Jul 23 2013
BY JOHN DAVIS: One of many effects of the Great Recession has been a shift in public policy and nonprofit programming from a focus on helping lower-income families “move to opportunity” to a focus on helping renters and homeowners to keep what they’ve already got. But there is nothing funny about families being stuck in housing that doesn’t meet their needs, either because it provides too little or demands too much.
May 6 2013
BY JOHN DAVIS: As the housing market has begun its slow recovery, major banks have been steadily withdrawing support and withholding capital from shared equity homeownership. It’s as if the entire sector had to be taught a lesson in humility after out-performing the bankers’ favored form of tenure.
Aug 27 2012
BY JOHN DAVIS: For many people, in many places, shared equity homeownership is simply a sweeter deal and safer investment than buying a home on the open market. Yet few of us who work with community land trusts (CLTs), limited equity cooperatives (LECs), or inclusionary housing programs mandating long-term affordability are accustomed to trumpeting the superiority of the housing we provide.
Jun 28 2012
BY GREG ROSENBERG: I remember a point I reached in my work a year and a half ago where I felt like I was spending just as much time measuring my performance as I was actually performing. I was filling out elaborately detailed tree structures with measurable performance targets. I was splitting each 15 minutes of my time into 16 different program categories.
Roots&Branches is now part of the Center for Community Land Trust Innovation: www.cltweb.org. We’re migrating much of the content from Roots&Branches to this new website — and as such, Roots&Branches will go into archival mode.
CONTACT: Please feel free to email Greg Rosenberg with any questions you have at greg@gregrosenberg.com.
Aug 19 2013
Toward A Loud and Proud CLT Movement
BY GREG ROSENBERG: This morning I taught what was probably my millionth class on community land trusts—but this one was different. This was a course for the Democracy Convention, the second national gathering of the U.S. democracy movement in Madison, Wis. For a change, the audience was way more radical than I was. And as I worked my way through a presentation on the division of property ownership, housing subsidies, and methods to minimize foreclosure rates, it dawned on me how much the language I used had changed over the years.
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