Community Land, Community Power: Combating Gentrification through the Community Land Trust Model

Abstract

In cities across America, communities face the destabilizing force of gentrification. But for many communities, gentrification is not a new phenomenon. The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) in Boston, Massachusetts, has led a decades-long fight against gentrification. This thesis explores the history of this neighborhood, and provides an analysis of one of the tools DSNI has used in this fight: a community land trust called Dudley Neighbors Incorporated (DNI). Community land trusts are an alternative model of land and housing allocation designed to provide long-term housing affordability and community control of land. Originating in the rural south during the Civil Rights Movement, they have increasingly been used in struggling urban neighborhoods vulnerable to gentrification. This thesis features historical research and interviews with DSNI and DNI administrators and residents to assess the efficacy of the community land trust model in combating gentrification. Ultimately, it finds that the model effectively combats gentrification within its existing boundaries, but faces challenges in generating a structural transformation of land allocation nationwide.