Florida Keys get new affordable housing after Hurricane Irma destruction

2018-08-29T14:42:00-04:00

Irma instilled new urgency to address the islands’ housing problem. “What was an emergency prior to the storm is now a crisis—an utter and complete crisis with regards to the housing for average worker here in Monroe County,” said Mike Laurent, executive director of the Florida Keys Community Land Trust.

The Florida Keys Community Land Trust was developed after Hurricane Irma hit last year to help built new affordable housing, which suffered the most damage on the islands. So far the trust has four new affordable cottages under construction with plans of building 20 more.

The new homes have been designed by Marianne Cusato, who led a similar disaster architecture project in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. Designed to withstand 200 mile-per-hour winds and at an elevation of 12 feet, the cottages' monthly rent will be capped at $1,588 with preference given to families displaced by Irma.

The Value of Land: How Community Land Trusts Maintain Housing Affordability

2014-05-01T14:43:00-04:00

Affordable housing is on New York City’s mind. A critical mass of civic organizations, academic institutions, city agencies, advocacy groups, and others are pondering the essential and perennial issue of how to ensure that the city becomes affordable for the extraordinarily diverse population that makes it work. [...] At the same time, a decades-old strategy to maintain housing affordability is finding a groundswell of support from an increasingly diverse group of stakeholders.

A community land trust (CLT) is an alternative model that separates the ownership of property from the ownership of the land on which that property is built. In effect, organized citizens remove land from the private, speculative market where its value is difficult to control.

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Florida Keys get new affordable housing after Hurricane Irma destruction

The Value of Land: How Community Land Trusts Maintain Housing Affordability