Community Land Trusts: The Past and Future of a Movement

Dayton’s Africana Elder’s Council drumming, dancing, and celebrating on the Gem City Market balcony for the Blessed Are Those Who Struggle Awards Ceremony on Juneteenth 2021. Photo Credit: Dayton Unified Power

This article is from the Summer 2022 Agraria Journal.

By Rose Hardesty

West Dayton (Ohio) has a rich history of Black-owned businesses and real estate, but decades of disinvestment, redlining, and predatory loan policies have made it challenging for current residents to own or develop property. Despite these obstacles, community members and organizers are working to improve living conditions, address food apartheid, and advance racial justice in the neighborhood. A major victory was reached in 2021 with the opening of Gem City Market, a worker- and community-owned full-service grocery store. In addition to fresh foods, the Market offers cooking classes, a community room, and a mini health clinic.

Organizers are not stopping here. One of the concerns surrounding Gem City Market and related projects is that they will make the neighborhood more attractive to outside developers and lead to gentrification, pushing out long-term residents. To get ahead of this threat, organizers formed Unified Power, a Community Land Trust (CLT) that aims to keep residents in the neighborhood by creating affordable housing and pathways to property ownership. Originally a project of Co-op Dayton, Unified Power has become an independent nonprofit, now known as Dayton Unified Power, with a community board and multiple ongoing projects.

They are currently developing a 25-unit apartment complex on Salem Avenue as a real estate cooperative. Residents will be able to invest in the cooperative and have a pathway toward ownership at the Salem Avenue complex, and eventually at other properties Unified Power is planning to acquire.

“Our major goal is land acquisition in scattered sites,” said Kenya Baker, executive director of Dayton Unified Power. To that end they are planning to launch capital and membership campaigns. “Our goal is to ensure individuals who have lived in the area for three generations aren’t displaced by gentrification,” said Baker.

A land trust is an entity, often a nonprofit, which conserves land for specific uses—natural resource protection, preservation of historical or cultural sites, cooperative farming, permanently affordable housing, or intentional community. The land is held in a trust, and leased to tenants for up to 99 years.

Agraria’s involvement with land trusts extends back to 1937, when our founder Arthur E. Morgan secured financing to purchase 1,200 acres of land near Asheville, North Carolina. He formed a nonprofit corporation to hold the land and established the Celo Community. The early community mostly consisted of Quakers and conscientious objectors to World War II and remains an active, democratically held land trust today. Over the decades Agraria has continued to partner with intentional communities, land trusts, and aligned organizations. Today, we hold land on our 138-acre farm to train and incubate beginning farmers, as well as a 40-acre intentional community near Yellow Springs called the Vale.

Community Land Trusts in their modern form emerged from the civil rights movement in the late 1960s. Unlike white-dominated communities that had used land trust models in the past, this new model was conceived as a political strategy embedded in the national conversation and movement for racial justice. Community Land Trusts allowed Black families to own land, generate wealth, organize, and exercise their legal voting rights without facing eviction. In 1970, real estate broker Slater King, Charles and Shirley Sherodd, and other Black leaders came together to purchase 5,735 acres of land in Georgia to establish New Communities, Inc. Located on a former plantation, it became the largest tract of Black-owned land in the United States.

New Communities faced many challenges. Despite some federal support for developing a community on the land, local government and officials would not allow houses to be built. White residents from the surrounding areas sabotaged farming equipment and activities and harassed members. Even with all of this opposition, occupants successfully farmed the land, created buying and selling cooperatives, and established a market that became well known for specialty products.

After two years of drought — and denial of USDA loans that provided emergency aid and other financing to local white farmers — New Communities lost their land in 1985. Harassment, sabotage, and USDA discrimination were common problems for Black farmers, leading to the loss of 90% of Black owned farms since 1920. In 1997, some remaining members of New Communities joined a class action lawsuit brought by Black farmers over racial discrimination in USDA programs. Over a decade later the suit was settled for $12 million, and the surviving members of the trailblazing Community Land Trust established a new property in Georgia to support Black farmers.

Today organizations such as The Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust, Black Family Land Trust Inc., Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and many others leverage the CLT model to reclaim and protect land for Black, Indigenous and people of color, and advance racial justice initiatives. CLTs dedicated to housing justice have also expanded. A 2019 Lincoln Institute of Land Policy study found that homes held in Community Land Trusts are increasingly allowing BIPOC families to achieve financial security and generate wealth (Wang, Ruoniu, et al.).

Dayton Unified Power follows this tradition and works to promote racial justice on multiple fronts. They partner with multiple community groups and organizations in Dayton such as Sister Baby Solutions, Operation G.O.O.D., and the Black Panther Party of Dayton to do neighborhood clean ups, address areas of blight, and establish community gardens. Unified Power is one of the organizers of the annual African Liberation Day celebration in Dayton, which attracts 300–500 attendees a year. They are also collaborating with Know4Life and EOL Dayton to offer youth programming. These programs, titled “Liberation Generation Through Academic Enrichment,” focus on STEM, health/wellness and nutrition, theater and liberal arts, mental health, and physical activity.

“Community engagement is the key,” says Baker. You can learn more about Dayton Unified Power and get involved by contacting Kenya Baker at daytonunifiedpower@gmail.com.

Rose Hardesty is Grants Manager for Agraria.

Click here read the full Summer 2022 issue of the Agraria Journal.