Book Review by Michael LaFond
September, 2020, Berlin

On Common Ground: International Perspectives on the Community Land Trust. Edited by
John Emmeus Davis, Line Algoed, María E. Hernández-Torrales. (Madison WI: Terra Nostra
Press, 2020)

On Common Ground is a powerful book being published at a significant time of crisis and
change. With 26 original essays, contributed by 42 scholars and practitioners from 12
different countries, this publication discusses how the Community Land Trust (CLT) model is
finding its place among international movements working for economic and social justice. A
focus is on “community-led development on community-owned land.”

On Common Ground describes how the CLT came out of the 1960s American Civil Rights
Movement, as activists extended their political fight into the economic realm. They had
recognized that having access to land was essential to securing greater independence for
otherwise marginalized and vulnerable populations. Whereas land ownership was
out-of-reach for most African-Americans, the activists believed that community ownership of
land could most help these people to help themselves. This ingenious new hybrid, separating
the ownership of land and buildings under the watchful eye of a community-controlled,
nonprofit organization, was the prototype for what eventually became the “Community Land
Trust”. It is understandable that the CLT was pioneered in the US, where poor, especially
African Americans in the Deep South, could have no expectations of their elected government
acquiring land and housing and then making it available to them through a common good
strategy.

Many in Berlin will at first be sceptical of a model “Made in the USA”, and ask how the CLT
relates to the market fundamentalism and rugged individualism otherwise exported by the US
in recent decades. Now in Berlin, the local government is once again willing to acquire land
and build housing with a more or less fair and just, albeit top-down approach. But what might
Berlin have to gain from the CLT model? What does a bottom-up, civil society-led, CLT
approach bring to current housing and urban development challenges?
It is asked what a CLT could possibly add to the already (relatively) well developed Berlin
landscape of socially-minded urban and housing development strategies. Off and on over the
last century, the German speaking countries have indeed been exploring and demonstrating
a range of common good approaches to land and housing management. The Housing
Cooperative was already popularized by the end of the 1800s and early in the 1900s
practices such as long-term leasing of land and city owned housing companies were
established. Recent decades have seen the pioneering of non-profit foundations such as
Stiftung trias and Stiftung Edith Maryon , who have shown how to remove land from the
speculative market and make it permanently accessible to affordable housing and other
projects. The Mietshäuser Syndikat (Tenement House Syndicate) has demonstrated in recent
years how to de-privatize land and housing, making them affordable for the long-term to
self-organized groups including former squatters.

Berlin, for some years now, has been engaged with a re-orienting of its real estate and
housing policies. Housing and other urban initiatives have been organizing and networking,
forcing the discussion of a new common good approach. A debate, for example, is being
moved forward as to how land and housing could be (re)municipalized or socialized. There is
an emerging consensus that housing - and therefore the land beneath it - should be
accessible to all. In the wake of such progressive developments, the Stadtbodenstiftung (City
Land Foundation) is arguing that land and housing could be managed by community-led
associations on community-managed land. The CLT model, emerging in Berlin as the new
Stadtbodenstiftung , is expected to soon be founded.

This amazing publication, On Common Ground, could assist experts and activists in cities like
Berlin in these challenging times. The book tells the stories of many CLTs and their
respective urban developments. There are now more than 250 CLTs in the United States and
hundreds more in England, Scotland and Ireland. In the last decade CLTs have emerged in
other large European cities, now providing inspiration for Berlin. The book surveys theoretical
and practical justifications for community-led development on community-owned land. The
proliferation and cross-pollination of CLTs in the Global North is reviewed as is the potential
for CLT development in the Global South. The success of selected CLTs is illustrated in cities
including London, Brussels, Boston, Burlington, and Denver.

What lessons are there for Berlin in the publication On Common Ground ? The book’s critical
perspectives are recommended, for example, which reflect on the changing environments to
which CLTs must evolve and adapt. They have to focus on challenges like the long-term
provision of inclusive housing while also dealing with larger issues such as racism and the
climate emergency.
Four of the primary lessons for Berlin are summarized below. Otherwise, of course, this book
with its 500 pages is highly recommended! Look for more information online:
https://cltweb.org/terra-nostra-press/on-common-ground/

Lesson 1
Developing Housing AND Organizing Community
Main objectives of “classic CLTs” include supporting permanently affordable housing while
involving not only the residents but also the surrounding “communities”. However, there is a
tendency in existing CLTs to either want to professionalize their work as housing developers
or to put a political emphasis on community organizing. Enabling and maintaining a culture of
participation is easier said than done: CLTs have to ask themselves how to establish this as
an ongoing goal. Land initiatives are challenged to practice strategies of social organizing,
inclusive leadership and community-building activities while developing partnerships with
local grassroots initiatives. The reality is that educational work and community organizing can
not easily be paid for with affordable housing, unless a scale is reached, for example, of a few
thousand apartments. Some CLTs do manage to maintain organizers as full-time staff, while
other CLTs partner with already-organized community groups to help them attain their
neighborhood empowerment goals.
An example is the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative, which helps organize
people to take properties permanently off the speculative market, empowering communities to
cooperatively lead a just transition from an extractive capitalist system into one where
communities are ecologically, culturally, and economically restorative and regenerative.
https://ebprec.org/

Lesson 2
Community Gardens. Learning from NYC
Berlin’s civil society created more than 150 community gardens in recent decades, having
been inspired by New York City and others. Unfortunately, many of these are threatened due
to extreme market pressures, as land values skyrocket and investment capital grabs onto
every possible “under-developed” piece of property in the city.
In 1999, the New York City Administration announced a plan to auction off over one hundred
pieces of city-owned land that were home to community gardens. Gardeners and their allies
mobilized in resistance to the plan, organizing demonstrations and filing lawsuits. After a
negotiated settlement, sixty-nine gardens were purchased by the Trust for Public Lands
(TPL). In the years since, TPL has established three local land trusts to hold and manage the
gardens: the Manhattan Land Trust, the Brooklyn Queens Land Trust, and the Bronx Land
Trust. T hey maintain community-owned green spaces in neighborhoods where there are few
city parks or other open land. Deed restrictions guarantee that they will remain undeveloped
and in community hands forever.
https://www.bronxlandtrust.org/about-us

Lesson 3
Learning from the Civil Rights Movement: being part of a broader struggle for
progressive change
It is argued that CLTs, while securing long-term affordable housing, should also be
consciously working on solutions to structural racism and economic injustice. In this sense, it
is maintained that CLTs should not see themselves as part of a self-contained “movement.”
Instead, CLTs should acknowledge a direct connection to the Civil Rights Movement along
with other social movements as the source of the model. CLTs can thus position their own
collective work as being a component and continuation of a broader struggle for new national
policies and programs, aimed at achieving progressive social, political, and economic
changes that directly address the ongoing impact of racism.
The Community Land Trust Brussels, for example, provides housing and supports the
emancipation of inhabitants. It ensures that more livable neighborhoods do not lead to the
displacement of current residents.
https://cltb.be/en/vision-and-mission/

Lesson 4
Better Together: The Challenging, Transformative Complexity of Community, Land,
and Trust
Last but not least, the big CLT vision calls for developing a synergy among the dimensions of
Community , Land and Trust . This remains a lofty challenge, realizing that especially in the
years of getting a CLT off the ground - there will be enough to do in giving attention to each of
these. If transformation, economic and social justice are the big goals, then it is
understandable that the challenges are complex and long-term: nothing short of systemic
change.