April 25, 5 pm: Allison S. Reed, “Enclaves of Poverty” or “Homes that Last”?: Temporality, Strategy and Competing Ideologies in the Implementation of Community Land Trusts

Please join us for our next meeting of the Money, Markets and Governance workshop on Tuesday, April 25, 5:00 – 6:30 p.m. in SSRB 404.

Allison S. Reed 
Ph.D. Student, Sociology, University of Chicago

“Enclaves of Poverty” or “Homes that Last”?:  Temporality, Strategy, and Competing Ideologies in the Implementation of Community Land Trusts

Discussant: Laila Noureldin

*Refreshments will be served*

ABSTRACT 
The shortage of affordable homeownership opportunities continues to increase at an alarming rate. A sizeable proportion of this loss comes from expiring affordability requirements—many homes initially built for low- and moderate income individuals become eligible for sale at market rate within 15 to 30 years of being built, thus eliminating additional affordable homes from the overall housing stock. The community land trust (CLT) and related shared equity homeownership strategies offer opportunities to preserve homeownership for 99 years, along with lowering or eliminating the cost of land for homebuyers, through ground leasing and resale restrictions. Despite the relative success of land trusts and similar models on a small scale, these mechanisms tend to be underutilized and scarcely known within the affordable housing sector. This paper explores the reasons why the models are being used in certain affordable housing spaces and not in others. Through interviews with local-level affiliate leaders of Habitat for Humanity, the US’ largest creator of affordable homes, this study investigates the reasons behind affiliates’ approaches to use long- or permanent affordability strategies. Preliminary interviews with approximately 30 Habitat for Humanity officials from across the nation reveal a number of reasons for variance in using CLT and similar models, including technical challenges, competing notions of land rights, and competing ideologies of the role of affordable homeownership in building wealth versus preserving communities in the long term. Taken together, this paper provides insight in the roles that time, land, and ideology play in organizational strategies to address homeownership inequality. 
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