Community Land Trust Program

Program Description:

Provide seed capital funding for a Community Land Trust to develop and/or acquire 100 units of affordable housing over 2 years. It is recommended to partner to expand the capacity of a existing third party community development service provider(s) to take on Community Land Trust functions, rather than launch new CLT. Seed funding may be dedicated to one or multiple CLTs.

Program Recommendations:

! Develop and approve a specific role for Community Land Trusts to function inside of the County’s comprehensive affordable housing plan. One or more CLTs could provide the following services independently, in concert, or under contract to the County: 1) Property acquisition; 2) Housing development & construction; and 3) property management;

! Partner with one or multiple existing affordable housing development agencies to undertake new, specific Community Land Trust functionality. Experience matters in order to get a CLT program launched and operating quickly and avoid early learning curve mistakes;

! Revise County tax assessment policy for CLT-developed affordable housing to ensure fair treatment of resale-restricted homes;

! Target CLT activity where it is needed most the fourteen highly historically distressed neighborhoods identified in the Metropolitan Center Neighborhood Distress Index;

! Assign the partner CLTs lead responsibility to coordinate County-wide Land Bank development

Program Cost Estimate:

! Total development costs required to develop or purchase 100 housing units is b etween $32.5 Million and $39 Million.

! Equity funding required to develop or purchase 100 housing units is between $ 11.3 Million and $17 Million.

Recommended program seed funding:

! $3.25 Million to $3.9 Million, to serve as either 1) an additional 10% per-unit project cost grant; 2) gap financing; or 3) interest rate write-down funding.

Households directly impacted during pilot program:

! 100 households