Can community land trusts slow gentrification?

ABSTRACT

Gentrification has become one of the most widely discussed phenomena in urban affairs due to its prevalence around the world. However, most discussions remain at the theoretical level or are limited to case studies of a few metropolitan cities. Furthermore, there is little research on the relationship between gentrification and community land trusts (CLTs)—to our knowledge, no studies have examined their connection.

Our investigation seeks to address this research gap by evaluating whether and how CLTs affect gentrification. Can CLTs counteract the negative effects of gentrification? Using a data set detailing the locations of CLT units at the national level, we employed a binomial logistic regression to examine whether CLTs influence gentrification, as well as a paired t-test with 9 relevant indicators to understand how CLTs affect gentrification. The findings suggest that CLTs may function as appropriate tools for stabilizing neighborhoods at risk of gentrification.

Notes

1. According to Lees (2000), the terms supply-side and demand-side, economic-side and cultural-side, and/or production-side and consumption-side are synonymous.

2. We are confident that there were no unknown CLT units in our neighborhoods, because even the locations of CLTs that did not participate in the survey were verified.

3. Based on the definition of gentrification in this study, these five characteristics relate to demographic change (1, 2, 3, 5) and capital reinvestment (3, 4, 5).

4. The corresponding citywide area includes the original neighborhood and for this reason likely shares similar socioeconomic characteristics. Two selection criteria were employed to identify these corresponding citywide areas. First, they must encompass the original neighborhood. Second, the specific census places in the census data set must have been used as corresponding citywide areas when the neighborhoods with CLTs were located inside. If this was not the case, county data were used instead.

5. One hundred twenty percent of the AMI is commonly considered to be a threshold that determines a high-income group. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has suggested that moderate income groups have 80–120% of AMI in their income guidelines (Galster & Booza, 2007).

6. Migration of residents may change age distribution beyond what is ordinarily caused by demographic change (aging, births, and deaths).

7. The affordability index is converted to help explain neighborhood affordability. A higher affordability index indicates higher affordability.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Myungshik Choi

Myungshik Choi is an Associate Research Fellow of Housing & Land research Division at the Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements. He holds a PhD in Urban and Regional Science Program from Texas A&M University and an MA and BA in Urban Administration from the University of Seoul, South Korea. His areas of research interests are land and housing policy, gentrification, community development, commons, and shared equity homeownership. His recent research seeks to mitigate the negative effects of gentrification via the platform based on shared ownership of local land property and building community wealth and/or assets.

Shannon Van Zandt

Shannon Van Zandt is Professor and Interim Head of the Department of Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning at Texas A&M University. She holds a PhD in City & Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina. She also currently holds the Nicole & Kevin Youngblood Professorship in Residential Land Development in recognition of her scholarship on housing, real estate, and urban development. Dr. Van Zandt’s research has created a niche within the housing and disaster fields that focuses on how the spatial distribution of residential land affects exposure, impact, and consequences from natural disasters, particularly for socially vulnerable populations. She serves on the board of the Texas Low-Income Housing Information Service, as well as the advisory committee of Texas Sea Grant, and has testified before the Texas State Legislature three times over the past 2 years on issues related to housing recovery after disaster.

David Matarrita-Cascante

David Matarrita-Cascante is an Associate Professor in the Department of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Sciences at Texas A&M University. His research on rapid community change is guided by the field of community sociology. His work seeks to better understand, from a sociological perspective, local processes that minimize the negative effects of rapid change while enhancing sustainable livelihoods. A second area of interest includes the topic of human dimensions of natural resources, guided by the fields of natural resource and environmental sociology. Along this line, his work seeks to understand the role the natural world plays in defining human behavior as well as people’s values and actions associated with its management and protection. His work, conducted through quantitative, qualitative, and mixed research methods in domestic and international settings, sits at the intersection of the above interests and various literatures including community development, amenity migration, tourism, protected areas, natural events, and community health.