Home schooled author Henry George troubled by the coexistence of great wealth and great poverty side by side called attention to the poverty created by speculative hoarding of land access around cities and presented alternatives to private land holding in his bestselling book “Progress and Poverty” (1879).
1981 Community Land Cooperative of Cincinnati (CLCC)
This inner- city CLT was started by the West End Alliance of Churches and Ministries in 1980. One of its leaders was Maurice McCrackin, a Presbyterian minister whose church lay in the heart of the West End, Cincinnati’s oldest and most impoverished African American community. The CLCC was unlike all previous CLTs in applying the model for the first time to an urban environment.
Much greater in-depth information is available here:
http://cltnetwork.org/publications-library/Today
The essence of this historical review above is to illustrate that Community Land Trusts evolved through time from a need to meet unaddressed social problems.
Today, the goal of a CLT is understood to provide a safety net and bridge for those people most in need, spanning the gap between urban and rural problems and solutions. Going beyond the work of an organization like Homeless Shelters, the primary purpose and focus of CLTs is that they provide for the mainstreaming and permanent preservation of low income housing and opportunities by placing land in public trust for perpetuity. “Once invested, forever kept in service.”
Inventory of Local Networks and Resources
In 2012 the Agricultural Census ranked Butte County as 28th in the nation and 19th in California for production of crops including greenhouse and nursery.
*Link* CSU Chico University Farm was ranked #1 for sustainability by College Values Online, while The Butte College make the list at #30.
*Link* and The Jesus Center leads an Organic Farm Project
The
extensive award winning work and research carried out by the University based Center for Healthy Communities serves 19 counties in Northern California and its programs are largely garden and agriculturally based.
Both CSU Chico and Butte College emphasize Sustainability in all their education programs, providing both education opportunities and student resources as interns and volunteers for a wide range of projects from developing
Makers Clubs to agricultural innovation. Sustainability Offices in both college and university infrastructure are focused on collaborative project coordination between departments.
The Chico Saturday Certified Farmers Market was ranked #5 in the world by
EssentialTravel.co.uk. There are approximately 10 seasonal markets run by 5 different community organizations in Butte County alone plus two year-round markets in Chico, all enabled to accept EBT (foodstamps). (Oroville Hospital runs one Cert. Farmers Market. Enloe ran one for several years.)
The Opportunity
Besides the ongoing strain that states of homelessness place on a society, the interest in
outdoor or wilderness child care and
elder care,
green burial and the comingling of the young, the old, in natural agrarian environments, the growing demand for paths to carbon sequestration in soils, the rich depth of natural resources, experience, educational opportunities, technology all conspire to an astounding social growth potential of an agrarian response through a Community Land Trust in California’s Sacramento River Watershed.
A community that combines these land, education, interest, and public service resources through affordable access to shelter and land delivers opportunity to those of limited resources to learn and grow their lives and business in strangely organic, interesting and creative ways and will expose Legacy CLT to a national and worldwide role for positive, long term, non violent, community based, change.
Current Programs & Achievements
Current active startup and organizational networking partners are:
The Disability Action Center
The Children’s Education Fund
Legacy CLT is actively seeking greatly expanded:
networking partners
organizational partners
pledges of land, money, or volunteer services through
Our Website
Estate Planners
Kickstarter
North Valley Community Foundationwww.hOurworld.org
Apprenticeships
Internships
Our own public information outreach program
at a pivotal time,
Legacy Community Land Trust is:
joined in land-based work, celebration and cultural tradition:
to understand that human beings belong on the planet and therefore obligated to act like it
to study & teach the intricate complicated and interwoven patterns of the environment
to imbue our forest, farm & garden soils with mineralized and organic carbon
to create our work within the margins of our understanding of nature
to reduce carbon emissions through deployment of renewables
to see the old, the weak, the sick, & the troubled, succeed
to be stewards of healthy air, soil, water & living systems
to emancipate & celebrate local food self sufficiency
to make real, affordable permanent shelter
to live, create, die & rot without waste
to attune with & return to nature
to eradicate homelessness,
to demonstrate peace
to feel love
“a little bit of everything.”
