The Magic of '1 = 3'
CommonSpace Community Land Trust pioneers a new approach to affordable housing
When the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors doled out $7.14 million in affordable housing grants in May, the recipients were, for the most part, well-known organizations, like West County Community Services, Burbank Housing, and Social Advocates for Youth.
But way at the bottom of the list was a small, little-known group called CommonSpace Community Land Trust. This organization, which is located just south of Sebastopol, is pioneering a new, small-scale approach to affordable housing that takes advantage of recent changes in state law designed to increase the number of homes being built in California each year.
Darryl Berlin, the group’s executive director, explained how a land trust works: “The structure of a community land trust is that the land is held in trust by a 501(c)3 that is member-based, and then through a 99-year ground lease, individuals, families and cooperatives can purchase the improvements—the improvements in this case being the homes or businesses on the property. So it basically takes land out of the speculative market by the community holding it in trust.”
Berlin said the concept of a community land trust grew out of the civil rights movement of the 1960s as a way to help Black Southerners gain political power through owning property.
“African Americans who started to try to become more politically active were finding that they were getting redlined or getting kicked off properties and were basically finding it very difficult to find political power without security of land. So a number of African Americans coming out of a couple of different civil rights movements did a tour of different land reform movements throughout the world,” he said. “They went to India to look at the Gramin movement and went to Israel to study the Kibutz movement, and then they came back and tailored what they thought was a nice balance of land reform that they could support. Again, it was about gaining power by gaining security and land.”
“The first community land trust in the United States was called New Communities, and at the time it was one of the biggest black-owned properties in the country– 4,000 acres,” he said.
The movement grew from there.
“Today, there are about 30 community land trusts here in California. There's over 300 across the US, and they're gaining more and more acknowledgement and more and more partnerships with local municipalities.”
How changes in state housing law can turn one house into three (or more)
Community land trusts use a number of models to create affordable housing, but Commonspace Land Trust is pushing a model it calls “1=3,” which was made possible by recent changes in state housing laws.
In an attempt to create more affordable housing, the state legislature passed a slew of new laws over the last few years, the most significant of which are AB 68 and SB 9.
AB 68 allows homeowners to add two more units – an ADU and a JADU (Junior Accessory Dwelling Unit) on almost any residential lot. This basically allows almost any single family property in the state to become a tri-plex.
SB 9 allows homeowners to subdivide residential properties in urban areas (like Sebastopol) and also in some semi-rural, unincorporated, “urbanized” areas, like Forestville and Graton.
Berlin is using these laws to turn formerly single-family residences into three units - a main house, an ADU, and a JADU.
“One of our housing programs is to take single-family-zoned properties—that's the one unit per property—and now, by right in California state law, you can have up to three units.”
The county awarded CommonSpace Community Land Trust nearly $120,000 to complete the conversion of the land trust property in south Sebastopol into three affordable housing units. (The property was donated to the nonprofit in 2017, the year the organization started.)
Berlin said this “1=3” approach is a more affordable way to create affordable housing.
“We've run the numbers and to create a new affordable unit of housing in Sonoma County is about $750,000. It's just scary how much it costs to build and how much new construction is and that it could take three to five years easily. But if we could do two of these projects a year—that's six units a year, and maybe over three to five years. that's 30 units. It's kind of like thinking about a 30-unit development, but done incrementally. We have run the numbers, and we think we can deliver a housing unit for closer to $350,000 to $400,000.”
In other words, for just half the cost of traditional new-construction affordable housing.
These units are then made available to lower-income residents who couldn’t normally afford a house in Sonoma County.
“One important thing about affordable housing and community land trust housing is you have to be eligible,” Berlin said. “You have to fit in certain requirements of how much income you make. This is under the Community Development Commission rule and it's actually part of our charter as a nonprofit: we have to provide housing for for very-low to low-income people, sometimes moderate income.” (See the income limits for Sonoma County here.)
Right now, Commonspace Community Land Trust only owns one property—the one where its office is located in south Sebastopol—but it’s actively seeking other properties. If you’re interested in turning your property into a land trust property or if you’d like to become a member of the land trust, reach them at commonspaceclt@gmail.com.
Read more about CommonSpace Community Land Trust here.