urbanism”. (68). Its banality made it an unlikely but explosive site for protests against urban development. Residents and patrons of the park who were homeless, unemployed, young, and people of color, believed that the force with which the city attempted to regain control of the park was unnecessary. Violent protests and riots against police at the park were met largely with bewilderment… what was so important about this one park? Why was the city so invested in the happenings of that one park?

The simple answer is that Tompkins Square park was in the middle of a development plan to renew the area (Christodora Condos) and the riff-raff that frequented the park just didn’t fit in with the planned demographic. However, one can argue that as the real estate in the area steadily increased in value that the resistors of Tompkins Square Park would eventually be priced out entirely and give up the fight in search of more accessible spaces. However, the extreme density of NYC leaves finding more accessible spaces nearly impossible. Tompkins wasn’t just a community watering hole, it became a physical symbol of the resistance; a reminder that no matter the circumstances, all humans, all New Yorkers are entitled to appropriate housing. The temporary housing built inside the park and subsequently in lots near the park served as irrefutable evidence of a housing crisis in the city. The city’s then attempt to forcibly remove this inevitable population of people exposed the hypocrisy of it all. Here the city’s interests lie with the developers of luxury condominiums that would completely out-price the community. City funds were spent, not on remedying the situation for the homeless, but on securing the ownership rights to the areas in question (i.e. $2.3 million spent immediately on “fortifying” the park). As in the case of the American frontier, the narrow power elite with the assistance of the governing body managed to discount the interests of a pre-existing community as a means to an end; an end where the consequences are exponentially great. In the case of Tompkins Square Park, the city prevailed with a leveraged responsibility to the displaced community, however, action on this responsibility remains largely stagnant as the population homeless and disenfranchised New Yorkers continues to rise with each day.