Land Banks and Community Land Trusts

Author(s): Kim Graziani (Technical Assistance Senior Advisor)

Land banks are public entities with unique governmental powers, created pursuant to state-enabling legislation, solely focused on converting VAD properties into productive and equitable uses according to local community goals.

Community land trusts (CLTs) are nonprofit organizations, governed by CLT residents, community residents, and nonprofit and public representatives, that provide permanent community control of land and affordable housing.

Together, land banks and CLTs can help reverse the trajectory of disinvestment and unlock a pipeline of vacant properties to provide much needed quality affordable housing for current and future generations. Through special powers granted by state-enabling legislation, land banks can more flexibly and efficiently acquire and sell VAD properties than other governmental or nonprofit entities. In many communities, long-term, affordable housing has been identified as a top community goal which creates an ideal opportunity for a land bank to prioritize the transfer of property to a CLT. In some communities, land banks and CLTs work together above and beyond a transaction or sale of property and formalize partnerships to proactively identify and develop properties to support mutual goals.

Places like Albany, New York; Atlanta, Georgia; and Columbus and Franklin County, Ohio are pioneering models of how these partnerships can support neighborhood stabilization and prevent displacement of vulnerable residents.

In this report, you’ll learn more about the differences between land banks and community land trusts, and how they can work together, promising models and examples of land bank and CLT partnerships across the country, and what is needed to grow and expand land bank and CLT partnerships.