Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Land Trusts/Open Space

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

>I would be curious to hear if any groups have any luck working through
>this avenue.

There was a cohousing group on Orcas Island, which through a state 
affordable housing program, applied for and got a land trust grant to 
purchase their property.  The requirements of such, plus the internal 
dynamics of the group, caused them to abandon the cohousing model and  
become a land trust.  The main requirement was that home owners in the 
group had to be in a certain income bracket at the time of closing on 
the mortgages,  that the development entity had to have certain 
qualifications, and most unforunately, that there was a cap on commonly 
owned property as a percentage of the total value, meaning that they 
could not jointly own  property and do a commonhouse. They chose to 
leave a small community commons in the center of the community.  In 
theory they could build a commonhouse on it with their own funds, but 
they are all low income and don't have funds.  There were lots of group 
problems as well, high turnover and low group commitment and thus, 
while they built low income-privately owned housing, many folks who 
live there have no interest or commitment to ANY sort of community.

There are several  Community land trust intentional communities around 
which offer propritary leases rather than private ownership, thus the 
group controls all the housing rather than individual private 
ownership.  I have heard of community land trusts with private 
ownership - but they all seem to lack any sort of common element.  I 
don't know if this is due to land trust issues, or just particular to 
the communities.

In my area the land trusts are formed to create low income housing, or 
to preserve land from development. The low income housing gigs seem to 
run off of govt. sponsership grants or loans and thus get saddled with 
a bunch of requirements.  Boy wouldn't it be great if someone won some 
giant lottery and put together a community loan fund to incourage the 
development of intentional communities?

Rob Sandelin