How Nashville’s community land trust aims to preserve housing affordability and build generational wealth

An affordable housing initiative launched a little over four years ago has recently finished its first property built for low- and moderate-income buyers. Nashville’s fledgling community land trust is aiming to create permanent affordable housing and help families build equity.

So what’s a community land trust?

The way it works in Nashville’s case is by pairing money from the city’s Barnes Housing Trust Fund with a non-profit housing group. They’re developing homes that they’ll sell to families who make 80% of the area median income or less.

But the trust will still own the land underneath, to keep them affordable long-term.

“And that way…developers can’t come in and buy up the land, and you know, those type of issues that the community, that they’re facing right now,” said Alisha Haddock of The Housing Fund, the nonprofit leading this effort.

She said the model also helps families build generational wealth through home ownership. That’s becoming more difficult to break into as housing prices in Nashville skyrocket. A recent report from Greater Nashville Realtors found that the median price for a single family home ballooned from $344,920 in January 2021 to $425,000 in the same month this year.

When the homeowners in the land trust are ready to sell, they receive a portion of the equity, depending on how long they’ve lived there.

What’s next for the program?

After some pandemic delays, Haddock said four of the 15 properties are in various states of progress.

“It sounds really small right now, but just think within the last less than a year, we have those four homes,” Haddock said. “And so imagine what we could do, without COVID being a factor.”

Haddock hopes this community land trust can become a bigger part of Nashville’s affordable housing strategy. Programs in other states have helped hundreds of people become homeowners.

Correction: This story originally gave incorrect information about how equity is split between Community Land Trust homeowners and The Housing Fund when homes are sold. Homeowners receive a portion of the equity depending on how long they’ve lived in their home, not an equal split.