A Community Land Trust for Lambertville!

Lambertville City Council

This is not a petition yet per-se, but a way to gauge community interest in creating a community land trust to ensure permanent affordable housing in Lambertville, NJ.

The following is a copy of the op-ed "A Community Land Trust for Lambertville: The Solution to the City’s Affordable Housing Crisis" by Leah Hunt.

The glaring issue in Lambertville following Hurricane Ida is the affordable housing crisis that the city has left to fester for decades. Since September 1st when about 40 families from the Village Apartments were made homeless, the biggest question has been: where will they go? Will our community leave them behind?


Lambertville currently has zero affordable housing units available. The small city has little room to physically expand, and many residents are vocally against any expansion or the addition of buildings that do not blend in with the city’s historic character. The traditional, developer-led model for providing affordable housing is based on the idea of continuous, profit-driven growth. But that isn’t realistic, especially in Lambertville. We need a solution that uses existing buildings and circumvents the profit imperative to provide far more affordable units than any developer could. Community Land Trusts (CLTs) do just that, and there are over 250 of them already in the US, including the Essex Community Land Trust in Bloomfield, NJ, and dozens more in Pennsylvania and New York.


In the CLT model, land is held in trust by the municipality and/or a non-profit. Then a CLT non-profit organization is formed to rent out 100% of the housing units at an affordable rate in perpetuity. In the case of apartment buildings, the way tenants rent their units is similar to mortgages because the tenants pay until they reach their share amount (a predetermined affordable amount) of the building. Then, when tenants move out, they can withdraw their share of the equity. The apartment buildings are democratically controlled by the tenants and other contributing organizational members of the community land trust. CLTs can be self-sustaining with all maintenance and taxes paid by tenant rent.


The city should seek to purchase the former Village Apartments property to form a Community Land Trust. This could be done with the help of grants and private donations in a similar fashion to preserving open space through land trusts. Obviously, the existing buildings would need to be demolished and new buildings would need to be constructed at a raised level and ideally with more units and better quality units than before. Former tenants who had to evacuate due to Hurricane Ida would be given priority in moving back into these new units. New tenants would have to qualify as low or moderate income as relative to the county’s median household income. The CLT model boasts the opportunity to provide an apartment complex that is permanently 100% affordable, as opposed to developer-led complexes that often provide less than 20% of units at an affordable rate, and not necessarily forever.


This proposed location could also be supplemented by the purchase of several existing homes in the city, which would then be rented out and managed in the same way. Not only would this avoid the physical expansion of the city, but it would allow low and moderate income tenants to live in an integrated way amongst the rest of the city.


As aforementioned, the CLT model provides for tenants to develop equity in their building. This allows tenants to accumulate wealth, thus helping to break cycles of poverty and intergenerational poverty. Indeed, the single greatest vehicle for Americans to accumulate wealth and pass on intergenerational wealth is homeownership, and renters are ordinarily excluded from this mechanism. The average homeowner in the US has the household wealth of $231,400, while the average renter only has $5,200.


Lambertville markets itself as diverse and welcoming, but in reality, many of its Black and Latino families are now likely to be excluded because their homes were destroyed in the flood and local landlords refuse to offer affordable rent on available apartments. Our nation’s structural racism, including the historic exclusion of people of Color from homeownership programs, mortgages, and loans, has left the average Black household with one tenth the wealth of the average white household. New Jersey’s median net wealth for white families is $352,000, while that of Black families is $6,100 and of Latino families is $7,300. Lambertville should prioritize housing the families displaced by the flood not only because they deserve to stay in our community, but because our community has a duty to counteract the effects of historic racist policy and to promote racial equity.


The rich and vibrant culture of Lambertville that locals and tourists alike enjoy is built on the labor of community members who hold low and moderate income jobs: in restaurants, small businesses, and so forth. If there are no affordable places to live in town, the restaurants and other small businesses that depend on low-wage labor are going to continue to be understaffed and may have to close. The city desperately needs to address the fact that low and moderate income community members are actively being displaced because of housing unaffordability, a process which Hurricane Ida has only accelerated.


To give concrete numbers, the median household income in Hunterdon County is about $115,000 per year (2015-2019 Census data). But an individual working full-time (40 hours/week) at the state’s minimum wage of $12 per hour will make about $24,000 per year. According to the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, a household can afford to spend up to 30% of its income on housing. For a household making $24,000 a year, that comes out to about $670 per month. We must also keep in mind that many people are single parents, many can only work part-time, and still more cannot work or are on social security or disability benefits. When a city such as Lambertville only has units available starting at $1,600 for a one-bedroom, it sends a message that only the non-elderly, abled, and wealthy are welcome.


But I am hopeful that Lambertville, which is so creative and caring, can embrace the innovative idea of a community land trust in order to preserve everyone’s right to live and thrive in the city, regardless of income level. I’ve already discussed the idea with many residents, including many who were displaced from the Village Apartments, and they are in favor of it and excited about the prospect. If you are in favor of this idea, please sign this petition so we can gauge interest. To get involved in advocating for a CLT in Lambertville, please email me.


Citations/more information:


Resources for the municipality:


Preliminary list of potential grant sources:

  • Federal Dept of Housing and Urban Development

  • State funding

    • NJ Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency

    • NJ Dept of Community Affairs, programs such as:

      • Municipal Land Acquisition Program

      • Small Cities Community Development Block Grant

  • Sustainable Jersey (if new building is made to be environmentally sustainable)


Examples of CLTs in the region:





Petition by
Gravatar
Leah Hunt
Stockton, New Jersey

To: Lambertville City Council
From: [Your Name]

The City of Lambertville should seek to purchase the property of the Village Apartments and other existing buildings in order to form a community land trust (CLT). The CLT will provide permanently affordable housing, which is critical for our community for the following reasons.

- To allow low and moderate income residents to stay in their hometown.
- To allow new low and moderate income families to join our community.
- To promote racial equity and diversity.
- To mitigate the effects of climate and economic crises on housing stock and affordability.

Lambertville needs an innovative, uncompromising approach to providing affordable housing. A community land trust will ensure that all community members, regardless of income level or race, can call Lambertville home for generations to come.