From Lowry, to Loveland, to GES, the model for-sale houses on leased land is being looked to as a crisis response
By Joe Rubino | The Denver Post
As a nationwide affordable housing crisis continues to inflict pain on renters and would-be homebuyers across the Centennial State, a tool that gets little public attention has emerged as a key means to get more people into homes they can afford.
This tool also helps stabilize neighborhoods struggling to deal with increased property values and an influx of new money.
For 15 years, land trusts have been quietly helping people buy homes in Denver’s Lowry, Cole and Speer neighborhoods through the nonprofit Colorado Community Land Trust.
Land trusts, typically 501c3 nonprofit organizations, work like this: They buy and refurbish homes or bring on developers to build homes on land they own. They then sell those homes to income-qualified buyers (usually making 80 percent or less of the area median income) at deep discounts. That’s according to Jane Harrington, the longtime executive director of the land trust.
