"regathering land in gulf coast
neighborhoods"
March 11th, 2006
The role of land in the economic system has challenged
philosophers, economists, and social activists through
the years. E. F. Schumacher was
one of many who wrote about "the
land question." As a response
to this question, in 1967 Robert Swann and colleagues formed the first community
land trust in Albany, Georgia, as a way to secure land for African-American farmers
excluded from land ownership.
A community land trust is a tool for separating land,
our common earth-given heritage, from buildings and other
improvements created by human labor. A community
land trust acquires land, develops a land use plan for
each site reflecting ecological limitations and social
priorities, and then leases the land through an inheritable
and renewable 99-year agreement. The lease can facilitate
multiple uses such as affordable housing, community buildings,
agriculture, business development, and open space preservation.
Leaseholders own their homes, barns, fences, stores, and
manufacturing facilities, but not the land itself. Resale
of improvements is limited to no more than current replacement
costs of buildings adjusted for deterioration, insuring
that the land itself is never again commoditized. The
exclusion of escalating land prices from the cost of buildings
keeps homes affordable to new generations.
In an article for the Poverty and Race Research Action
Council (www.prrac.org), Gus Newport describes the application
of a community land trust for creating an urban village
in the Dudley Street neighborhood of Boston. Gus
has also served as mayor of Berkeley and most recently
as executive director of the Institute for Community Economics.
When Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, Gus
Newport knew that a community land trust would be a needed
tool for regathering neighborhood lands and making sure
that original residents had a say in shaping the future
of redevelopment. Susan Witt's January 2006 interview
with Gus about this work follows.
For more information about community land trusts, you
can go to the web site of the E. F. Schumacher Society
(www.smallisbeautiful.org) where you will find background
material and legal documents used by the Community Land
Trust in the Southern Berkshires. You will also find
information on the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy's April
2006 Community Land Trust Academy in Washington state and
the July conference, "Building and Sustaining Communities" in
Colorado, organized by the National Community Land Trust
Network together with the Lincoln Institute.
Best wishes,
Joshua Lichtman, Christopher Lindstrom, Julie Macé,
and Susan Witt
Staff of the E. F. Schumacher Society
140 Jug End Road
Great Barrington, MA 01230 USA
(413) 528-1737
www.smallisbeautiful.org
* * * * * * *
Interview with Gus Newport
by Susan Witt
January 2006
I reached Gus Newport in Gulfport, Mississippi where he
is working with residents to apply the CLT model to the
rebuilding of traditionally African-American neighborhoods
devastated by the hurricane. The North Gulfport and
Turkey Creek communities were purchased and settled by
freed slaves in 1866 and quickly grew into vibrant, self-sufficient
neighborhoods made up of farms and small homesteads, surrounded
by the marshland that was the natural protection against
hurricanes.
By the twenty-first century development pressures were
taking their toll. Higher taxes meant long time residents
were losing their single-family homes to foreclosure to
be replaced by infrastructure improvements to benefit tourism. Wetlands
were being filled to build casinos, damaging natural defenses. A
group of residents began steps to organize the North Gulfport
Community Land Trust and Turkey Creek Community Initiatives
to repurchase land at foreclosures in order to ensure that
housing remained affordable to traditional African-American
families, while maintaining the historic nature and scale
of buildings, and protecting wetlands. It was a big
undertaking.
After the wrath of the hurricanes, these fledging organizations
are proving an important way for these communities to pull
together to make their voices heard in the rebuilding effort. Gus
is there to help. The tendency of a federal response
to an emergency situation is to make it easy for large
developers. Take the land by eminent domain, tear
everything down and build strip malls and casinos for a
newly envisioned tourist industry. Local people,
local jobs, local culture, and local ecology are excluded
from this vision of development.
The residents of North Gulfport and Turkey Creek know
that it was their neighbors and friends who helped them
through the trials of flooding and storm damage, not the
government agencies. Their roots run deep, associations
are long lasting, and love of place is entwined with love
of family. They will stay and rebuild. The
rebuilding will reflect who they are as a people—predominantly
African-American single-family homeowners with generational
roots.
The CLT concept is a way of organizing and protecting
that rebuilding so that the land, and decisions about its
use, remain in local control—an alliance of residents,
affordable housing advocates, environmentalists, history
enthusiasts, and economists. They envision stable
neighborhoods of home ownership and well-paid manufacturing
jobs rather than the low-salaried employment of the tourist
industry.
Much work is ahead to bring this dream to reality, to
resist the pressures of big schemes, to allow the democratic
power of local people to stand against the power of central
government bureaucracy. Gus is helping these groups
to rally allies to their cause and vision. Once achieved,
it will set an important example for other regions facing
similar pressures.
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