Let’s go communal to solve Denver’s housing crisis

Community land trusts sound about as communist as it gets, and then you learn the concept was born and raised in Burlington, Vt., when Bernie Sanders was just a small-town mayor.

Intentionally using the least flattering language possible, a land trust is the practice of creating communal land for the poor to live on.

But, despite clear philosophical reasons to oppose such an enterprise, the Denver metro area needs a robust, comprehensive land trust.

Residents and community activists in some of Denver’s poorest neighborhoods are calling for a land trust to compete with the insatiable appetite of developers, especially in north Denver, that is driving out lowincome residents and bringing in high-end housing. National land trust expert John Davis — from Vermont — was in Denver Tuesday helping advocates begin the work of launching just such a venture.

He and others, like Roger Lewis of Boulder, who for a time served as the head of the national land trust network, and Aaron Miripol, president of the Urban Land Conservancy, have already spent a couple decades using land trusts in Colorado. Here’s how it works.

The land trust — either a nonprofit or a housing authority — buys a single-family home at market prices. The trust then sells the house to a low-income buyer. The buyer must prove their income isn’t above limits, and ideally the limit is set somewhere to capture the working poor: those who make too much money to qualify for Section 8 or public housing, but not enough to ever come remotely close to being able to buy a house at the Denver metro area’s market prices.

Although the trust sells the home, it perpetually owns the land underneath. The new homeowner is “leasing” the land from the trust, making a monthly payment that covers the (discounted) property taxes and perhaps a small return for the trust so it can invest in more land in the future.

The homeowner, however, gets a portion of the increase in value of the home when they go to sell it again. That sale is restricted — under the terms of the land lease — to go to an income-qualified individual in the future at an affordable price. Homeowners still get a healthy return on their investment even though it’s capped and the house is maintained affordable forever.

Some trusts set the resale price based on a percent of future appraisals, ensuring growth occurs in line with the market and that a homeowner has an incentive to invest in home repairs and upgrades.

The single-family home example is the easiest to explain, but the same practice can be used for apartments, condos, townhouses, trailer parks, commercial buildings and community space.

If we’ve learned anything from decades of watching cities grow and contract, flounder and blossom, it’s that developers don’t often build housing for the poor when they social engineer the price points in their communities or buildings.

A land trust could take the millions of public dollars already being poured into “affordable housing” out of the hands of developers who are in pursuit of profit. Units can be targeted in neighborhoods with good schools, jobs, transportation and grocery stores, and to the income levels in need. A robust land trust could begin the work of ending concentrations of poverty and displacement of residents.

Denver is primed to begin a land trust now. A new property tax and fee on developers will raise

$15 million a year for affordable housing and the Colorado Department of Transportation is setting aside at least $2 million for affordable housing in communities impacted by the Interstate 70 expansion. Neither pot of money has a home, yet.

Skeptical that such social engineering is warranted? Consider this: the concept of an urban land trust for housing is the exact same as the concept for a conservation land trust that uses easements to permanently prevent development of privately owned land. In 20 years the state spent $1.1 billion on conservation easements, and that doesn’t even include the investments of cities and counties.

Is it such a stretch that public dollars could be used to create stewardship in our urban communities?