Policy and Advocacy

The CA Community Land Trust Network (CACLTN) is a membership organization representing the Community Land Trusts (CLTs) of California. We now have 60 nonprofit organization members spanning the state from Humboldt County in the North to San Ysidro, near the Mexican border, encompassing both rural and urban areas. The Network was founded to help the growing CLT movement collaborate on advocacy and to facilitate capacity building for emerging CLTs. Incorporated in 2018, the Network hired its first staff in 2021. Since incorporation, the Network’s board of directors has played a critical role in guiding the mission of the organization and supporting operations when necessary. The board is elected by our members and made up of staff, board members, and residents of our member CLTs. 

The Network’s mission is to support its member organizations and emerging CLTs in being an essential part of solving California’s affordability crisis by taking land and housing from the speculative market and placing them into permanent affordability through community ownership. Through our member organizations, the Network seeks to strengthen stability, ownership, and empowerment in California’s low-income communities and BIPOC communities.

 The Network maintains an active program of peer-to-peer capacity building, resource creation, and technical assistance to build the capacity of organizations committed to community ownership and permanently affordable housing for low-income households. We also have a robust policy and legislative advocacy program through which we seek to change the policy landscape to create more opportunities for CLTs and like-minded organizations to have an impact. Our advocacy has primarily focused on the state level where the Network has sponsored four successful bills since 2018, but also includes growing work at the local and regional levels.