The Spark: When Communities Own the Land, Housing Stays Affordable

Welcome back to The Spark, our monthly celebration of how people just like you are creating positive change, one meaningful step at a time. The Spark is generously supported by Laura Rice. Sign up to Reasons to be Cheerful’s weekly newsletter  here  and you’ll get The Spark in your inbox at the start of each month. In this issue The power of community land trusts Cool roofs, cooler homes The perks of intergenerational roommates A community takes back its land In 2019, Nachand Trabue began noticing investors’ “We buy houses” signs all over her corner of Louisville, Kentucky. A historically Black neighborhood since the Civil War, Smoketown has deep roots and a long, proud past — including the city’s first Black library and first Black dentist, and as the birthplace of Muhammed Ali. But increasingly, long-term residents were getting priced out of their own community. For those like Trabue, a fourth-generation resident who remembered Smoketown in its thriving heyday, the change in their community was especially galling. “Because they’re taking away everything that made Smoketown great. They’re buying up the parks, the vacant lots, and putting in houses. There’s nothing for the kids. There’s no enrichment, no activity,” says Theresa Boyd, executive director of Smoketown Community Land Trust. A mural in Smoketown by The Art of Kacy. Credit: Don Sniegowski Trabue had had enough — she started pulling out the investors’ signs, reached out to the city’s land bank to figure out which vacant lots in the neighborhood were held by the city and connected with River City Housing , a local nonprofit home developer, to see how they could work together. At the same time, “the Smoketown Originals started to come together,” says Boyd, referring to a community organization of older residents with deep roots in the neighborhood. “They went to the churches, the community centers, the youth centers.” They started pushing the city to do a housing needs assessment and got in touch with Grounded Solutions , a national nonprofit for affordable housing, to decide whether a community land trust would be a viable option. Community land trusts (CLTs) are grassroots nonprofits that provide long-term affordable housing by buying and developing land on behalf of the community. When selling or renting homes, the CLT retains ownership of the land they’re built on, which makes the homes cheaper and keeps the land itself under community control. Crucially, CLTs also preserve affordability long-term by requiring owners to sell at an affordable price. The first CLTs grew out of the civil rights movement to secure land ownership for Black farmers.  Today, they are an increasingly popular way of protecting land from speculators and creating long-term affordable housing, with over 300 CLTs in the US .  The CLT’s first houses were recently completed, and more plots have already been chosen. Courtesy of Smoketown CLT In Smoketown, a lot of the initial work focused on explaining what a CLT is and getting the broader community on board. “Communities that have been divested [from] and have been talked to and at versus with, they lose their voice,” says Boyd. “We really had to rally the troops here in the community to be like, ‘You actually have a say in what goes on in your community.’”  In 2020 the community and its partner organizations won the city’s Request for Proposals, securing $2.1 million to create a CLT. By 2023 the CLT was formalized and Boyd was brought onboard as the executive director. “I really whipped us into shape administratively and organizationally,” she says. “But most importantly, I went back out into the community and I was like, ‘Okay, this is what you wanted. Now what are we going to do with this land?’” Weighed down by negative news? Enter your email below to receive our smart, uplifting newsletters. Or click here to choose exactly which ones you want [contact-form-7] Based on a series of surveys, Smoketown CLT built its first seven houses right across the street from where Muhammed Ali threw his first punches under the watchful eye of trainer Fred Stoner, the grandfather of the CLT board president. These houses were recently completed, and the next seven plots have already been chosen. Before starting new developments, the CLT approaches the people living around the plots, says Boyd. “We invite them to the table: Okay, what are your concerns? What are your comments? This is what we are thinking. Is it a viable housing option for your street?” CLTs come in many different shapes, sizes and funding arrangements. In Smoketown, the CLT is funding the construction of the houses, but received the plots of land for free from the city. The land bank has earmarked around 70 plots in the neighborhood for the trust, says Boyd: “We were fortunate that those that came before me had enough gall to go to the city and be like, “Y’all holding all this land and you are absolutely not going to give it to investors. You are going to earmark it for the Community Land Trust.’ And we made them put it in writing.” Mayor Craig Greenberg joined Smoketown CLT to celebrate the completion of the CLT’s first seven homes. Courtesy of Smoketown CLT The city government has been supportive of the CLT, says Boyd, but it would not have happened without the community putting years of work into it. “Louisville’s been around for a really long time, and the people in our community absolutely will hold them to task, and that’s absolutely what they did. They started showing up at the council meetings, the reallocation of funds.” Partnering with experts, like Grounded Solutions, is key to getting a CLT off the ground, as is ensuring that community members see themselves represented in the CLT leadership, says Boyd. “[And] you have to be willing to change and really meet people where they are and not be afraid to make good trouble.” Learn more about Smoketown Community Land Trust here , or get additional information from Grounded Solutions here . Keeping it cool one roof at a time When Tony Chaves noticed how extreme heat and rising air-conditioning costs were affecting his Las Vegas neighborhood, he decided to help solve the problem with a ladder and a bucket of ultra-reflective white paint.  As part of the two-person nonprofit Alchemical Opus, Chavez started painting the roofs of Arts District businesses for free, significantly decreasing their indoor temperatures, with one business owner reporting saving $60 to $70 a month on electricity. Coating roofs in white paint is an easy way to lower the temperatures of homes and public buildings. In recent years homeowners across India, Burkina Faso, Mexico and South Pacific have painted their roofs white as part of a global scientific study, with early results indicating substantial cooling. In the U.S., Philadelphia gave 62 households free cool-roof coatings in a 2025 pilot project, while the New York City CoolRoofs program has painted over 12 million square feet of roofs with reflective white paint since 2007. A number of U.S. cities also require cool roofs on new and re-roofed buildings. Wait, you're not a member yet? Join the Reasons to be Cheerful community by supporting our nonprofit publication and giving what you can. Join Cancel anytime The science behind the idea is straightforward: White and reflective roofs absorb less solar heat, and applying reflective coatings is the easiest way to transform a roof into a so-called “cool roof,” while also prolonging the life of the roof . The U.S. Department of Energy says cool roofs can reduce annual air-conditioning energy use in single-story buildings by up to 15 percent, while other studies show that painted roofs can lower maximum indoor temperatures by 2.2 to 5.9°F in residential buildings that are not air conditioned. Learn more about cool roofs here . Housing across generations After moving from the countryside to Vienna for university, Lukas Hecke, Manuel Schuler and Marlene Welzl experienced first-hand how difficult it could be to find good housing on a student budget. At the same time, they knew the city was full of elderly people with small pensions and large apartments, who often felt lonely after their children grew up and moved out.  In 2015 they started connecting older people with spare rooms to younger people looking for a place to live. It began organically, by word of mouth, and soon grew into the housing platform Wohnbuddy that has carefully matched over 400 people based on their interests and communications over the years.  The impact goes beyond private homes. Since 2017, Wohnbuddy has also partnered with senior residences, where students bring new energy through activities, music and social interaction. Learn more about Wohnbuddy here . The post The Spark: When Communities Own the Land, Housing Stays Affordable appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful .