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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.
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