A new report suggests that Connecticut’s laws make the state well-suited to improve its housing affordability through a little-known but growing model: community land trusts.

A community land trust is a way to create and preserve affordable housing in which a nonprofit owns the land and develops housing. Sometimes, additional community gathering spaces such as gardens or shops can go on the land as well.

The housing has regulations regarding ownership and transfer of the property to new residents that keeps it affordable. Connecticut’s laws regarding land trusts include one that reduces property tax burdens on the land. The law helps make the state amenable to land trusts, according to the report released last month from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Still, advocates say Connecticut can do more. They want to see more funding put toward the model as well as further tax reforms.

Kristin King-Ries, one of the report’s authors, said there has been a growing interest in community land trusts nationwide.

“There’s been a return to the idea of a full potential of community land trusts as a way to build the whole community up,” King-Ries said in an interview.

Connecticut is one of just six states that reduces property tax burdens only on community land trust-owned land. Land trusts can get property tax easements in the state. Eight others require local assessors to reduce the tax burden on land owned by a CLT and to take affordability restrictions on the homes themselves into account when calculating taxes on the homes, according to the report.

Taxes on the homes built on community land trust property have been an issue for homeowners on Southeastern Connecticut Community Land Trust property, executive director Mirna Martinez said.

Homes on community land trusts typically have certain restrictions around the sale that keep the homeowner from earning as much money as they might in a traditional private residence sale. The restrictions are meant to ensure the homes stay affordable in the long-term.

Martinez said Connecticut tax law doesn’t take this into account when assessors are evaluating the homes.

Connecticut was also one of the early adopters of a state law that had statutes that enabled community land trust development. In 2018, five had what the report defines as comprehensive community land trust legislation. These laws usually include measures that define a community land trust, have a state housing trust fund or other funding for land trusts, or taxation standards specialized to community land trusts, among other aspects, according to the report.

Earlier this year, that number was up to 20, according to the report.

“I see this as sort of brought up as an important tool for affordable housing,” said Alexander Kolokotronis, director of the Naugatuck Valley Project, which owns a land trust property in Waterbury. “It falls in this broader ecosystem of affordable housing. And so there is definitely more interest. I hear and see more talk of it in Connecticut.”

The Waterbury property operates as a co-op, a corporation that allows residents to buy shares in the housing development so they can take votes on how the property should be managed. The units were built on property owned by the land trust, in a unique partnership that means land costs can stay low.

Kolokotronis said in his experience, community land trusts work to preserve affordability. He compared it to methods such as the federal low-income housing tax credit program, which offers tax incentives to developers if they keep a set percentage of units in a development affordable for at least 30 years.

The program is one of the federal government’s primary ways of encouraging construction of affordable housing. But critics have pointed out that the affordability requirements don’t last forever.

Connecticut runs the risk of having about 5,000 units of affordable housing expiring in the next five years, according to a report from the National Housing Preservation Database.

Martinez said while she thinks momentum is growing for community land trusts there is still work to do.

Often, when she’s talking about her work, she said people don’t know what a community land trust is.

“I think we still have a long way to go in telling the story,” Martinez said.

Her organization, which operates primarily in New London, encourages homeownership and community gardens on their land. She said she’d like to see the state target down payment assistance to programs like community land trusts that guarantee affordability in perpetuity.

Kolokotronis agreed that more funding would help the model grow, particularly to help with staffing and technical assistance for the nonprofits. 

King-Ries said in addition to gains in popularity, her review found that more community land trusts are working to encourage density.

“It was a single-family model … but in the last five to 10 years, the shift to multi-family, that’s really been where the focus has been,” King-Ries said.

It reflects a larger land use conversation that’s happening around the country, including in Connecticut. Affordable housing advocates have been pushing for more density because it allows more units to be built on existing land and makes it easier for more residents to use public transit.

As community land trusts grow denser and have more units, King-Ries said there’s a push-and-pull between a desire to build more and the community feel that’s traditionally part of community land trusts.

But, she said, it’s helped by a growing number of land trusts that are using the land for community spaces such as gardens and churches.

“There’s been a return to the idea of a full potential of community land trusts as a way to build the whole community up,” she said.