AMHERST COMMUNITY LAND TRUST CELEBRATES FIFTH ANNIVERSARY

By Maura Keene and Maurianne Adams

The Amherst Community Land Trust (ACLT) celebrated its fifth anniversary on Sunday, August 11, with a gathering at the Mill River Recreation Area. Members, friends, residents, and a puppy enjoyed each other’s company and the generous offerings of food and treats, with a birthday cake baked for the occasion by one of the board members.  

ACLT was founded in Amherst in 2014 as a private, charitable non-profit to help address the shortage of affordable homes in Amherst, and to also  strengthen and stabilize year-round family neighborhoods. ACLT provides affordability by acquiring funding to purchase and hold the land  beneath a house. The house itself is simultaneously purchased by someone who qualifies as low- or middle-income. ACLT gives the homeowner a 99-year renewable lease on the land. ACLT’s  ownership of the land substantially reduces the total sale price of a residential property, at times by as much as half, thus making the house itself affordable for low- or moderate-income families. 

If or when the homeowners wish to sell, an affordable resale calculation and agreement  is used.  Homeowners sign a ground lease with the community land trust, by which they agree to the terms of resale, based on an established formula deriving from the original purchase price of the house. This practice  helps to keep the house affordable for the next generation of qualified buyers, regardless of spikes in the housing market. In effect, the homebuyer is exchanging the benefit of purchasing a home in Amherst affordably for the possibility of benefiting from a rising market. Many owners are glad to do so, and are also  happy to see their houses remain affordable, even after they sell and leave Amherst. The perpetual affordability is maintained by the affordable resale requirement, and by ACLT’s continued stewardship of the land.

The use of community land trusts to provide affordable homeownership is a well-established practice in the U.S. There is an international network, as well as a local network of community land trusts, including many in Massachusetts.  The community land trusts support each other’s efforts to provide quality, affordable, owner-occupied homes, including sharing examples of land leases and homeowner agreements. The community land trust model differs from other land trusts, because it focuses on affordable housing. Affordable home ownership is achieved through the shared ownership of houses and the land they sit on, as described above.  ACLT focuses on making homes affordable in existing Amherst neighborhoods with the related goal of sustaining  neighborhoods that might otherwise become unaffordable based on rising market rates. Some programs are available only to first time home buyers. 

“Affordability” has been defined by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and is based on annually recalculated levels of income and family size.  The “area median income” (AMI) is established annually for the Amherst-Springfield area.  Different funding agencies require different AMI percentages to qualify,  so that low- or middle-income house purchasers’ incomes can range from 30 to 120 percent of the AMI for Amherst, a town with an unusually expensive housing market.

Membership in ACLT is open to all Amherst residents (annual dues for 2019 are $15 per person). The volunteer board of directors is composed of one-third each of homeowners, community and public representatives. . This governance structure enables all ACLT members, which includes those in ACLT homes, to participate directly in decisions. Membership fees and donations are tax-deductible.  

Although only five years old, the ACLT has had several major achievements. It used Community Preservation Act (CPA) and Interfaith Housing funds in 2015 to purchase land from the North Amherst Community Farm and partnered with Habitat for Humanity to build a duplex on North Pleasant Street, now occupied by two families. Habitat vetted candidates, held a lottery, identified new owners (winners of the lottery), and constructed the building. This duplex represents ACLT’s first two holdings.

 ACLT currently has CPA funding to provide $125,000 each for the land under two Amherst homes (total $250,000 allocation), thus making two Amherst homes permanently affordable for qualified first-time home buyers. Qualified homebuyers will be vetted by Valley Community Development Corporation and then chosen by lottery.

In  another approach, several ACLT homeowners are planning to donate their properties to ACLT during their lifetimes or as part of their estate plans. They or their estates will receive tax deductions for permanently donating land to the ACLT and providing for affordable sale of their homes through ACLT. These homeowners realize that they themselves would not, in 2019, be able to afford the homes they enjoy and they want that opportunity to be available to others. The Habitat-built duplex, the two CPA-funded first-time home purchases, and anticipated  four donated properties suggest that perhaps, when ACLT celebrates its tenth birthday, it will have provided at least eight or more affordable homes for low- and middle-income Amherst families.  

This year, the ACLT organized and hosted the first-ever Massachusetts Community Land Trust conference, with presentations from Andover CLT, Berkshire CLT in the Southern Berkshires, Bread & Roses CLT (Lawrence), Equity Trust (Amherst) , Valley CLT (Greenfield), and Worcester Common Ground, followed by an afternoon of discussion, problem-solving, and mutual support. The groups will continue this collaboration.

For more information, contact mailto:amherstcommunitylandtrust@gmail.com  or visit www.amherstcommunitylandtrust.org.