Skip to content

Events

Building Community with Community Land Trusts

Establishing a Community Land Trust

Hosted By

Due to the overwhelming interest of the Building Community with Community Land Trusts webinar series, we are excited to announce a bonus fourth webinar! Jason Webb will rejoin us in this session to go into greater detail about how to set up a community land trust that will create more affordable housing options for your community. Anika Singh Lemar, a clinical professor of law from Yale Law School, will also be joining to share information about the legalities of setting up a land trust.

Community land trusts acquire and steward land and ensure the homes on the land remain affordable. They separate the ownership of land from the ownership of the homes or buildings, allowing people to purchase homes at lower prices while the CLT retains ownership of the land. This model helps prevent displacement, supports neighborhood stability, combats gentrification, and promotes development.

This webinar series is designed for those already involved with community land trusts, as well as those who are just beginning to explore the concept. The series will cover the basics of CLTs, explore how to manage them, examine different CLT models, and empower attendees to implement them. These webinars are hosted by the Housing For All Alliance, a statewide network of neighbors, resident leaders and organizations working together to build local power and advance housing justice in Connecticut. 

Speakers

  • Jason Webb Community & Technical Assistance Principal

    Grounded Solutions Network

  • Anika Singh Lemar Clinical Professor of Law

    Yale Law School

  • Alex Kolokotronis (Moderator)

Lemar anika singh headshot

Anika Singh Lemar is a clinical professor of law at Yale Law School where she teaches clinics that represent affordable housing developers, tenants, homeowners, small businesses, community development financial institutions, fair housing advocates, and cooperatives. Singh Lemar writes about land use, zoning, and housing. She served two terms as editor-in-chief of the American Bar Association’s Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law and has been a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institute’s Metropolitan Policy Project. She is currently a member of the board of New Haven Bank and president of the Connecticut Bar Foundation.

Prior to joining the Law School faculty, Singh Lemar practiced real estate law at a Connecticut law firm. She began her career as a law clerk for the Hon. Janet C. Hall of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut and, later, as a fellow and staff attorney at the Community Development Project of the Urban Justice Center (since renamed TakeRootJustice) in New York.

Singh Lemar received her B.A., cum laude, from Yale University and her J.D., cum laude, from New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar, a Dean’s Scholar, and a Robert McKay Scholar. While in law school, she received the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans and co-founded Next City.

Grounded Solutions JW Headshots 3

Jason Webb, Community and Technical Assistance Principle, Grounded Solutions Network

Jason has close to 40 years of experience in community organizing and revitalization. He was instrumental in the revitalization of a community in Roxbury Massachusetts called “Dudley Street,” as highlighted in the awarding winning documentaries Holding Ground, Gaining Ground, and the book called Streets of Hope. At Grounded Solutions, his primary area of work is to support nonprofit organizations and public agencies to explore, adopt and implement housing policies and programs with lasting affordability that advance racial equity and inclusion. Jason has led technical assistance engagements in over 50 communities such as Louisville, KY; Memphis, TN; Baltimore, MD; Durham, NC; and New Orleans, LA. He serves as the primary point of contact for Fee for Service engagements by providing the subject matter expertise.

Andrey haimin q2 Fyzn KJOQ unsplash

Hosted in partnership with

  • All In Alliances

    All In is a network of grassroots alliances in a growing number of Connecticut cities and towns, where neighbors work together across their differences to make it possible for everyone to have a home, food, and a voice in the decisions that affect their lives.