
A Texas nonprofit experiments with land trusts, for affordable housing - jseliger
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2020/04/community-land-trust-houston-texas/609790/
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ikeboy
The article compares this to Georgism, but the comparison seems misplaced.

The point of a land value tax is not to make housing more affordable, but to
ensure land goes towards the most productive use. If LVT was implemented along
with zoning reform, housing would indeed become far more affordable because
lots of more housing would be built. But a government subsidy for lower income
families to pay below market land rent is a very different policy and has none
of the benefits of LVT.

~~~
outlace
Is there any example of a LVT anywhere in the US or even outside the US?

~~~
Apocryphon
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax#Implementation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax#Implementation)

~~~
wil421
Interesting read about Fairhope, Alabama and Mobile Bay jubilees.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Bay_jubilee](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Bay_jubilee)

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matchbok
All of these programs are band-aids at best. Most, like this, will force
middle class rents even higher, putting more strain on the system.

The causes of ever-increasing rent are clear, but unpopular to address. We
need more transit and living opportunities in healthy, job-rich areas so that
100 people aren't competing for a tiny apartment. Sadly, any movement to do so
is attacked as "gentrification" or nonsense about "luxury" apartments. So,
nothing gets done and people continue to get priced out. :/

~~~
L_Rahman
The prime opponents to new housing construction aren't people who complain
about gentrification or luxury housing. Those groups don't have that much
political power. The proof for this lies in the fact that most new housing
construction in American cities takes place in lower to middle income
neighborhoods.

The opponents to transit and living construction tend to be people who
complain about "other people" moving in, "my property values", and
"neighborhood character".

We are on the same side of this issue, I simply urge you to direct your anger
at more appropriate targets :)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _The opponents to transit and living construction tend to be people who
> complain about "other people" moving in, "my property values", and
> "neighborhood character"._

I have a feeling that "house as a place to live" is fundamentally incompatible
with "house as an investment".

~~~
zyx321
It's not literally about property values.

It's about class, and to a lesser degree race. If there was good public
transit, then 'inner city' people who can't afford owning a car could come and
go freely. The suburban middle class don't want anything to do with 'those
people'.

~~~
L_Rahman
Exactly! This is why I chose to put "property values" in quotes. While it is
something that they think about, it's mostly about excluding people they have
prejudices against.

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dcole2929
This sounds like a really nice idea that is 20 years away from being a
horrific disenfranchising one. Owning the land is an important piece of wealth
transfer from generation to generation. This reminds me of the situation in NC
and other parts of the south where minority communities are starting to lose
control of the land there families due to a bunch of loop holes. There the
problem is that due to lack of paper trails ownership is murky and often
reverts back to the city who then sells it away to the highest bidder (often
developers who displace the people who have been there). What happens 20 - 30
years from now when this non profit has shuttered and the land is now owned by
some random bank? It's great that the land lease is transferable to heirs but
this just has all the makings of a looming disasters

~~~
badrabbit
99 year leases are common in many countries. You still get equity and you can
still sell the house. If you don't sell before the lease is up and they don't
renew the lease, they still need to compensate for the value of the house
before kicking you out.

~~~
subpixel
There is a cap on what you can resell the house for, so this is not a way to
get rich in real estate.

It's interesting how many commenters seem to think that renders this model
ineffective.

"If nobody can get rich in this game, nobody should play" is an odd way to
look at this program, which is about helping renters graduate to home
ownership while protecting their community from speculative capital.

~~~
badrabbit
I agree that real estate shouldn't enable a "get rich easy" scheme,it maligns
incentives of everyone involved.

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finder83
Interesting concept, I'm not entirely sure what I think of it. Land ownership
interests me a lot more than homeownership, and undeveloped land has its own
value in a community. That's partly why we bought our house on two acres in a
small community. A house surrounded by forests or a lake or even just farmland
is more desirable to me than more dense housing, so I don't entirely
understand Henry George's point. I would much rather live on land that I could
do things with, such as farm, or hunt, or build things, and be "out in the
country".

What happens after the 99-year ground lease is up? Are the house and land then
sold together on the open market?

~~~
dcolkitt
While it's nice to be around idyllic nature, it comes at the cost of being
further away from other humans. There's a reason economic productivity rises
by roughly 10% every time a city doubles in size.

More people, means more innovations. Higher density leads to a more rapid
spread of new ideas and best practices. Workers, entrepreneurs and investors
can rapidly reconfigure to seize opportunities. Less density means you're more
likely to fall into stagnation, as the one local employer in commute distance
slowly circles the drains.

City life comes with significantly better living standards. What you lose in
yard space you make up with much higher salaries, better healthcare and
education, and more varied cultural options. To a large extent country living
is only idyllic because of the technological exports made by high productivity
city-dwellers.

I agree that there's a deep human need to connect with nature. But the
solution isn't to try to give every man is his own personal Nottingham forest
on his property. It's to build high-quality parks and nature reserves, and
good transit so people can easily access these amenities.

~~~
DeathArrow
There are some downsides:

Overcrowding, traffic jams, very high housing prices, high prices for food and
everything else. Yes, you earn more, but you pay more for living in smaller
apartments, so the standard of live isn't guaranteed to be improved.

Here's a comparison from Numbeo: You would need around 3,630.58$ in Austin, TX
to maintain the same standard of life that you can have with 8,100.00$ in New
York, NY. [https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=United+States&city1=New+York%2C+NY&city2=Austin%2C+TX)

I think that moderation is best, and there probably are ranges of population
density which are the best. Urban sprawl is bad, as is overcrowding in the
city center.

In some parts of the world, you can live in a rural area and travel to work by
fast trains, so you can have your cake and eat it, too.

~~~
dcolkitt
I mostly agree with what you're saying. But high housing costs are largely a
result of policies designed to intentionally restrict supply. Not necessarily
density itself.

As a counterfactual to the NIMBY West, Tokyo has very high density but
surprisingly affordable housing because it places few restrictions on building
and land use.

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wahern
> Many people still balk at the investment required by a CLT — in Houston, the
> city puts in roughly $105,000 per home.

I wonder why $105,000. Looking at Zillow a quarter acre of land in the Acres
Home area sells for ~$50-$75,000, and substantially less if you buy a bigger
lot. And per the article, banks are providing home mortgages, thus
substantially financing construction. Unless they're selling the houses for
significantly less than the cost of construction, it doesn't make sense. Even
if you had to heavily subsidize risk premium on the mortgage, a $105,000
expense per home seems exorbitant and not sustainable.[1]

I bet costs could come way down if there was some serious money put behind a
project like this to scale it up. Singapore, Hong Kong, and other places
around the world (often former British colonies, because of smart U.K. housing
policies immediately before decolonization) build affordable housing using
similar schemes (99-year property lease, transfer covenants, etc), but on a
much larger scale. San Francisco could (and should) do this, rather than spend
years negotiating over developer exactions for every tiny project.

[1] It would make more sense if most of that $105,000 was recovered on the
first sale. But the article calls it a "subsidy", and other context suggests
the $105,000 isn't directly recovered.

~~~
thebradbain
I agree that $105,000 is too high for the area from a cost point of view, but
when compared to California’s affordable housing up front capital cost, it
looks much more promising ($1 million per unit in this, extreme but
unfortunately not too extreme for this state, case):
[https://www.bisnow.com/los-angeles/news/affordable-
housing/a...](https://www.bisnow.com/los-angeles/news/affordable-
housing/affordable-housing-in-california-could-cost-1m-per-unit-according-to-
la-times-study-103838#ath)

At that rate, Houston metro could get 100 homes for the same price it takes to
produce 10 affordable homes in the San Diego metro area!

~~~
cat199
no expert in the topic, but this comparison is only meaningful if compared to
the local cost per unit of raw land - land prices in SD metro are probably way
higher, esp. compared to this particular part of houston

won't try to categorize - take a streetview tour:

[https://goo.gl/maps/9sEyR9YRRR2EDFND8](https://goo.gl/maps/9sEyR9YRRR2EDFND8)

what is clear is that this area is mostly empty fields or pretty poor, with
vastly more expensive gentrifying houses popping up in the greenspace.

a large area land trust can buy large chunks, preventing speculation on the
greenspace from completely removing the existing community

subsequently, since community members are part of the trust, they would
defacto own all of the local land, guarding against future speculation and
ensuring a like-minded voting block w/r/t local property tax policy (which is
huge in TX and in practice what serves as the state income tax)

so to me the topic is basically like rent control for real estate.

whether or not this is the state's business is another topic - interesting
that our free market, 'classless' republic is in effect building up a
hereditary landowning class though.

~~~
imtringued
I'm not sure how this is rent control for real estate. The policy only applies
to land that the government owns.

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mleonhard
20% of housing units in Denmark are co-operative owned. See sidebar at
[https://www.housinginternational.coop/co-
ops/denmark/](https://www.housinginternational.coop/co-ops/denmark/)

How Danish housing cooperatives work (6-min whiteboard video):
[http://stories.coop/stories/kab-how-cooperative-housing-
work...](http://stories.coop/stories/kab-how-cooperative-housing-works-in-
denmark/)

This is a model for affordable housing that really works.

~~~
sien
That's interesting.

However, Danes spend the second highest proportion of income on housing in the
OECD after Finns.

See the chart on page 2.

[http://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC1-1-Housing-related-
expendi...](http://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC1-1-Housing-related-expenditure-
of-households.pdf)

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kyleee
So it sounds like these trusts get favorable tax treatment too from a property
tax perspective? Seems like that will be a sticking point if these gain
popularity as it could suppress property tax revenue

~~~
gpanders
This is a good point, and as long as public schools are funded from property
taxes I think this will continue to be a problem.

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hash872
Big disagree with this concept. If the article is accurate, it prevents Regina
Daniels or any other beneficiaries from accumulating significant wealth in the
the property, because resale (or presumably home equity loan) values are
capped. So what does she get out of it? More stability for her family and a
capped mortgage payment every month, yes, but no real chance to actually
accumulate wealth. It's basically blocking the way in which the poor can join
the middle class (yes I think index funds are a better investment than real
estate, but I think owning your own home is perfectly fine for a lower income
family).

A better idea would be to deregulate housing and let developers build condos
there, and she could buy one (or I'd be totally fine with government
assistance in her buying one!) Way more efficient use of the land, and she
could accumulate real wealth that way

~~~
tree3
> it prevents... accumulating significant wealth in the the property

That's the entire point- to make housing affordable, not to make housing a
investment.

~~~
hash872
That may be the point of the program, I'm saying I don't think it's a very
good point. Owning is basically always more expensive than renting, there's
taxes, insurance, endless maintenance etc.

As I said in my original comment, I'm sure it gives her family more stability,
but wealth accumulation via government-sponsored real estate ownership is
literally a huge part of why white families have more than African America
ones in this country. I think this program is missing the forest for the trees

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _wealth accumulation via government-sponsored real estate ownership is
> literally a huge part of why white families have more than African America
> ones in this country_

There surely must be a point in which we realize a course of action is wrong
and abandon it, instead of perpetuating it to be "fair" to those who joined
later?

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adelHBN
Houston's land trust seems to be managed by the city government. So is it
draining government coffers? Not sure how this works.

San Francisco has a land trust (I only know of one). But it's community-based
and owned. Here's the site: [https://sfclt.org/](https://sfclt.org/)

There are other trusts as well, such as farming trust: [https://malt.org/why-
we-protect-farmland/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI...](https://malt.org/why-we-protect-
farmland/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI2saXr4Dp6AIVj_5kCh0RQw_BEAAYASAAEgJ99vD_BwE)

~~~
wahern
Another alternative that used to be popular in many American cities are coops.
Instead of buying property you buy shares in a corporation which give you the
right to occupy a unit. The large, low-rise apartment complex on Geary Blvd
across the street from Japantown is a coop.

Regarding the effect of 99-year property leases on home prices, there's a
condominium tower at 946 Stockton St/950 Washington St in Chinatown that has a
99-year ground lease (expiring in 2069, I believe).

Units in both developments regularly sell for a fraction (~ 1/3 to 1/2, IIRC)
of comparable units in the area. You'd have to know the details of the
shareholder rights (coop) or accession rights[1] (ground lease) to know how
the prices compare to freeholds or rentals, but it shows how alternatives
aren't new, just merely coming back into fashion.

[1] That is, whether ownership of the tower transfers to the landlord without
any renumeration for the improvement; whether the condominium owners have a
renewal option, etc.

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brundolf
I don't know much about this subject but it sounds like a really cool idea. We
might need some of this in Austin.

~~~
subpixel
The article mentions that Austin has two CLTs.

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markdown
Relevant:
[http://existentialcomics.com/comic/337](http://existentialcomics.com/comic/337)

And don't skip the article below the comic.

