Community Land Trust advocates from across the country are spotlighting Lexington this week, as a national convention dedicated to the topic gets underway downtown.
Community Land Trusts – or arrangements where low-income homebuyers purchase homes on land owned by a nonprofit trust – are nothing new, but Lexington’s innovative approach to relocating the Davis Bottom neighborhood away from the Newtown Pike Extension represents a first.
"I think this is the first time... that a federal administration, the Federal Highway Administration, was thinking about how to address the need for relocations if they were going to build this road and coming up with the community land trust was a perfect idea and we hope that more people will think of that," says Melora Hiller, executive director of the National Community Land Trust Network.
The result, Davis Park, is an affordable housing project featuring two single family homes, two duplexes, and two quadplexes. All residents are expected to move in by 2016.
Hiller says the project was the reason her group decided to bring the conference to Lexington this year – and the event will include the screening on a documentary on the neighborhood and a tour and cookout at the park.
