Somerville Community Land Trust is a 501(c)3 non-profit working to preserve housing affordability in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Our members and volunteers come from a variety of backgrounds. Some of us are very experienced with land trusts, and some of us are brand new, but all of us share the same goal: building community power and stability in Somerville.

Our story so far

In 2018, the City of Somerville convened an independent working group to investigate the community land trust model and the possibility of establishing a CLT in Somerville. In its final report, the working group recommended that the City support the startup of an independent, community-led land trust and provided suggestions about how such a CLT should operate. The City responded by providing some start-up resources, in the form of staff support and a grant for technical assistance. From there, Somerville Community Land Trust was born!

We spent our first few years as an almost entirely volunteer-run organization: getting the word out, meeting with our neighbors to learn more about community desires, incorporating as a non-profit, building relationships with other community and social justice groups in Somerville and state-wide, and developing our strategic plan for membership, fundraising, and land acquisition. In 2022 we hired our first full-time employee—an executive director—and acquired our first property.

2023 is poised to be a big year for SCLT. We’ll be welcoming our first CLT residents into our first permanently affordable units, we’ll hold our first elections for the first non-interim SCLT Board of Directors, and we’ll continue building our membership, fundraising, and strategizing for our next acquisition. We can’t wait to see what else the year brings!