History
Community Land Trusts have rich historical antecedents, most notably the Gramdan (Gift of the Village) Movement in India, where the villages act as the trustees of land made available for individual use, and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and tenant/ farmer struggles in the South. They also draw on the tenure systems of numerous native cultures around the world. The first CLT in the United States was founded in the 1960s in Georgia to provide homes and agricultural leaseholds for African American farmers. Through the 1980s, CLT’s expanded from these rural beginnings and spread to the east coast urban areas. Now, in 2008, there are over 200 CLT’s across the United States, many of these started in the past 30 years. OPAL CLT and the Lopez CLT, both in the San Juan Islands, were the first two founded in the northwest nearly 20 years ago. At last count there are now 22 CLT’s in the four-state Northwest. The Community Land Trust structure has become recognized as a very practical and thoroughly tested means of ensuring permanent affordability, and the CLT movement is rapidly growing.
A map to current CLT sites can be found at:
http://www.burlingtonassociates.com/resources/archives/national_directory_of_clts/index.html
An excellent article, “Roots of the CLT Movement” can be found at: http://www.burlingtonassociates.com/resources/archives/clt_101/000323.html
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