South Bronx Land and Community Trust
The formation and structure of a Community Land Trust cannot be limited to a platform that examines only existing affordable housing programs. The South Bronx Land and Community Resource Trust is intended to be more comprehensive in scope. Our view is that this must include efforts to address protecting accessibility to community open space as an equal part of the balance in creating viable, long-term sustainable communities. Further, the model considers some broad approaches to land use management that not only considers the future of housing, but also, local economic development opportunity that would be uniquely available to a community land trust entity.
The Community Land Trust model can be utilized to achieve development of effective strategies to confront issues relating to environmental resilience, community development, and long-term affordability, as well as having the potential to address concerns of supplemental municipal infrastructure, public safety, and cultural preservation and development.
As proposed, this CLT model would impact the physical and political landscape in which existing housing and community development finance programs are utilized, streamlining and improving their implementation. Because the proposed CLT would not have a direct hand in development, it is left to existing and future public-private partnerships to leverage their resources and expertise to continue to identify opportunities and develop innovative projects, as has proven to be effective over the last several decades of real estate development in the City.
This project is currently in progress with the City of New York. If you have any questions about the specifics of this initiative, feel free to contact us.