City of Lakes Community Land Trust

Hope Community continues to serve and empower the community.

The development of Hope Community Court in the winter of 2003-04 featured 10 units of housing, six rental units and the first four homeownership units to be placed in the City of Lakes Community Land Trust.  Through Hope’s commitment to the CLT model and its commitment to ownership opportunities we continue to help build better communities.

Community Land Trust makes home ownership affordable.
A Community Land Trust (CLT) works to provide permanently affordable housing to community members by owning the land, but selling the home on the land to a low-income buyer.  The homeowner leases the land from the CLT through a 99-year ground lease.  The lease is the key to connecting the homeowner, usually a first-time homeowner, to the community, and to keeping the house permanently affordable.  It includes a resale formula that determines the home’s sale price and gives the family a share of the increase in the home’s value when they decide to sell it.  In this way, the investment made in the home by public and private subsidy sources that make it affordable to the first owner remains with the home to make it affordable to subsequent owners as well.