Q: Could a community land trust help solve D.C.’s gentrification crisis? A: No, not 15 years after the velocity of DC's housing market changed in earnest

Yesterday's Post has this article, "Could a community land trust help solve D.C.’s gentrification crisis?"

The answer is "no." At least, "no, not if the land trust is just now starting to get active, after the DC real estate market has been seriously appreciating since 2004."

First, a land trust isn't the only way to buy multiunit buildings. Community housing organizations can buy and hold such properties as a way to maintain permanent affordability.  (In the social/public housing world btw, "preservation" refers to keeping properties affordable, not historic preservation.)

There should have been a more concerted effort to do this starting many years ago.

Second, a land trust, focused on buying individual properties, in today's market, at least in DC, can't have much impact.

The properties are too expensive, even relatively speaking, in areas East of the River where housing prices are lower, but still not cheap.

As I mention from time to time, an urban land trust isn't a new idea. It is discussed at length in the book Streets of Hope, which was published in 1999. (There is also a companion movie, "Holding Ground: The Rebirth of Dudley Street, New Day Films, which came out in 2001.)

After 2530 years, the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative's land trust has 225 units, some owner-occupied, some cooperative housing, and some rental, with some of the land part of an urban farm ("Trust and transformation in a Roxbury neighborhood," Boston Globe).

More importantly, they were getting property when the neighborhood was distressed, a weak real estate market, not when it was a strong market.

And most of the properties they got for free, either from the city or by eminent domain action.

That being said, the DSNI is a great example of a community development initiative and revitalization in a weak real estate market.

By comparison, DC's "East of the River" real estate market is much higher cost, and the land trust operating there won't get much property for free.

Note too that the interest in creating the land trust wasn't just permanent affordability, it was to have underlying control of the land to be able to take control were properties to once again become distressed.

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Urban land trusts are a program to initiate when real estate is cheap, with a revitalization plan in place, not when it is already very expensive and without an overall plan.