by John Croft Land is in short supply. Housing is expensive. Is there a way through this mess? Mortgages keep you in debt. Community Land Trusts offer an exciting way of building a pathway out of the land ownership quagmire! In Western Australia, before the Mabo case, there were just two types of land holding: 1. Crown Land: Most of the land in Western Australia was Crown Land, owned by the government and taken as `terra nullius' (empty land) by the crown representative, the Governor of Western Australia, on settlement. Prior Aboriginal ownership of the land was not recognised in law until 1992. 2. Freehold Land. All of the remainder was freehold: land, owned by private individuals or incorporated bodies, who had full title to the land. This land was `alienated'. This meant that it had a title of ownership, giving the owner a number of rights. These included rights to exclude trespassers, to develop the land as they saw fit, to use any non-mineral resources upon it, to build within frameworks specified by local government, or to dispose of it as they saw fit, as and when they wished, to another party (person or corporation). In addition to these two types of land ownership, various forms of leasehold or rental also existed, in which individuals or corporations had "usage rights". These rights were specified in a contractual agreement between either the lessor (the owner or their agent) and the lessee (the person or corporation renting or leasing the land). Such a system is historically fairly recent, a product of the industrial age. Prior to the industrial revolution there was a third land ownership category, closer to that recognised under Native Title, the category of `the commons'. Common land was unalienable land, owned by a community over which individuals or groups had temporary usage rights, granted to them by that community. Common land gave most people in Britain access to land and its resources for food production or grazing livestock. From Elizabethan times, various rich and powerful interests could (and did) petition parliament to `enclose' the commons, privatising a community asset. This first privatisation made many people into landless labourers who were driven out of the British countryside to the industrial cities, to work in the new factories. Since then privatisation of publicly owned assets has continued, concentrating more and more power into to the hands of the rich and powerful. Such privately owned lands become a `thing' to be bought and sold, treating the land and all it contains, trees and water ways, as economic commodities that can be disposed of for profit. Given that the quantity of land is always fixed, whilst the population over the last four centuries has been growing, this ensures a constant inflation in land prices. Concentration of land ownership tends towards those with the greatest purchasing power, making it constantly harder for low income people to ever own their own housing, or have the security of tenure that private ownership provides. To assist in these cases, banks and financial institutions provide mortgage agreements, in which they hold the land title deed as security against loan taken by the householder to the land. The rates of interest on this land are such that the eventual cost to the individual householder in paying off the mortgage is many times the original purchase price. However, in every case, the householder takes a gamble that the rate of inflation in land prices will be greater than the total amount payable on the interest, securing a capital gain at the time the land is sold. This capital gain in no way reflects the work or improvements made by the individual. Rather it reflects the increased accessibility to transport and community services over time, together with the increasing population demand for a limited land supply. Background to Community Land Trusts Community Land Trusts (CLTs) provide an alternative to these developments. Effectively they recreate a "commons" by removing for ever land from a speculative real estate market. How is this achieved? The CLT movement began in America. From the 1960s it was proving almost impossible to create new National Parks or wilderness preserves in the USA. As soon as a community group announced it sought to get a particular part of land set aside for future generations and for the preservation of the existing ecology, developers would seek immediately to take control and prevent it from happening. Donations by major land development companies to major political parties made it doubly hard - it was a brave politician who would act against the interests of those who put up the funds that got him (it was usually a him) elected in the first place. To overcome these problems Conservation Land Trusts were established. The first step was purchasing the land that people wished to develop as a National Park or Wilderness Preserve, and then vesting the ownership of that land into a trust. The beneficiaries named under that trust were listed as "people of the United States". A further provision was that the land, once owned in this fashion could only be disposed of as a result of a unanimous consent of all the named beneficiaries. This effectively removed the land forever from the speculative real estate market. Community Land Trusts took these ideas one step further. Under Ronald Reagan the Savings and Loan (S&L) Societies, which previously had raised funds exclusively for the provision of cheap housing for people on low to medium income had their provisions for making loans "deregulated". As S&L loans were guaranteed by government and no controls on their loans issued, S&L Societies entered into a vast range of speculative money making ventures. In the 1987 stock market crash, S&L Societies started to go bankrupt, losing more money in three months than was spent on the entire Vietnam War. People interested in providing alternative kinds of low cost housing were the first to realise the potential for Community Land Trusts. Others followed when it was realised that a CLT had a number of advantages. One of these was the recognition that the conception `private land ownership' is not a unitary right, but contains a number of different conditions (e.g. ability to prohibit trespass, ability to use of land, power to re-sell, ability to exploit resources occurring on the land etc.). CLTs tend to separate these rights, giving residents the power to use the land in certain ways, for certain purposes, but not to sell or dispose of it in any way to others. Some of these rights may be sold to the residents, others leased, or even provided freely to the members, whilst others remain held by the trust of the CLT. Community Land Trusts were thus a way for communities to:
Generally a community land trust (CLT) is a non-profit membership organisation created to hold land for the benefit of a community and individuals within the community. Most of the over 91 CLTs in the USA are concerned with providing and preserving affordable housing on this land. A CLT is generally designed to establish a stronger and broader board of trustees than a private land trust. This is accomplished by creating a board with a majority of trustees that are not necessarily land users, but who are committed to the purposes for which the trust was established. Usually only one third of the trustees can live on the land or benefit directly from it, while two-thirds must live elsewhere and receive no direct benefit from the land. This ensures that any donors or land-resident beneficiaries who are also trustees cannot change their minds about the purpose or mission of the trust, use the land for some other purpose, or sell it privately. The two-thirds of the board of trustees from the wider community serve to guarantee the mission of the trust since they are theoretically more objective, and, as they are excluded under trust terms will not be tempted by personal monetary gain. These people may be available for assistance in mediating disputes, or accessing external resources of assistance to the CLT. Private land trusts can be revocable by the original donors; community land trusts are usually not revocable. Community Land Trusts are set up as non-profit corporations, sometimes with a tax-exempt status. The trust holds actual title to the land, and grants the land residents long-term, renewable leases at reasonable fees, often for peppercorn rentals, long term renewable leases, or for the costs of land rates and community upkeep. The original owners of the land and Community assets cannot get their money out of a community land trust once they have made the donation. A CLT is an option for those who wish to ensure that the original purpose for their land and activities continues unchanged into future generations, and are not altered by subsequent requirements for quick cash, loss of commitment or personality conflicts among the land residents. This is not to say that individuals cannot receive a fair and just reward protecting the value of any individual assets contributed. Thus for example, many CLTs allow individuals to receive the value of any housing built by that individual (including an agreed return for any sweat equity contributed). They will, however, not allow any unjustified `capital gain' earned through any market appreciation of the value of these assets, other than a fair return on expenditure, corrected for Consumer Price Index rises. This is to ensure that individuals do not lose out as a result of changes through inflation. Privatising capital gain (as allowed on the sale of conventional privately owned land or housing) is considered by those involved in the CLT movement to be a theft from the community. Apart from these benefits, most Trustees in CLTs adopt an `arms-length' management approach, delegating all day to day management issues to an association of the residents. This association is usually in the form of a housing co-operative. John Croft, from the Gaia Foundation Journal, Resources The USA has a number of Community Land Trusts in operation, and a number of resource groups to support them and supply information. If you are interested in learning more about CLTs it would be worth contacting: Institute for Community Economics, Land Trust Alliance, 1319F St NW, Suite 501, Washington DC 20004,USA. Website: http://www.lta.org Some USA CLTs are Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, Commonplace Land Co-op, East-West Housing Co-op, The Farm, Life Center Assoc. Contact details of these and others can be found via the Federation of Intentional Communities in the USA. Contact them at PO Box 814-D, Langley WA 98260, USA.
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