Bronx homes and Bronx land belong in Bronx hands.

Incorporated in 2020, the Bronx Community Land Trust (Bronx CLT) works to build and preserve safe, healthy, and deeply affordable housing for the borough’s racially and economically diverse residents as well as accessible commercial, industrial, and green spaces. The Bronx CLT advances community leadership, shared wealth, and collective governance over our Bronx land to create long-term sustainability, responsible planning, and equitable development that prevents displacement and gentrification.  

The Bronx CLT conducts community assessments to identify underutilized or vacant city-owned land, works to transfer it into the Bronx CLT, and build partnerships to facilitate the development and stewardship of that land in the vision of local residents. We host educational workshops on communal ownership to help residents determine if that is the right course of action for their building, and to empower them to take steps to secure ownership for themselves.

Our Bronx CLT board is composed of local residents and outstanding leaders in housing advocacy and affordable housing development. Through learning exchanges and technical assistance programs, we prepare our board members to guide our strategy overall for the Bronx CLT and engage with city agencies and developers to shape development strategies across the city to benefit our communities.

We are growing an ecosystem to support community ownership of land and housing across our city and state.

As coordinating members of the New York City Community Land Initiative (NYCCLI), we campaign for the legislative and financial infrastructure necessary for local CLTs to thrive throughout the city.


Bronx CLT breaks new ground!

In 2023, we developed plans for new cooperative housing construction in Belmont-Crotona. We anticipate the construction of approximately 25 units of homeownership for Bronx residents, all held permanently affordable through the Bronx CLT—the first housing of its kind in the Bronx! Watch the story on PIX 11.

 

Learn more about community land trusts!

What is a community land trust?

A CLT is a community-led organization that owns land. It separates ownership of the land from the buildings and other uses above it, be it housing, a business, even a community garden. The CLT pulls the land permanently off the market, and becomes responsible for putting that land to use for the benefit of the people who live in the area. A CLT is a way for organized communities to manage land collectively with the goal of ensuring equitable and permanently affordable development for the community.

Why do we need a CLT?

For five decades, NWBCCC has been fighting back the tide of disinvestment and displacement in our working-class, immigrant, Black and brown communities. Today, our people remain poor and disenfranchised from the decision-making processes and economic institutions that impact the future of the Bronx. 

Our members founded the Bronx CLT through research, visioning, and building leadership to address these pressures and the realities of low wage jobs, unaffordable rents, and rising evictions. The land trust is a fight-forward model that shifts the conversation from simply organizing to keep tenants in their homes and businesses to empowering community members to collectively own and make decisions about their buildings, storefronts, green spaces, and more in order to meet our community’s needs.

how does a CLT work?

  1. A community is struggling with issues like:

    • rising housing costs and commercial rents

    • overcrowding and displacement

    • lack of community and open spaces

    • vacant buildings

  2. Community members work together to form a community land trust, a non-profit, democratically governed organization that gets and keeps land in a trust on behalf of the community.

  3. The CLT facilitates community-driven planning to address the community’s immediate and long-term needs. It works with resident groups, non-profit housing developers, and other organizations to:

  • preserve and enhance permanently affordable housing and other places of value to the community

  • Steward and develop unused spaces to meet community needs

 

Explore our community-led research on community land trusts:

 
 

For more resources on CLTs, visit the New York Community Land Initiative here.

 

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