Community Land Trusts Are Standing Up to New York City’s Worst Landlords

The community land trust movement in New York City started gaining ground in the mid-2000s, when Picture the Homeless, an organization led by currently and formerly unhoused New Yorkers, as well as the New Economy Project and other groups, began examining whether the model could offer a solution to the housing speculation ravaging the city. The approach gained speed in the 2010s, with the founding of the New York City Community Land Initiative (NYCCLI), an alliance of housing and social justice groups working to advance community land trusts, as well as a City Council–sponsored funding initiative, which has provided between $750,000 to $1.5 million annually to support the organizational development of CLTs. In 2022, tenants in the Bronx were able to buy their building and go co-op, a development that was covered by The New York Times and sparked a huge growth in CLT organizing, including the founding of NYCCLI’s Tenant Takeover Group.

Goldin told me that in some other cities, community land trusts tend to think about their work as enabling a step toward home ownership. But “in New York City,” she said, ‘it’s much more about how to gain control of where we live and fighting against displacement—making sure that land and housing is used for people, not for profit.”

While just a few years ago there was only one functioning community land trust in the city, today there are 20, nine of which own land or are in the process of obtaining it.

“Communities across New York are showing what’s possible through CLTs, as they collectively steward land for permanently affordable housing, community and green spaces, and other pressing needs,” said Goldin. “Not only can CLTs grow across New York—they can pave the way for new models of development that stabilize and build wealth in communities, addressing the affordability crisis at the root.”

The ENYCLT was founded in early 2020 by community leaders in Brownsville and East New York, who worried that Covid-19 would worsen local real estate speculation and displacement. When Anousheh and her coworkers heard about the conditions at 248 Arlington, they collaborated with other groups, including the HOPE Tenant Union, to hold rallies outside the building and pressure the landlord into making improvements. In June 2023, after a door-knocking campaign to inform residents about the organization and their aims, ENYCLT hosted a 248 Arlington tenant vote in their office just around the corner from the building. The residents voted unanimously to proceed with an acquisition campaign.

Ana said she was curious about the community land trust model when she met Anousheh and the staff. But she was reluctant to get involved. It was only after ENYCLT was on the verge of purchasing the building that Ana changed her mind. The process had taken many months, and now that the purchase was finally on the horizon, residents were getting nervous and a little fearful. Anousheh said, “In that moment, Ana stepped forward as a leader to bring the sale to the finish line.”

At a meeting, Anousheh explained that the building would now need a tenant council to help lead the building through the renovations and co-op conversion process. Ana and two other residents raised their hands and offered up their time.

As the ENYCLT was pursuing the purchase of 248 Arlington, organizers at the Bronx CLT were moving forward with their own acquisition—an 18-unit residential (with two commercial units) apartment building in the West Bronx. The trust had reached out to residents at 785 East Tremont in summer 2023 after it learned the building had been auctioned at a tax lien sale. “The tenants had no idea any of this had happened,” recalled Todd Baker, the Community Development Project Manager at the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, which runs the trust.

Through organizing, the Bronx CLT was able to reverse the foreclosure, get the buyer to walk away, and convince the city to suspend the tax lien. Since then, they’ve supported the tenants in gaining control over the building, which has enabled them to make repairs, hire a super, pursue a gut renovation, and hire a private management company, said Baker. The tenants recently agreed to join the Bronx CLT and will seek to complete a failed co-op conversion that was started about three decades ago.

Over the last few years, and especially since the purchase of 248 Arlington, more and more tenants are collaborating with community land trusts in hopes of gaining control over their homes. Goldin said that about 15 buildings are working with community land trusts toward the acquisition of their homes, including in buildings owned by Daniel Ohebshalom, once dubbed New York City’s “worst landlord” by New York City’s Public Advocate. Some CLTs in New York City are even working at developing empty lots to build truly affordable housing from scratch.

The ReAL Edgemere CLT was born in 2021, after Hurricane Sandy devastated the Rockaways. After conducting a series of community workshops about housing needs and climate resilience, the trust secured permission from the city to develop housing and retail properties on vacant land near Norton Ave, alongside Jamaica Bay. (The CLT had also planned on building a community park that mitigates the impact of climate change but had to put that plan on hold when Trump scrapped the funding stream). It is now working with a development partner to build 32 one-to-three-family homes, and in doing so establish affordable housing on a substantial portion of the vacant plots in the neighborhood. “Maybe 20 years ago, the city would have sold off the land to whatever developer was interested,” one ReAL Edgemere CLT member told me. Instead, community members are hiring firms to develop the land according to their needs. “CLTs are such an amazing answer to the desire to have real agency over how development is proceeding.”

Fighting against a landlord for repairs or to obtain community control over a property is difficult—but a new kind of organizing challenge presents itself once a building or tract of land is acquired, Anousheh told me: “It’s really hard to switch from fighting a slumlord to building something together.”

The work “isn’t all rainbows and butterflies,” Anousheh said. Since gaining control of 248 Arlington, the ENYCLT has invested in conflict mediation and assisting neighbors with long histories of living alongside each other to rebuild trust. “That’s one of the challenges—just dealing with certain people in the building, the personalities and politics,” Ana said. “When you live in the same place—all right, different apartments, but you live in the same place, you have to be one unit.”

There are also other challenges across the community land trust movement, including how to balance the inherent tension between maintaining affordability and giving poor families and people of color the opportunity to generate equity. For Ana, part of the draw of owning her unit was the possibility to pass it along to her daughter and create generational wealth. “I wanted something to pass onto my daughter.” Yet since the land under 248 Arlington is owned by the trust, the organization will set upper limits on resale value and the income of prospective buyers.

At the Cooper Square Community Land Trust, the oldest continuously running housing CLT in New York City, owners are barred from selling their apartment for any more than they bought it for, plus inflation—which, in 2025, was just $1,800. As a result, the CLT allows immediate access to home ownership for even the poorest New Yorkers. The last six people welcomed into Cooper Square apartments came directly from Department of Homeless Services shelters, said Dave Powell, the executive director of Legacies of Cooper Square Unido, the managing nonprofit for the buildings.

Ana understands and approves that the equity in her apartment will be limited to maintain permanently affordability—though perhaps not as much as at Cooper Square. The question is how to draw that line, though every community land trust that I spoke with stressed there’s no universal answer. “I wouldn’t ever assume that there’s a one-size-fits-all approach or that what we did is appropriate for every community,” said Powell, who added that universal rent control and eviction protections probably would have the greatest impact in any given city.

Providing political education to tenants makes a big difference, said ENYCLT and other organizations. Todd Baker of the Bronx CLT said that part of nurturing a relationship with building residents involves helping them answer the question of equity: “It is really, really challenging to get people to let go of the deeply ingrained individualist belief in the American dream of household wealth achievement through homeownership.”

Still, it’s possible to push residents to think differently. “What’s underneath individual wealth?” he asked. “You’re trying to get at prosperity. You’re trying to get at stability. You’re trying to get at quality of life. And those are things that can also be achieved through community wealth.”

In the 18 months since 248 Arlington was purchased, conditions have improved—a new camera system is up and running, the front entrance locks have been changed, the boiler has been repaired, many pipes have been replaced, and emergency repairs have been completed in the building’s 20 units. The residents are finalizing plans to gut and renovate the building, and will then begin the process of converting to a co-op.

Anousheh said that the ENYCLT is focusing on organizing tenants in multi-unit family homes being targeted by speculators, who either flip the properties or evict the tenants and rent them out for significantly more. Their aim is to identify particularly bad actors and build portfolio-wide tenant unions that can stand up to them.

These days, Ana is a fierce organizer, both in 248 Arlington and the community land trust movement as a whole. This spring, she went door-knocking to let neighbors know about the tax lien sale. She spoke in Albany at a rally to push for the passage of the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, which would give tenants a first opportunity to buy their buildings when landlords decide to sell. She’s also pushing the New York City Council to pass a slate of bills, known as the Community Land Act, that would help transfer more land and property into the hands of community land trusts.

One of those bills, the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA), would give CLTs and other nonprofits a first right to purchase multifamily buildings when a landlord decides to sell. The bill would “make an enormous difference,” said Goldin, by giving tenants and CLTs a seat at the table to negotiate before buildings are placed on the open market. Advocates say they are one council member away from a supermajority on COPA, added Goldin, and hope to secure the additional vote in the coming weeks. If COPA passes, the growth of CLT organizing in NYC may accelerate even further. “Right now what we’re doing [in our building] is spreading to other neighborhoods, to other boroughs,” Ana told me. “And not only did it happen at 248 Arlington. It can happen anywhere.”