Community Land Trusts
There is a crisis in housing at all levels – nationally, statewide in Ohio, and locally in Cuyahoga County, particularly in Cleveland. Combined with a chronic shortage of affordable housing, a large percentage of renters now face extremely high rent burdens as emergency federal rent assistance ends; mass evictions may result. Many renters are unable to buy starter homes and some are being displaced by gentrification. Governmental housing programs and policies to address these issues are inadequate.
Nationally, there has been a movement to promote community land trusts (CLTs) to provide affordable housing and to stabilize neighborhoods. CLTs provide affordable housing through permanent ownership of the land where housing is built. There are now hundreds of CLTs in the United States, many involving Community Development Corporations. Nationally, the Grounded Solutions Network supports this movement.
This Forum will provide information about the organization, goals, and accomplishments of CLTs, including two existing examples in Ohio – the Central Ohio CLT that is a partnership of the City of Columbus and Franklin County and their land banks, and the newer Near West CLT that covers Cleveland’s Ohio City and Tremont neighborhoods.
Moderator
Dr. Dennis Keating – Emeritus Professor of Urban Studies, Levin College of Urban Affairs, Cleveland State University
Panelists
Marge Misak – President, Equitable Development Solutions
Ben Trimble – Chief Real Estate Officer, Ohio City, Inc.
Hope Paxson – Vice President of Programs & Housing, COCIC (Columbus-Franklin County CLT)
Dr. Jeffrey Lowe – Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy, Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs,Texas Southern University
Dr. Dennis Keating – Emeritus Professor of Urban Studies, Levin College of Urban Affairs, Cleveland State University
Dr. Dennis Keating is an Emeritus Professor of Urban Studies at the Levin College of Urban Affairs, Cleveland State University. He has written widely on housing, neighborhood development, and urban policy. Most recently, he has addressed The Right to Housing, Community Land Trusts and Land Banks, and the re-emergence of Rent Control. As a volunteer at Future Heights, he has worked to form its Future Homes program to promote the rehabilitation of vacant, abandoned homes in Cleveland Heights.
Marge Misak – President, Equitable Development Solutions
Marge Misak is the president of Equitable Development Solutions LLC, with a focus on technical assistance to start-up and existing Community Land Trusts. Since 2018, Misak has been the principal CLT Technical Assistance Provider for the Central Ohio Community Land Trust, Columbus, OH. She provided start-up technical assistance to the Oberlin CLT, and is working with the 6 CLTs in Ohio on formation of the Ohio CLT Network. Misak teaches and mentors in the Shared Equity Housing Initiative of NeighborWorks America.
Misak was the founding director of the Cuyahoga Community Land Trust in Cleveland in 2001, the first CLT in Cleveland. She is a former board member of the National Community Land Trust Network (now the Grounded Solutions Network). Marge volunteers her time in Cleveland with the Vital Neighborhoods group and the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless’ housing justice advocacy.
Hope Paxson – Vice President of Programs & Housing, COCIC (Columbus-Franklin County CLT)
Hope Paxson is Vice President of Programs and Housing for the Central Ohio Community Improvement Corporation (COCIC)-The Franklin County Land Bank. Hope is responsible for the oversite of COCIC’s programs offering a repurpose and disposition strategy for underused, abandoned, tax delinquent, and foreclosed properties. She has also been instrumental in forming new initiatives to support housing stabilization and reutilization efforts taking place in Franklin County. Prior to her work in Columbus, Hope administered federal, state, and local dollars to further the work of affordable housing in multiple counties throughout Northwest Ohio. Currently, in partnership with the City of Columbus and Franklin County, Hope is contributing to the successful launch of the Central Ohio Community Land Trust; a subsidiary of COCIC.
Dr. Jeffrey Lowe – Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy, Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs, Texas Southern University
Jeffrey Lowe is an Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy, and Director of the Center of Excellence for Housing and Community Development Policy Research, in the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University. Prior to joining the Department of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy faculty, Lowe was a Visiting Associate Professor of Urban Planning in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University; and Associate Director /Visiting Associate Professor of the Mid-Sized Cities Policy Research Institute, Graduate Program in City and Regional Planning at The University of Memphis, respectively. Also, he held faculty positions in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at both Florida State University and Jackson State University. Lowe is a past distinguished visiting fellow at the Advanced Research Collaborative, The Graduate Center, City University of New York.
Lowe’s research focuses on social justice and racial equity concerns within the context of community development. His scholarship advances understanding and policy recommendations for innovations in community-based planning, organizational development, and neighborhood revitalization and land use decisions in cities and regions. He is the author of Rebuilding Communities the Public Trust Way: Community Foundation Assistance to CDCs, 1980-2000 (Lexington Press 2006), which highlights cases of community foundation assistance to CDCs from 1980 to 2000 in Cleveland, Ohio, Miami, Florida, and New Orleans, Louisiana, and other publications including those in Cities: The International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning, Journal of Urban Affairs, and Urban Geography. At present, Lowe is a member of the Grounded Solutions Network (a Community Land Trust) Research Collaborative, and his efforts as an activist scholar aided in establishing the New York City Community Land Initiative and the Houston (Texas) Community Land Trust.
Lowe earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Howard University; a Master of City and Regional Planning from Morgan State University; and a Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Policy Development from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
