During the past two decades, as markets have pushed the price of land and housing beyond the reach of low- and middle-income families, governments in England and Europe have struggled to provide effective policy responses. Problems of affordable housing, social displacement, and degradation of the existing housing stock have grown steadily worse. This has prompted NGOs and community activists to seek innovative solutions of their own, looking beyond conventional approaches to housing provision long promoted by either the market or the state. One promising innovation, in particular, has attracted an increasing amount of attention and support: the community land trust (CLT).
The first community land trusts in England were developed in the early 2000s. The first CLT on the European continent was established in Brussels in 2012. The first Organismes de Foncier Solidaire, the French version of a CLT, was established in Lille in 2017. Interest in the model has grown ever since, both within these countries and in those nearby.
This growth has been seeded and supported by national CLT networks in England and France and by a cross-national partnership funded by the European Union, known as Sustainable Housing for Inclusive and Cohesive Cities (SHICC). Founded in 2017, SHICC has raised the profile of CLTs among policymakers and housing activists across North-West Europe and has provided essential resources for CLT projects.
Featured in the present monograph are local, national, and cross-national efforts to grow the CLT movement in this part of the world. The monograph’s chapters were selected from On Common Ground: International Perspectives on the Community Land Trust, a collection of twenty-six original essays published in June 2020 by Terra Nostra Press. But in the years since these essays were written, there have been significant changes among CLTs in London, Brussels, England, and Europe — and within the networks supporting them. Postscripts have been added to this monograph’s chapters, therefore, bringing the story of community land trusts in these cities and countries up to date.
Table des matières
Figures
Foreword
Elisa Ferreira, European Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms
Introduction: On Common Groundxiii
John Emmeus Davis, Line Algoed, and María E. Hernández-Torrales
1.The Once and Future Garden City
Yves Cabannes and Philip Ross
2.London Community Land Trust: A Story of People, Power, and Perseverance
Dave Smith
2021 Postscript: Creating a City-wide, Multi-site London CLT
Calum Green
3.Messy is Good! Origins and Evolution of the CLT Movement in England
Stephen Hill, Catherine Harrington, and Tom Archer
2021 Postscript: Can Messy be Transformative?
Tom Chance
4.From Pressure Group to Government Partner: The Story of the Brussels Community Land Trust
Geert De Pauw and Nele Aernouts
2021 Postscript: Surviving the Pandemic, Supporting Our Families, Sustaining Our Work
Geert De Pauw
5.Beyond England: Origins and Evolution of the Community Land Trust Movement in Europe
Geert De Pauw and Joanquin de Santos
2021 Postscript: Further Growth of the European CLT Movement
Joaquin de Santos
About the Contributors
A propos de l’auteur
María E. Hernández-Torrales holds an LLM in environmental law from the Vermont Law School and an MA in Business Education from New York University. She studied for her undergraduate and Juris Doctor degrees at the University of Puerto Rico. Since 2005 she has been doing pro bono legal work for the Proyecto ENLACE and for the Fideicomiso de la Tierra del Caño Martín Peña. Since 2008, Hernández-Torrales has worked as an attorney and clinical professor at the University of Puerto Rico School of Law where she teaches the Community Economic Development Clinic.