Community Land Trusts, Gentrification and the OZ

08/26/19 • 69 min

Community Land Trusts, Gentrification and the OZ, Dan Bitner, MBA speaks with Julius Kimbrough from the Crescent City Community Land Trust in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Val Orseli from Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association in NYC’s Lower East Side. In this episode, we explore gentrification pressures and how CLTs can act as a bulwark for affordability in rapidly changing neighborhoods. Dan Bitner leads listeners through the basics of how CLTs operate and learns about innovations on the CLT model from our guests. These innovations include: the scattered site CLT in the Lower East Side which now encompasses over 20 buildings, and the use of predial servitude and deed restrictions in mixed income, mixed use buildings such as the newly restored Pythian building in New Orleans. We end by asking our guests for their insights into the current opportunities and challenges for the CLT model.

Previous Episode

Affordable Housing and the OZ Policy

Affordable Housing and the OZ policy, Lauren Harper ’20, and Christian Rodriguez ’19 examine the roots of the affordable housing crisis in the United States and explore the challenges and opportunities for addressing it with CitySCOPE podcast guests: Karen Dubois Walton, President of Elm City Communities in New Haven and Brandon Weiss, Visiting Professor at Yale Law School. We ask our guests their perspectives on the potential of the OZ policy for addressing the need for affordable housing. Topics covered include: the history of public housing and redlining, current regional dynamics inherited from redlining era, key issues of how to boost supply of affordable housing and where to build it, current trends in providing affordable housing such as mixed-income, mixed-use models, inclusionary zoning, community land trusts, and rent control.

Next Episode

Investing in Businesses in Opportunity Zones

Investing in Businesses in Opportunity Zones, Professor Kate Cooney explains the current status of OZ regulation related to business investment and highlights the key questions about these regulations that have slowed down investor action in this area and also the tensions in play around community benefit. Dr. Cooney leads listeners through a series of models for supporting local entrepreneurs in OZs, including mixed use housing developments with ground floor commercial that might be both amenable to OZ investments and supportive of the growth of local entrepreneurs, a corner store Bodega economic development program yielding real results, impact investment funds focused on helping small and medium size businesses grow along with the regional economy in gentrifying neighborhoods, and an arts based economic development project with business and neighborhood development in its sights.

Guests include: Greg Reaves from Mosaic Development Partners in Philadelphia, Joe Evans from The Kresge Foundation, James Johnson-Piett from Urbane Development, Aliana Pineiro from the Boston Impact Initiative, Lucas Turner-Owens from the Boston Ujima Project and Jason Price from NXTHVN in New Haven, CT.