Oakland Community Land Trust - Oakland

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The Oakland Community Land Trust (OakCLT), formed and incubated at the Urban Strategies Council in 2009 as part of a response to the foreclosure crisis, is a non-profit organization that creates permanently affordable housing by purchasing foreclosed, vacant properties and putting them into a community land trust. The community land, a partnership between the City and the OakCLT, is an multi-faceted project that not only employs local labor to rebuild distressed properties, but also incorporates services to prospective home buyers and to its home owners. The process of acquiring properties is that the trust purchases distressed, foreclosed homes, uses local labor to renovate homes to LEED standards, and sells a ready house not-for-profit to low and middle income buyers ("families earning 50 to 80% of the area median income ($45,150 to $64,400 per year for a family of four, in Oakland," according to the OakCLT official site). What distinguishes the land trust is that the improvements and use of the land is sold to the home buyer while the land itself is possessed by the land trust. This allows the land trust to ensure

History

According to the OakCLT site:

In 2007, Urban Strategies Council and other Oakland community-based organizations came together to discuss their joint concerns regarding the mounting foreclosure crisis and its negative impacts on low-income neighborhoods in Oakland. The Council proposed that a community land trust model could provide an innovative vehicle for creating a stock of permanently affordable housing in Oakland. After a two year process of strategizing with community partners, developing a detailed financing plan and governance structure for the land trust, and building community support throughout Oakland, the Oakland Community Land Trust was awarded $5.025 million in Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) funding from the City of Oakland.

By acquiring and rehabilitating vacant foreclosed homes, the community land trust model will help stabilize struggling Oakland neighborhoods and provide affordable homeownership opportunities for working families in Oakland. In early 2010, OakCLT acquired its first bank-owned foreclosure, officially launching our NSP Homeownership Project.