Hello, neighbor!
The Los Angeles Community Land Trust Coalition (LACLTC) is composed of five Community Land Trusts (CLTs) from across LA County. These include: Beverly-Vermont CLT (BVCLT), El Sereno CLT (ESCLT), T.R.U.S.T. South LA, Fideicomiso Comuntario Tierra Libre (FCTL) and Liberty Community Land Trust. The coalition is committed to the preservation of low-income communities of color by decommodifying housing, promoting education, community empowerment, the conversion of tenants to owners, and making housing a human right.
T.R.U.S.T. South LA is a community-based effort that works to stabilize the neighborhoods south of Downtown LA, where increased property values and rents have pushed out many long-term residents. Our mission is to serve as a steward for community-controlled land; to be a catalyst for values-driven, community-serving development; to build awareness and community leadership in issues of housing, transportation and recreation; and to create programs and initiatives that encourage community building and economic opportunity.
The Beverly-Vermont Community Land Trust was born out of the Los Angeles Eco-Village project, in which an intentional community employed innovative peer-to-peer funding methods to create a revolving loan fund to incrementally purchase properties. BVCLT now stewards the land of four properties with a total of 48 homes and 75 tenants, where the majority of property improvements are held by a self-governed, incorporated limited-equity housing cooperative. As an organization, BVCLT fights to create sustainable communities and ensure residents of Koreatown, East Hollywood, and the surrounding neighborhoods have access to just housing, equitable transit, and integrate urban living with nature.
The El Sereno Community Land Trust is a group of committed residents and stakeholders who provide opportunities for the residents of El Sereno, Los Angeles to secure community spaces and housing that is decent, affordable, and that is held in stewardship by community members on a long-term basis. We are dedicated to de-commodifying local real estate by acquiring properties that will be held by the land trust in perpetuity for the common good. We also plan to work with residential and commercial tenants that wish to stay in their homes and businesses to help preserve the networks, support systems, cultural and social fabric of our community.
Fideicomiso Comunitario Tierra Libre (FCTL) is a grassroots Community Land Trust (CLT) founded in 2018. FCTL is the first CLT in the Eastside, led predominantly by women of color. Regionally we are in the Boyle Heights/East Los Angeles area. Historically our communities have been disinvested, redlined and impacted by for profit development.
FCTL members sought to create an alternative to the extractive housing crisis and displacement of our neighbors, friends and family members by securing community control and community ownership through the CLT model. FCTL objectives are to grow our infrastructure to provide services for capacity building for the membership, to decommodify land and housing by taking it out of the speculative market and make housing affordable in perpetuity.
FCTL is working to establish a cohesive local, regional and statewide CLT movement with the Los Angeles Community Land Trust Coalition (LA CLT C) and the California Community Land Trust Network (CACLTN), to implement policies that will expand and fund a strong CLT movement to create permanent affordable housing.
We are emerging collectively a CLT ecosystem to protect, repair, invest, and transform our communities. Communities of the working class people of color (POC), one block at a time.
Today more than ever inequality and injustice are highlighted by the current pandemic in our communities of POC as we have seen our neighbors most vulnerable and impacted by COVID19.
Liberty Community Land Trust was created in December 2019 as part of an ecosystem that seeks liberation and healing through the development of a democratic economy, with the goal of preserving and developing permanently affordable housing. Liberty is a Black-led, Black/Brown-focused CLT based in Los Angeles’ Southwest, Mid-City and adjacent communities, and is housed at The Umoja Center in historic Leimert Park Village, the center of Black activists and the Black arts community. Liberty CLT is the outgrowth of successful advocacy on transit justice, land use, community development and tenants’ rights, and demands for community control and self-determination that date back to the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising.