Finding Common Ground: Land Trusts and CLTs Explore New Collaborations
July 10, 2023 by Community land trusts and conservation land trusts are looking to work together and collaborate on new ideas to preserve land while also creating access to affordable housing. In Atlanta, the Athens Land Trust originally functions as a conservation land trust. But when a member bought a piece of vacant land and donated it to the trust, the local government provided an affordable housing grant, and the organization built its first house. As the organization grew, it now holds over 20,695 acres of conservation easements, from farms outside Athens to pine plantations and mountains in north Georgia, and it built and rehabbed homes inside the city—but they remained practically separate. The two parts of the organization we kept separate, but by bringing together both worlds, new programs have come about to benefit the community as a whole. The trust began running gardening classes and farm workdays, youth programming around agricultural skills, and a farmers market in a low-income Black neighborhood.