LatinaLista —
Campaign: Mil Abrazos Community Land Trust
Urban farm creates Land Trust to preserve land and affordable housing for future generations
Since 2012, Gaia Gardens, a nonprofit certified organic farm, has been operating on a leased parcel of land in Santa Fe. With the support of a large group of friends and neighbors, the farm’s operators have turned a parched and neglected landscape into a colorful urban oasis, cultivating an acre of land in the middle of town and galvanizing a powerful community around it.
This 3.5-acre rental property is now threatened with foreclosure. To preserve this unique piece of land, continue the farm’s educational mission and provide affordable housing for future generations, the team tending it intend to buy the farm property and hold it clear of real estate speculation. To do so, they have created the Mil Abrazos (One Thousand Hugs) Community Land Trust, a nonprofit, to purchase the property.
A Community Land Trust (CLT) is a nonprofit membership organization that owns and holds land “in trust” for the benefit of the community in order to provide permanently affordable access to land for such purposes as quality housing, sustainable agriculture, cottage industries and co-operatives, by forever removing the land from the speculative market.
The heart of a CLT is the creation of homes that remain permanently affordable, providing successful homeownership opportunities for generations of lower income families and individuals.
An agricultural CLT develops and exercises responsible and ecological practices which preserve, protect and enhance the land’s natural attributes, and serves as a model in land stewardship and community development by providing information, resources and expertise.
The campaign’s goal is $250,000 and ends on October 15.
