Ethical action in the age of austerity: cases of care in two community land trusts

Abstract

As social housing diminishes in the U.S., community land trusts have tried to adapt to the age of austerity, growing in numbers and expanding their terrain. We argue their continued success and growth greatly depends on enacting—to borrow from Gibson-Graham et al. (2019)—matters of care. These include all ethical and experimental actions taken to repair worlds in crises. We study two community land trusts that emerged two decades ago and argue that their work is based on two braided strands of care: care for people and care for place. The efforts of these community land trusts are varied and evolving, as they work closely with their contexts over time, combatting displacement, and responding to place-based crises through experimentation and the nurturing of community ties. This article challenges mechanistic accounts which attribute the success of community land trusts not to the care they enact but to the shared-equity organizational model.

Keywords:

• Community land trusts
• care
• austerity
• affordable housing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 ICE was the original strategizing entity for marketing CLTs and disseminated consistent messaging, in a variety of formats, that educated people about what CLTs were and explained their structure and purpose.

2 We are indebted to our colleague Jakob Schneider for his research and theorizing about housing after the foreclosure crisis using Actor -Network Theory and developing analysis of socio-material resources that constrain and enable housing provision.

3 They were able to house clients with incomes as low $14,000/year.

Additional information

Funding

This research is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1559577. We would also like to thank the Gittell Collective in Urban Studies for their contribution in support of this research. The faults are our own.

Notes on contributors

Claire Cahen

Claire Cahen is a PhD Candidate in Environmental Psychology at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. Her current research includes an NSF study on CLTs, as well as a study on labour-community coalitions to defend public education.

Erin Lilli

Erin Lilli is a PhD Candidate in Environmental Psychology at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. Her current research looks at racialized relations to land and property through an analysis of gentrification using a framework of racial capitalism.

Susan Saegert

Susan Saegert is a Professor in Environmental Psychology at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. Her current research includes an NSF study comparing the life trajectories of people housed in CLTs with those housed in the regular market.