When Shaya Schreiber started searching for a home in Madison, Wisconsin, her options were limited.
Student loans made the single mother of two ineligible for certain affordable housing and a market-rate home was beyond her reach. Then she found the Madison Area Community Land Trust.
The trust helped her purchase a three-bedroom house on the west side of the city. The organization paid $160,000 for the home and more for necessary improvements. Then Schreiber bought it from the trust for $135,000.
“I wouldn’t have been able to afford a house otherwise,” she said.
Community land trusts are a form of social housing where a nonprofit controls the land through a long-term ground lease and sells the home to low- to moderate-income buyers at a discount. Such arrangements often limit the value of the homes on resale, to ensure permanent affordability.
The Atlanta BeltLine has a new program to help nearby homeowners cover property-tax increases that likely result from the development. A welcome initiative, but “at least 10 years too late,” one advocate says.
The parcels are part of a larger effort to redevelop publicly owned vacant land throughout Atlanta.
According to planning commissioner Tim Keane, there are more than 1300 properties in the city’s name.
With most, however, Keane told council members Tuesday the city is unsure whether development is possible.
He said Atlanta is forming a task force, involving Invest Atlanta, the Atlanta Housing Authority and the Atlanta BeltLine, to review available parcels.
“To take them from the category of we’re not sure if it’s suitable for affordable housing into the category of absolutely suitable for affordable housing,” Keane said.
Michael Friedrich: Atlanta’s land trust shows how to create affordable housing
Nonprofits that buy land, build homes and sell below market rate are giving low-income homebuyers a chance
(Monica Garwood | The New York Times)
By Michael Friedrich | Special to The New York Times
| April 19, 2021, 3:43 p.m. | Updated: 4:08 p.m.
If anyone knows how gentrification has displaced Black working-class residents in Atlanta, it’s Makeisha Robey, a preschool teacher. During her two decades living in the city, she has watched affordable apartment complexes vanish as new developments arise and wealthier, white residents move in.
After being priced out of renting in a series of neighborhoods, Ms. Robey, a 43-year-old single mother, became determined to buy a house of her own. “Being able to build some kind of equity, being able to have this home base where your family can come visit,” Ms. Robey said, “I wanted that for myself.”