In 1994, Birdena Oakley-Carlisle watched builders construct her home from the ground up in Bloomington’s land trust neighborhood, Autumnview. She didn’t know then that the trust would disappear less than 20 years later.
As Bloomington’s new land trust approaches the building phase, community members have raised concerns about the land trust model, citing the failure of the previous program by Housing Solutions, Inc., said Nathan Ferreira.
Beginning in 1993, Monroe County Housing Solutions, Inc. — a freestanding nonprofit — built houses in a neighborhood on West RCA Park Drive and surrounding streets, Cardinal Court and Harmony Place, as part of a community land trust. But by 2010, the trust had dissolved, Ferreira, the city’s director of real estate development, said.
Bloomington and Monroe County residents who remember this effort find themselves asking a question: Will the Summit Hill Community Land Trust be different?
“I’m one of the few who have managed to hold on.”
Twenty-nine years ago, Oakley-Carlisle watched contractors pour the concrete footings for her new home. They had encouraged her to choose a lot next to a community park, and, considering her only roommate — a 165-pound Rottweiler — she agreed.
In the next few decades, Oakley-Carlisle would survive cancer, endure racism and get married. Even when she received offers on her home for its proximity to the park, Oakley-Carlisle held on. She lived in that house through it all, even after the organization that helped her afford it was no more.
The trust dissolving meant land would no longer be separate from the price of the home — a core principle of land trusts. Buyers enter land trust agreements because of the affordability offered by paying for a house, not the land. Many Autumnview residents took out second mortgages to purchase their lots.
Oakley-Carlisle took a different approach that helped her afford her payments. She sold the house back to the contractors, renting from them until she could repurchase it with the help of a Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher. She still lives there today.
Monroe County Housing Solutions Land Trust: What was it?
A Herald-Times article published July 31, 1994, said Autumnview would be Indiana’s first land trust subdivision where affordable housing for local families would be built.
According to Patrick Murray, who was a board member at Housing Solutions, there were a few phases of the plan. It began when RCA gifted land in southwest Bloomington to the city. Part of it would be used for what is now RCA Community Park, and the rest later became land trust housing.
The city used Community Development Block Grant funds to assemble the infrastructure for Autumnview, then worked with the newly formed nonprofit called Monroe County Housing Solutions, Inc. (later renamed Housing Solutions, Inc.).
Potential land trust homeowners who met income eligibility guidelines were required to take Housing and Neighborhood Development’s homeownership program, Murray said. They would then choose a lot, which the city deeded to the nonprofit. The first home was completed in 1993. Autumnview would eventually contain 29 houses.
“Under the trust, a person who meets income guidelines can purchase a $40,000 to $55,000 house,” The Herald-Times wrote in a 1994 story. “The land will be retained by the trust and the homeowner will lease it for 99 years for less than $100 a month, including money set aside for property taxes.”
After Autumnview’s completion, grant funds paid for more land. The land trust built 19 houses on Countryside Lane and Peoples Court and called the neighborhood Winterwood. Two more stand-alone houses were later built.
Jeff Stone, assistant director for Housing Solutions, Inc., praised the benefits of the land trust model in a 2003 publication for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The Bloomington land trust would complete its 50th home that year, he wrote.
“A home buyer who takes this opportunity is also providing opportunity for future home buyers. Buying a land trust home is building and buying with a sense of social conscience,” Stone wrote. “For everyone who has a hand in this — providing a glass of water to those who thirst — our cup runneth over.”
What went wrong?
In 1993, when it was created, land trusts were more common in large cities, Murray said. As Indiana’s first, and because it was based in a town of less than 65,000 at the time, the land trust struggled to secure reliable funding.
“Making it work was a challenge,” Murray wrote in an email. “It was not easy.”
To pay for staff, construction and administration, Housing Solutions charged a developer fee, or a surcharge on the sales price of each house. In the beginning, that provided some income. Housing Solutions fundraised annually, but its donor…
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