Responsible land stewardship is key to addressing social injustice, ever-widening wealth disparities, and mounting ecological crises in the United States and around the world. For over forty years, the Schumacher Center for a New Economics has been guided by this conviction and has advanced community land trusts (CLTs) as a powerful tool for transitioning land away from the speculative real estate market and into democratic stewardship by local communities.
The CLT model is now used in a wide range of rural and urban contexts to address affordable housing shortages, provide retail and manufacturing spaces for small businesses, expand farmland access for small farmers, and more.
But a critical barrier remains for CLTs: access to land. At the Schumacher Center we have come to recognize that there is not sufficient funding in philanthropy and government combined to purchase the land necessary to address the significant land access problem in the United States. That’s why we’re advancing a new strategy: promoting the donation of land by individuals, families, and institutions into CLTs, as part of a broader cultural shift toward equitable and sustainable land stewardship.
The goal of the Schumacher Center’s land gifting initiative is to make the donation of land to community land trusts as well-understood (by estate planners, lawyers, community foundations, and private individuals) as donating land to a conservation trust. And at the same time, to provide guidance to CLTs in seeking out and receiving land donations.
To learn more about the land gifting initiative, or offer feedback, please email: communitylandtrusts@centerforneweconomics.org.