Land trust
A land trust is an organization established to hold land
and to administer use of the land according to the charter
of the organization. A land trust is a useful way to manage
complex divisions of the Bundle of Rights that people
can own in real estate, and can be used to manage something
as large and complex as a multi-state REIT, or as common
and small as a single-family home.
Investment trust companies hold property for investment
purposes and non-citizens who want long-term access to
land in Mexico often enter real-estate trust agreements,
called fideicomiso, with Mexican citizens, but land trust
more often refers to a community scale organization. Community
land trusts are established to provide low- and middle-income
families access to affordable housing while conservation
trusts protect environmentally, historically or culturally
valuable places. Land trusts are also in place to protect
farmland and ranchland.
Contents
* 1 Community land trusts
* 2 Conservation land trusts
Community land trusts
Land trust communities trace their conceptual history
to India's gramdans where villages held property in the
community interest, and to European and North American
land banks, which are quasi-public agencies that invest
in land often to help build family farms or to encourage
economic development. Residential land trusts emerged
in the United States after calls among civil rights leaders
in the 1950s and 1960s in the American South for economic
reforms to reverse rampant poverty. An Institute for Community
Economics was organized in the 1960s to help residential
trusts:
* Gain control over local land use and reduce absentee
ownership
* Provide affordable housing for lower income residents
in the community
* Promote resident ownership and control of housing
* Keep housing affordable for future residents
* Capture the value of public investment for long-term
community benefit
* Build a strong base for community action
Residential community land trusts are now widespread
in the United States , but seldom gain much notice beyond
occasional local news accounts. The Institute for Community
Economics in 2004 reported nearly 120 community land trusts
of varied sizes in 30 states, the District of Columbia
and in five Canadian provinces. While a few earlier trusts
faltered, the number of land trusts in North America overall
nearly tripled between the 1987 and 2004.
Community trusts don't typically advertise their goals,
but rely on community members and word of mouth to attract
new residents. In residential land trusts, the community
association usually owns land, while their occupants'
own buildings. Trusts usually retain rights to buy buildings
from residents who move out of the community. The goal
of residential trusts is often to protect housing prices
from real estate speculation and gentrification but to
allow residents to accrue equity, including sweat equity.
Conservation land trusts
The goal of conservation trusts is to perpetually preserve
sensitive natural areas, farmland, ranchland, water sources,
or notable landmarks. These include enormous international
organizations such as The Nature Conservancy, as well
as smaller organizations that operate on national, state/provincial,
county, and community levels. Conservation trusts often,
but not always, target lands adjacent to or within existing
protected areas.
Many different strategies are used to provide this protection,
including outright acquistion of the land by the trust.
In other cases, the land will remain in private hands,
but the trust will purchase a conservation easement on
the property to prevent development, or purchase any mining,
logging, drilling, or development rights on the land.
Trusts also provide funding to assist like-minded private
buyers or government organizations to purchase and protect
the land forever.
As most land trusts are non-profit, they rely on endowments
or donations to provide capital to acquire land or easements.
Donors often provide cash, but it is not uncommon for
conservation-minded landowners to donate an easement on
their land, or the land itself. Some trusts also receive
funds from government programs to acquire, protect, and
manage land. Some trusts can afford to pay employees,
but many others depend entirely on volunteers.
When land is acquired, trusts will sometimes retain ownership
of the land in perpetuity, or sell the land to a third
party. This third party is often the government, which
will usually add the land to an existing protected area,
or create a new one entirely. Land trusts were instrumental
in the 2004 creation of Great Sand Dunes National Park
in Colorado , as well as the expansion of Hawaii Volcanoes
National Park by 50% in 2003. Land trusts also sell land
to private buyers, usually with a strict conservation
easement attached. Keeping the land under private ownership
has the added benefit of maintaining the land on local
property tax rolls, providing income to the local government.
Some areas have extremely limited public access for the
protection of sensitive wildlife, or to allow recovery
of damaged ecosystems. Many protected areas are still
under private ownership, which tends to limit access as
well. However, in many cases, land trusts work to eventually
open up the land in a limited way to the public for recreation
in the form of hunting, hiking, camping, wildlife observation,
watersports, or other responsible outdoor activities.
This is often with the assistance of community groups
or government programs. Some land is also used for sustainable
agriculture or ranching, or even for sustainable logging.
While important, these goals can be seen as secondary
to protection of the land from development.
The Land Trust Alliance, formed in 1981, provides technical
support to the growing network of land trusts in the United
States . The Alliance performs a National Land Trust Census
that keeps track of the land protected by local and regional
land trusts[1]. The last Census, conducted in 2003, reported
that these trusts have protected almost 9.4 million acres
(38,000 km²) of land in the United States , double
the 4.7 million acres (19,000 km²) recorded in the
1998 survey. Over 5 million acres (20,000 km²) of
that was protected by conservation easement in 2003. Although
it does not include national or international land trusts
in its Census, the LTA estimates another 25 million acres
(100,000 km²) in the U.S. have been protected by
those organizations. The largest amount of land protected
by local and regional trusts is in the Northeast with
2.9 million acres (12,000 km²), while the fastest
growing region between 1998 and 2003 was the Pacific (consisting
of California , Nevada , and Hawaii ), with protected
land increasing 147% to 1.5 million acres (6,100 km²)
in 2003.
In 1891, the Trustees of Reservations was founded, the
first land trust in the entire world. Land trusts now
operate in all 50 U.S. states, as well as many other countries.
Since then, the number of land trusts has steadily increased,
with most forming in the last 25 years. Over 300 new local
and regional trusts were formed in the period from 1998
to 2003 alone, with the last LTA Census counting 1,537
operating in the United States . Over 1,000 of these are
members of the LTA. California now has the most land trusts,
with 173 operating statewide in 2003. Massachusetts ,
despite being much smaller, was a close second with 154
land trusts that year.
In October 2002, Property and Environment Research Center
published a report by Dominic P. Parker entitled Cost-Effective
Strategies for Conserving Private Land . This paper identified
numerous ways for operating land trusts more efficiently,
pointing out that conservation easement and other tools
for land preservation may be less costly than ownership.
Sometimes the various rights associated with land ownership
are separable. A preservationist organization may, for
instance, buy only the extraction rights on a property
with oil or minerals, and then rent those rights to extracters
on the organization's terms. The terms might include requirements
to protect the environment and pay the organization royalties
on materials extracted. Many land trust organizations
had already been using these strategies for years when
this report was published.
