The idea of the Northern Manhattan Community Land Trust was advanced during 2017 as the Inwood community’s antidote to the scourge of displacement, eviction, and gentrification. The dream of creating a Community Land Trust was meant to provide an alternative to the Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan for affordable housing, a way to achieve the Mayor’s policy objectives and to better meet the needs of th
e existing community. In 2014, the Mayor released a plan to construct or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing by 2024, noting: “We have a crisis of affordability on our hands.” The plan observed that New Yorkers are “seriously rent burdened” or spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent; the “lowest-income New Yorkers can afford very few of the affordable units”; and homelessness was a growing problem, with more than 50,000 individuals living in the City’s shelter system. The Mayor’s plan would achieve its goals primarily by implementing changes in land use policy (zoning regulations), requiring that a portion of most new housing be permanently affordable to low- to moderate-income households, and using financing tools such as tax credits to preserve existing affordable housing. The Mayor’s plan to rezone neighborhoods was not well-received in targeted communities, where residents believed that 1) the new housing would not be affordable to them; 2) landlords would replace existing tenants with new tenants at much higher rents using buy-outs, evictions, warehousing vacant apartments, and inadequate maintenance; 3) leaseholders with preferential rents would suddenly find their housing to be unaffordable; and 4) the demographic makeup of the community would be forcibly and irreversibly altered. Seeking to strengthen their roots in New York City, people around the City began advocating for the establishment of Community Land Trusts. The purposes of the Corporation are as follows:
Provide community-controlled, sustainably affordable housing
Build the social and economic capacity of community residents to own and manage their housing
Improve the collective life of the community by fostering the holistic cultural and economic development of people and organizations, and of the environment
Anchor working class people, immigrants, and people of color against displacement. We are currently undergoing incorporation as a a 501c3 federal income tax-exempt public charity under 26 U. C. 501.
