Opinion: NYC Needs Land and Housing for People, Not Profit

“As the city and state pour subsidies into for-profit development that fails to serve those most in need, Community Land Trusts (CLTs) offer a proven and powerful way to ensure lasting affordability, protect tenants, and begin to repair longstanding racial and economic injustices.”

From the South Bronx to East New York and beyond, communities are working to reclaim land for public good, take housing off the speculative market, and ensure permanent affordability—through community land trusts (CLTs) and neighborhood-led development. 

On Tuesday, the City Council held a historic hearing on the Community Land Act—a groundbreaking slate of bills backed by 150-plus groups that would enable CLTs and other nonprofits to dramatically expand the supply of deeply and permanently affordable housing in low-income and Black and brown neighborhoods. 

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More than 60 tenants and community groups testified in support of the bills, which include the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (Intro 902), giving CLTs and other qualified nonprofits a first right to purchase multifamily buildings when landlords sell, as well as Public Land for Public Good (Intro 78), requiring the city to prioritize CLTs and other nonprofits in public land dispositions. The package also includes a resolution calling on New York State to enact the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act. 

Together, these bills represent a bold shift toward community stewardship, equity, and long-term housing stability.

The need for such a shift couldn’t be clearer—or more urgent. Today, more than half of Black and Latino New Yorkers face housing insecurity, the result of decades of disinvestment, displacement, and speculative development. As the city and state pour subsidies into for-profit development that fails to serve those most in need, CLTs offer a proven and powerful way to ensure lasting affordability, protect tenants, and begin to repair longstanding racial and economic injustices.

Community land trusts are nonprofit, community-governed organizations that own and steward land for the public good. Rooted in civil rights movements, CLTs represent a powerful approach to taking land and housing off the speculative market, preventing displacement, and advancing community self-determination.

In recent years, the CLT movement has grown by leaps and bounds—from just two CLTs a decade ago to more than 20 today, operating in every borough. New York City’s CLTs now steward more than 1,200 permanently affordable rentals and shared equity cooperatives, as well as green spaces, affordable retail storefronts, community and commercial hubs, and more. 

Among the movement’s recent wins:

• Last year, the East New York CLT worked with organized tenants to purchase their 21-unit apartment building from a neglectful landlord—the first purchase of its kind by a CLT in New York City. The CLT is now coordinating with tenants to make long-overdue repairs and convert the building into a tenant-owned affordable cooperative. 

• After a decade of sustained advocacy in the South Bronx, the Mott Haven Port Morris Community Land Stewards secured rights in 2023 to transform an abandoned city-owned property into a Health, Education, and Arts (HEArts) Center. The CLT is also waging a campaign to ensure an accessible waterfront, in an environmental justice community that lacks healthy green spaces and where one in five children suffers from asthma.

• On a Queens peninsula devastated by Hurricane Sandy, the ReAL Edgemere CLT was selected to redevelop 119 vacant city lots for climate-resilient affordable homeownership and open space. The grassroots CLT is engaging community residents, many of whom live in public housing, through a robust and inclusive community planning process.

• Cooper Square CLT, New York’s veteran CLT formed in 1994, has long stewarded more than 320 deeply affordable apartments on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Now, the CLT is organizing tenants in two rent-stabilized buildings it rescued from tax foreclosure.

• Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition launched the Bronx CLT in 2020 to build shared wealth and collective governance over Bronx land. In addition to other community ownership wins, NWBCCC has secured commitments for four sites in the Belmont neighborhood that the CLT will preserve as permanently affordable cooperative housing. 

• Borne out of activist opposition to Amazon’s planned headquarters in Long Island City, Queens, the Western Queens CLT is currently focused on securing rights to the same site—a 600,000 square foot, publicly owned Dept. of Education building in Long Island City—to create manufacturing jobs, an immigrant street vendor commissary, and artist and community spaces. 

• This Land Is Ours CLT, formed in 2019, contributed to a successful bid to the NY Archdiocese that will develop a decommissioned religious property into more than 500 newly constructed affordable apartments. The CLT also is working to acquire and convert two city-owned parking lots to permanently affordable low-income apartments for families and seniors. 

Even with these and other gains, the city’s CLTs face steep barriers to scaling up—chief among them, access to land and capital. 

The Community Land Act would begin to change that. By giving CLTs a first right to purchase buildings when landlords sell, COPA would enable communities to intervene before speculators swoop in. Meanwhile, Public Land for Public Good would empower CLTs to transform vacant public land-–a precious resource—into truly affordable housing, vibrant community and green spaces, and more.

The City Council has taken initial steps to foster the growth of New York’s CLT movement, including by funding CLT education, organizing, and technical assistance in the city budget, since 2019. Groups have leveraged modest funding awards to deliver outsized results—building deep bases of support in their communities, acquiring and rehabilitating their first properties, partnering with mission-aligned developers, and much more. 

We now need New York City to go all in on its support for CLTs, through robust funding and policy support that enables them to seize opportunities to bring land and housing into community control. The Community Land Act is an essential step forward.

The city’s deepening housing crisis demands bold, systemic solutions. CLTs are already showing what’s possible—ensuring real affordability, preventing displacement, and putting land in community hands. Beyond simply building more, communities are organizing through CLTs to ensure land and housing are developed—and stewarded, over generations—for the public good.

Deyanira Del Río is executive director of New Economy Project. Matthew Shore is senior organizer at South Bronx Unite and a member of the Mott Haven-Port Morris Community Land Stewards. Brianna Soleyn is a board member of the East New York Community Land Trust.