Photo: This property at 14 Leroy St. in Dorchester was purchased by Boston Neighborhood Community Land Trust. Jesse Costa/WBUR photo
By James Jennings, John Smith, and Ashley E. Harding
Special to the Reporter
Boston’s racial wealth gap is well known and has generated much discussion locally and nationally. Based on research funded by The Barr Foundation and its Racial Wealth Equity Initiative— and meetings with thirty stakeholders across the US and Puerto Rico— we think that community land trusts — or CLTs— represent a missing and critical link in such discussions.
Our new study— “CLTs as a Tool for Community Wealth Building and Closing Racial Wealth Gaps”— has two main objectives. The first is to elevate public awareness about CLTs in Boston and other urban communities in Massachusetts. A second is to highlight how CLTs can build community wealth as a way to reduce racial wealth gaps.
CLTs are entities that own local land cooperatively in order to obtain, build, and manage affordable homeownership available to residents who may not typically have the financial means to buy homes in the speculative market. Under this model, housing remains permanently affordable for homeowners and renters because the cost of land is taken out of the cost of homeownership by making it cooperatively owned, typically in perpetuity for 99 years.
CLTs are growing in numbers. There are 18 CLTs in Massachusetts and approximately 300 across the United States. The first known CLT in the US was founded in 1967 by African Americans in Albany, Georgia. One of the most prominent examples is the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), located in a part of Dorchester and Roxbury known as The Dudley Triangle.
In 1983, DSNI was granted eminent domain powers to develop land by former Boston mayor Raymond Flynn. CLTs like DSNI are typically located in places that were earlier targets for speculative land strategies and discriminatory housing resulting in gentrification, displacement, and race-based housing segregation.
Our study shows how CLTs have been effective in increasing homeownership and financial security for low-income households. They have also helped to reduce gentrification and displacement and support and sustain small local businesses, since the collective model enhances local buying power and entrepreneurship.
Individual homeownership is indeed a most valuable tool for closing the racial wealth gap in Boston. Nevertheless, a significant issue remains: if having a home is critical for building wealth, then being able to keep a home is just as important.
The cost of owning and maintaining a home can be out of reach for many Black and Latino/a and working-class residents in Greater Boston. In 2022 the median price of single-family homes in the Greater Boston region was $900,000. In Boston proper, it was a whopping $975,000.
The market pressure is especially acute in neighborhoods like Black and Latino areas of Roxbury and Mattapan with substantial number of low-income households.
In Roxbury’s 02119 zip code, the median price of a single home rose by 13.8 percent in just three years (2020 to 2023) —from $577,500 to $657,000. The increase was even more dramatic in zip code 02126 ,which encompasses predominantly Black Mattapan: 25.6 percent, according to analysis based on information provided by the Black Knight and PolicyMap research firms. This extraordinary spike makes homeownership difficult for most families living in Black and Latino neighborhoods where there are relatively few households earning 80 percent of the Greater Boston Annual Median Income (AMI), or $130,250.
The DSNI catchment area is home to hundreds of businesses, many of them employing between 1 and 4 workers. CLT residents can be a local and reliable consumer base and dollars stay in the area for longer periods due to presence of these small businesses. Analysis from one marketing company indicate that the approximate aggregate retail expenditure was $75 million in 2022, and the aggregate household net worth hit more than $2 billion in the two census tracts where DSNI properties are located.
That represents significant place-based consumer expenditures and local buying power. These kinds of resources can provide part of a framework for CLT-driven economic activities that sustain affordable housing and generate opportunities for residents.
They can spur entrepreneurship and creative economic innovations, untapped cultural resources, and green strategies for increasing healthy foods for residents and neighbors.
Our report offers recommendations aimed at enhancing the work and impact of CLTs. First, community and grassroots organizations should consider local initiatives capable of leveraging the economic resources that CLTs bring to neighborhoods like ours.
Raising public awareness is crucial. But this must include strategic attempts to reach certain audiences like elderly residents and homeowners to understand the advantages associated with this form of cooperative housing. Highlighting entrepreneurial opportunities for youth that are generated by CLTs is also a way to raise public awareness and support. Land trust leaders should be aggressive in cultivating relationships with small neighborhood businesses. CLTs can also be a key partner with public health organizations seeking to enhance the accessibility and quality of public health among residents.
The philanthropic sector should increase opportunities for financing land acquisition, development, and increased organizational capacity. Local and state leadership should consider the value of land banks, and public banks, as tools to strengthen and sustain the CLT sector. These sectors should approach CLTs as potential partners in closing racial wealth gaps in Boston and Massachusetts.
Given a still growing housing crisis, and continuing gentrification and displacement in low-income and working-class communities within the context of the financialization of housing as a speculative commodity, it would be a major oversight to continue treating CLTs as a missing link and thereby overlook this sector’s potential in building and sustaining community wealth.
James Jennings is a professor emeritus at Tufts University; John Smith is executive director at Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative; and Ashley E. Harding sf the founder of North Star Academics.
