The Washington Post, Oct. 2 2019: Could A Community Land Trust Help Solve D.C.’s Gentrification Crisis?
For decades, the District’s fight against the economic and social forces of gentrification has been a rear-guard action: belated restrictions on development, overdue attention to the needs of working-class families, modest affordable housing complexes tucked into neighborhoods where rent has already skyrocketed.
But a new initiative taking shape east of the Anacostia River aims to take a different approach. A nonprofit is buying property in a way that insulates it from development pressure, creating islands of affordability for longtime Washingtonians and girding against gentrification before the process begins.
The Douglass Community Land Trust, incorporated last month after years of planning and neighborhood outreach, will bring an increasingly popular approach to preserving affordable housing to the nation’s capital, which according to a recent study has experienced the country’s most intense rate of gentrification.
