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A community land trust, or CLT, is a non-profit organization that purchases land on behalf of its members and sells it at discount rates to people who otherwise wouldn't be able to buy homes of their own.
In Houston, for example, the Greater Third Ward and Greater Fifth Ward saw median home prices increase 28% and 17.4% over the past year, respectively, while black residents saw their homeownership rate drop by 5 percentage points between 2010 and 2020, the Houston Chronicle reports.
"Under our housing market's current structure, price pressures can disproportionately displace Black residents," the paper notes.
CLTs have been around since the 1970s in places like Georgia and Texas, but in Houston they're now being used to help low-income families buy homes in areas that have already been gentrified.
In Houston, for instance, the Houston Community Land Trust rents land on which it owns the homes to low-income families, who then buy them from the trust at a discount and then rent the land back to the trust for as long as they remain in the home.
The owner of the home gets a property tax break, while the trust gets an equity gain on the home and rents the land back to the owner for as long as they remain in