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.
— urbanomnibus.net
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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A strategy that is largely at odds with the generation of revenue from property taxes, especially in areas of high land value. Here, for example, land is about 80-90% of tax value. For this to work pretty much all land would have to be held in public trust. Which makes perfect sense if you think about it.
Miles: interesting; please explain further. If all land is in public trust, how does the government earn property tax revenue? Maybe you just mean public housing land..... I'm just coming from the fact that in my city (most/all cities I assume), property taxes are reasonably high and continue to rise because the city continues to raise the %...... 50 Years ago, property taxes accounted for the far majority of city total revenue for city projects; transit, maintenance, public buildings, utilities, etc. Today, property tax = only 20% of total revenue.... and so when the city needs money, property taxes seem to be the target. I may be missing the point here..
What exists now is a tax system that rewards development in a multitude of ways from regressive property tax to reduced taxes on rental income and capital gains (among others).
Putting all land in public trust is of course socialist and will never happen. The idea that a few can own everything and exclude others is the ultimate result of the privatization of land. This is essentially feudalism.
If all land were in the public trust, taxes would be assessed on development rather than on land, taxes on which only encourage development. Thus development would be discouraged and preservation or public use encouraged.
Here on the East End, the development rights of some land has been purchased (ostensibly) for preservation. In reality much of this land is used for quasi-agricultural uses (private horse farms, polo grounds) or shielded from public view and used to enhance the value of private property despite the fact that public money was used to purchase the development rights.
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