Ana has lived at 248 Arlington in Brooklyn’s East New York neighborhood for greater than 50 years. (She requested for her final identify to be withheld to guard her privateness). Other than her first landlord, each one since “has been the worst.” Repairs weren’t achieved. Typically the constructing went days with out warmth or scorching water. The entrance door didn’t lock, so nonresidents would loiter within the foyer.
Ana, who has labored as a medical assistant and a phlebotomist, advised me that she assumed she’d at all times be caught shelling cash out to somebody who wouldn’t care for her residence. “And whereas they take lavish journeys and we pay their mortgage, what occurs to us?”
That every one modified in 2023, when a gaggle of tenants, in tandem with the East New York Neighborhood Land Belief (ENYCLT), started serving to residents to enhance circumstances within the constructing—and in the end to take management of it utterly.
In February 2024, after elevating nearly 1,000,000 {dollars} in personal capital and securing $700,000 in low-interest loans, ENYCLT and 248 Arlington’s tenants bought the constructing. “Now, as a substitute of preventing a slumlord, residents are working to construct one thing collectively,” Hannah Anousheh, the campaigns director for ENYCLT, mentioned.
The win is a part of a vibrant and rising motion throughout NYC’s 5 boroughs: of tenants, neighbors, and group land belief activists who refuse to be on the mercy of builders and landlords and as a substitute take possession of the sources of their communities. “Tenants themselves know greatest care for their very own houses,” Anousheh mentioned. The group land belief housing mannequin “proves which you could have deeply and completely inexpensive housing—protected and delightful housing—with out revenue being the motive.”
The first group land belief was developed within the Nineteen Sixties to serve Black sharecroppers in Georgia, and housing rights activists later tailored the mannequin for city communities. After a constructing is bought, the land beneath it’s transferred into the fingers of a group land belief. Sometimes, a CLT is guided by a board, normally composed of residents, group members, and housing consultants or activists, which commits to stewarding the land in perpetuity for the larger good. In the meantime, the constructing is managed by present residents, who can choose to turn into house owners or proceed renting.
Elise Goldin, the group land belief organizer on the New Economic system Challenge, defined that by imposing restrictions on how a lot revenue will be made out of future house gross sales and inserting revenue restrictions on who should buy or hire, this partnership ensures that each the land and the property are “completely faraway from the speculative market.”
The group land belief motion in New York Metropolis began gaining floor within the mid-2000s, when Image the Homeless, a company led by at the moment and previously unhoused New Yorkers, in addition to the New Economic system Challenge and different teams, started analyzing whether or not the mannequin might supply an answer to the housing hypothesis ravaging town. The method gained pace within the 2010s, with the founding of the New York Metropolis Neighborhood Land Initiative (NYCCLI), an alliance of housing and social justice teams working to advance group land trusts, in addition to a Metropolis Council–sponsored funding initiative, which has offered between $750,000 to $1.5 million yearly to assist the organizational growth of CLTs. In 2022, tenants within the Bronx had been capable of purchase their constructing and go co-op, a growth that was coated by The New York Instances and sparked an enormous progress in CLT organizing, together with the founding of NYCCLI’s Tenant Takeover Group.
Goldin advised me that in another cities, group land trusts have a tendency to consider their work as enabling a step towards residence possession. However “in New York Metropolis,” she mentioned, ‘it’s way more about achieve management of the place we reside and preventing in opposition to displacement—ensuring that land and housing is used for folks, not for revenue.”
Whereas only a few years in the past there was just one functioning group land belief within the metropolis, as we speak there are 20, 9 of which personal land or are within the means of acquiring it.
“Communities throughout New York are exhibiting what’s doable by means of CLTs, as they collectively steward land for completely inexpensive housing, group and inexperienced areas, and different urgent wants,” mentioned Goldin. “Not solely can CLTs develop throughout New York—they will pave the best way for brand spanking new fashions of growth that stabilize and construct wealth in communities, addressing the affordability disaster on the root.”
The ENYCLT was based in early 2020 by group leaders in Brownsville and East New York, who fearful that Covid-19 would worsen native actual property hypothesis and displacement. When Anousheh and her coworkers heard in regards to the circumstances at 248 Arlington, they collaborated with different teams, together with the HOPE Tenant Union, to carry rallies outdoors the constructing and strain the owner into making enhancements. In June 2023, after a door-knocking marketing campaign to tell residents in regards to the group and their goals, ENYCLT hosted a 248 Arlington tenant vote of their workplace simply across the nook from the constructing. The residents voted unanimously to proceed with an acquisition marketing campaign.
Ana mentioned she was curious in regards to the group land belief mannequin when she met Anousheh and the workers. However she was reluctant to get entangled. It was solely after ENYCLT was on the verge of buying the constructing that Ana modified her thoughts. The method had taken many months, and now that the acquisition was lastly on the horizon, residents had been getting nervous and somewhat fearful. Anousheh mentioned, “In that second, Ana stepped ahead as a pacesetter to deliver the sale to the end line.”
At a gathering, Anousheh defined that the constructing would now want a tenant council to assist lead the constructing by means of the renovations and co-op conversion course of. Ana and two different residents raised their fingers and provided up their time.
Because the ENYCLT was pursuing the acquisition of 248 Arlington, organizers on the Bronx CLT had been transferring ahead with their very own acquisition—an 18-unit residential (with two industrial models) house constructing within the West Bronx. The belief had reached out to residents at 785 East Tremont in summer season 2023 after it realized the constructing had been auctioned at a tax lien sale. “The tenants had no thought any of this had occurred,” recalled Todd Baker, the Neighborhood Growth Challenge Supervisor on the Northwest Bronx Neighborhood and Clergy Coalition, which runs the belief.
Via organizing, the Bronx CLT was capable of reverse the foreclosures, get the client to stroll away, and persuade town to droop the tax lien. Since then, they’ve supported the tenants in gaining management over the constructing, which has enabled them to make repairs, rent a brilliant, pursue a intestine renovation, and rent a personal administration firm, mentioned Baker. The tenants just lately agreed to affix the Bronx CLT and can search to finish a failed co-op conversion that was began about three a long time in the past.
Over the previous few years, and particularly because the buy of 248 Arlington, increasingly tenants are collaborating with group land trusts in hopes of gaining management over their houses. Goldin mentioned that about 15 buildings are working with group land trusts towards the acquisition of their houses, together with in buildings owned by Daniel Ohebshalom, as soon as dubbed New York Metropolis’s “worst landlord” by New York Metropolis’s Public Advocate. Some CLTs in New York Metropolis are even working at growing empty tons to construct really inexpensive housing from scratch.
The ReAL Edgemere CLT was born in 2021, after Hurricane Sandy devastated the Rockaways. After conducting a sequence of group workshops about housing wants and local weather resilience, the belief secured permission from town to develop housing and retail properties on vacant land close to Norton Ave, alongside Jamaica Bay. (The CLT had additionally deliberate on constructing a group park that mitigates the affect of local weather change however needed to put that plan on maintain when Trump scrapped the funding stream). It’s now working with a growth companion to construct 32 one-to-three-family houses, and in doing so set up inexpensive housing on a considerable portion of the vacant plots within the neighborhood. “Possibly 20 years in the past, town would have bought off the land to no matter developer was ,” one ReAL Edgemere CLT member advised me. As a substitute, group members are hiring companies to develop the land in response to their wants. “CLTs are such an incredible reply to the need to have actual company over how growth is continuing.”
Preventing in opposition to a landlord for repairs or to acquire group management over a property is troublesome—however a brand new type of organizing problem presents itself as soon as a constructing or tract of land is acquired, Anousheh advised me: “It’s actually exhausting to modify from preventing a slumlord to constructing one thing collectively.”
The work “isn’t all rainbows and butterflies,” Anousheh mentioned. Since gaining management of 248 Arlington, the ENYCLT has invested in battle mediation and helping neighbors with lengthy histories of dwelling alongside one another to rebuild belief. “That’s one of many challenges—simply coping with sure folks within the constructing, the personalities and politics,” Ana mentioned. “Once you reside in the identical place—all proper, completely different flats, however you reside in the identical place, you need to be one unit.”
There are additionally different challenges throughout the group land belief motion, together with stability the inherent pressure between sustaining affordability and giving poor households and folks of coloration the chance to generate fairness. For Ana, a part of the draw of proudly owning her unit was the likelihood to go it alongside to her daughter and create generational wealth. “I needed one thing to go onto my daughter.” But because the land underneath 248 Arlington is owned by the belief, the group will set higher limits on resale worth and the revenue of potential patrons.
On the Cooper Sq. Neighborhood Land Belief, the oldest repeatedly working housing CLT in New York Metropolis, house owners are barred from promoting their house for any greater than they purchased it for, plus inflation—which, in 2025, was simply $1,800. In consequence, the CLT permits fast entry to residence possession for even the poorest New Yorkers. The final six folks welcomed into Cooper Sq. flats got here straight from Division of Homeless Providers shelters, mentioned Dave Powell, the manager director of Legacies of Cooper Sq. Unido, the managing nonprofit for the buildings.
Ana understands and approves that the fairness in her house will likely be restricted to take care of completely affordability—although maybe not as a lot as at Cooper Sq.. The query is how to attract that line, although each group land belief that I spoke with confused there’s no common reply. “I wouldn’t ever assume that there’s a one-size-fits-all method or that what we did is acceptable for each group,” mentioned Powell, who added that common hire management and eviction protections in all probability would have the best affect in any given metropolis.
Offering political schooling to tenants makes an enormous distinction, mentioned ENYCLT and different organizations. Todd Baker of the Bronx CLT mentioned that a part of nurturing a relationship with constructing residents entails serving to them reply the query of fairness: “It’s actually, actually difficult to get folks to let go of the deeply ingrained individualist perception within the American dream of family wealth achievement by means of homeownership.”
Nonetheless, it’s doable to push residents to suppose in another way. “What’s beneath particular person wealth?” he requested. “You’re attempting to get at prosperity. You’re attempting to get at stability. You’re attempting to get at high quality of life. And people are issues that may also be achieved by means of group wealth.”
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Rally in assist of the Neighborhood Land Act in New York Metropolis in June 2025.(Aviva Stahl)
Within the 18 months since 248 Arlington was bought, circumstances have improved—a brand new digital camera system is up and working, the entrance entrance locks have been modified, the boiler has been repaired, many pipes have been changed, and emergency repairs have been accomplished within the constructing’s 20 models. The residents are finalizing plans to intestine and renovate the constructing, and can then start the method of changing to a co-op.
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Anousheh mentioned that the ENYCLT is specializing in organizing tenants in multi-unit household houses being focused by speculators, who both flip the properties or evict the tenants and hire them out for considerably extra. Their goal is to determine significantly unhealthy actors and construct portfolio-wide tenant unions that may stand as much as them.
Nowadays, Ana is a fierce organizer, each in 248 Arlington and the group land belief motion as an entire. This spring, she went door-knocking to let neighbors know in regards to the tax lien sale. She spoke in Albany at a rally to push for the passage of the Tenant Alternative to Buy Act, which might give tenants a primary alternative to purchase their buildings when landlords determine to promote. She’s additionally pushing the New York Metropolis Council to go a slate of payments, often known as the Neighborhood Land Act, that may assist switch extra land and property into the fingers of group land trusts.
A kind of payments, the Neighborhood Alternative to Buy Act (COPA), would give CLTs and different nonprofits a primary proper to buy multifamily buildings when a landlord decides to promote. The invoice would “make an unlimited distinction,” mentioned Goldin, by giving tenants and CLTs a seat on the desk to barter earlier than buildings are positioned on the open market. Advocates say they’re one council member away from a supermajority on COPA, added Goldin, and hope to safe the extra vote within the coming weeks. If COPA passes, the expansion of CLT organizing in NYC might speed up even additional. “Proper now what we’re doing (in our constructing) is spreading to different neighborhoods, to different boroughs,” Ana advised me. “And never solely did it occur at 248 Arlington. It may possibly occur wherever.”
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Aviva Stahl
Aviva Stahl is an award-winning investigative journalist whose reporting has appeared in The New York Instances, The Guardian, Buzzfeed Information, and The Nation. Her present work focuses on how politics and energy form health-care entry behind bars. She’s additionally a registered nurse.
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