Piloting New Partnership Opportunities Between a Land Bank and a Community Land Trust in Albany, New York

Author(s): Center for Community Progress

In 2017, the Center for Community Progress — through our technical assistance scholarship program — worked with the Albany County Land Bank (ACLB) and the Albany Community Land Trust (ACLT) to help the two entities pilot a more effective and sustainable partnership. ACLB and ACLT were looking to achieve shared goals: address vacancy and abandonment and preserve housing affordability.

After research and interviews with stakeholders, Community Progress made the key recommendation that, in addition to prioritizing permanently affordable housing, vacant land itself should be a key component of this engagement. Vacant land could help inform a pilot maintenance program between ACLB and ACLT. Vacant land could serve as a vehicle to engage and educate residents, and provide a starting point to rethink block-wide revitalization strategies. Vacant land could help shape the City of Albany’s newly formed Vacant Property Task Force, and its many reuses could help forge cross-sector partnerships that currently do not exist.

This report provides a blueprint for how a land bank and community land trust can work together to achieve shared goals, and how vacant land can be a core part of the strategy.