CCC Mission & Model

The CLT Capacity Collaborative or “CCC” is a growing cohort of Community Land Trusts (SFCLT, Care CLT, PAHALI, CLAM, Bolinas CLT, Common Space CLT, Two Valleys CLT, NCLT, Richmond Land, and South Bay CLT) in the SF Bay Area and beyond committed to working together to leverage our shared capacity and resources to pursue our common CLT missions. 

Every CLT has its own local character, but the common CLT mission we all share is to advance a housing market and economy that works for low-income and BIPOC communities through the democratic, resident controlled community ownership of land and housing.  We do this specifically by stopping displacement, creating community ownership, and homeownership opportunities for those of low-moderate income families and particularly people of color. 

The CCC, through a collective governance structure and shared infrastructure, will increase efficiencies by reducing the cost of our operations, enabling us to scale and make greater impact in the communities we serve in the Bay and beyond. 

Currently, the majority of CLTs have less than 5 staff people. This makes it difficult to do what we do best in organizing tenants and stopping displacement, educating tenants on different models of community ownership, and creating homeownership opportunities.

Many areas of the work we do are highly technical and therefore the cost of labor can be incredibly high, making it difficult for small developers like CLTs to scale and grow. Areas like real estate development, law, and finance are particularly expensive in a labor market like the SF Bay Area. By adopting the model of a collective shared infrastructure- a “central server hub-spoke model”- we are able to consolidate these expensive functions into one back office hub, which serves individual spoke CLTs, thus making our work more sustainable and scalable. 

We believe that every city should have a CLT to stop displacement and create homeownership opportunities, but we also believe that each CLT should not have to bear the burden of raising astronomical amounts of philanthropic and government dollars to sustain itself. 

The Benefits of the CCC:

1. Technical assistance through shared governance: Interaction between the back office and spokes will be an educational and collaborative process through which individual CLT staff will be trained in the same technical language as back office staff who will provide decision support and implementation for important decisions affecting local projects in order to ensure that the work remains community-driven and local.

2. Reduction in the cost of operations through the economies of scale: Individual CLTs will be able to operate with a much lighter local staff with the most expensive functions centralized into a back office which operates more cost effectively by taking advantage of the economies of scale. 

3. Optimized systems/processes to ensure high quality output: centralized back office allows us to collectively invest the time & resources needed to build out systems/processes for all the different programs. This ensures the work is high quality & all important aspects of a functional area are accounted for.

4. Free CLTs to do the real work of community ownership: Allow CLTs to focus on “what we do best”- community organizing and the stewardship of community ownership - rather than the technocratic business of real estate development and asset management.

5. Ensure the sustainability of the work for CLT employees, each member CLT, and, even more, each project: the rate of burnout/turnover in this work is high due to lack of staff capacity. Furthermore, the loss of one key staff member can lead to organizational crisis, which can then lead to the lack of oversight over projects, causing them to become socially and/or financially unsustainable over time. A shared infrastructure would ensure sustainability for employees, the organization, and the projects as member CLTs will be able to rely on a backbone shared infrastructure for support, stability, and resources.

6. Create greater access to financing: CLTs can leverage a shared infrastructure for access to capital for their projects and to grow their organizations. Currently, many lending institutions and philanthropy organizations see CLTs as a risky venture given their current capacity, particularly given the professionalized and complex nature of the work; however, a shared and stable infrastructure will hopefully reduce the risk for these actors, thereby allowing more capital to flow into this work.

7. Leverage the economies of scale to collectively negotiate financially & politically: By acting collectively, we will present ourselves as a “bigger client” for vendors and negotiate more effectively for inputs into the maintenance of our buildings (e.g., purchase insurance for our properties, sourcing general contractors for our projects), as well as, in becoming more important players in Sacramento to lobby for policies, as well as, funding that benefits our work and our communities.

8. Catalyze more CLTs: Through a shared infrastructure we hope to stimulate the creation of many more CLTs (rather than less) given that each is able to operate more inexpensively focusing on the hire of tenant and community organizers and stewardship managers, rather than technical experts in real estate development, law and finance.

9. Staff support & resident development: support the staff and resident development of CLTs, including specifically focusing on initiatives to support resident and community employment with expertise in their community

Membership in the CCC

Organizations committed to developing housing through the CLT model are eligible to apply regardless of their staff size or status of their non-profit incorporation. The CCC welcomes emerging CLTs, as well as those beyond the San Francisco Bay Area extending to Humboldt in the north and Fresno in the Central-South. Membership in the CCC is decided by a majority vote of its members. Membership in the CCC requires attendance of its monthly meetings by preferably the same representative each time. *Membership in the CCC does not guarantee access to the fee for service programs offered by SFCLT as this may be constrained by a smaller service geography and number of clients depending on SFCLT’s capacity.

Role of SFCLT’s Fee-for-Service Program

San Francisco Community Land Trust (SFCLT) is creating a fee-for-service program comprising six programs that will be available to the CCC and other small BIPOC non-profit housing developers across the region starting from 2025. These programs will be developed and launched in a three phased approach which will be iterative, dialogic, and working at the speed of trust with the CCC and our respective SFCLT membership: 1) creation of SFCLT in-house programs in areas currently not in-house (i.e., Brokerage & Property Management) (2024); 2) SFCLT provides a fee-for-service program for the CCC and small BIPOC led non-profit developers which is initially free and eventually offered at 20% below market rate (2025-2028); 3) the CCC advances a hub-spoke model for CLTs (2028).

Fee for Service Programs: 

• Real Estate Pro Forma Development 

• Asset Management

• Construction Management

• Real Estate Brokerage Services

• Property Management 

• Co-op Education