Unusual Alliance: Land Trusts Forge Ties to Housing Groups

Supporters of land conservation and proponents of low-cost housing are usually at odds over land use, but now they are increasingly looking for common ground.

Literally.

Especially in fast-growing cities and towns, where natural areas are threatened and the ability of low-income residents to pay for a home is limited, a tiny but growing number of projects around the country are looking to pair land protection with moderate real-estate development.

Under a typical arrangement, several charities work together, sometimes with help from a government agency, to acquire land and come up with a plan to split it, building low-cost housing on a small portion, and preserving the rest for its natural, environmental, or recreational value.

Among such projects in the works:

• On Mount Desert Island, Me., where a busy tourist industry and a growing number of second-home buyers are pushing local housing prices out of the reach of year-round residents, a land-trust group is working with two housing organizations on two projects to share land.

• In Santa Barbara, Calif., a local land trust is in discussion with a housing organization and the area’s major avocado producers to fashion a deal that would preserve farmland and, at the same time, provide a place for workers to live.

• In the burgeoning suburbs of Burlington, Vt., a local land trust and a housing group are figuring a way to buy a 50-acre property. A mobile-home park now on the land would be maintained, while the rest of the land, which runs along the La Platt River, would be kept in its natural state.

“More people are thinking about making these kinds of dual-mission projects happen,” says Kendra J. Briechle, who wrote a new report on the subject for the Conservation Fund, a national land-preservation group, in Arlington, Va. “As the population increases, the trend is accelerating.”

60 Projects

The first collaboration involving a housing and an environmental project was started about 30 years ago, and probably 60 more have developed since then, Ms. Briechle estimates.

Most of those projects, however, have happened in the last seven years, says Ms. Briechle, and the Conservation Fund intends to capitalize on that nascent interest. The group plans to study the potential for cooperation between land trusts and housing groups, sponsoring the first national conference on the subject next fall.

Already some housing organizations are demonstrating growing interest in the environmental movement, incorporating more environmentally friendly building practices in their work (The Chronicle, October 26). A national housing group and one of the country’s biggest environmental organizations, National Resources Defense Council, have even gotten together to develop standards that low-cost housing groups can use to be sure they incorporate environmentally friendly building practices into their work.

But cooperation between conservation and housing groups is much trickier when it comes to land use, since the groups have often found themselves on opposite sides of the issue.

Housing proponents have traditionally blamed conservationists for taking land off the market, thus driving up real-estate prices, while conservationists have long criticized housing groups for not taking into account the need to preserve valuable natural lands.

Necessity may soon bring the two sides together more frequently, say advocates of housing and environmental collaboration. Where real-estate prices are high, and land available for either preservation or development is scarce, unlikely partners may decide to forge alliances.

A local public-housing agency in Maine will start building this spring about 30 small single-family homes on a portion of a former 200-acre farm on Mount Desert Island. The housing authority bought the land from a businessman who had run a local restaurant and was distraught that most of the employees could not afford to live on the island. The businessman wanted his land to be used to increase housing options for the area’s lower-income, year-round residents.

But the housing authority couldn’t pay the whole $2-million sale price, and since much of the property was scenic shorefront and biologically significant wetlands, the agency called on the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, a local land-trust group, to share the cost and the land. The houses will be built on about 30 acres, with the rest preserved as open space.

Learning from that deal, the land trust is now also talking to the Island Housing Trust, a low-cost housing group in Bar Harbor, Me., about sharing a 35-acre parcel of land the trust bought two years ago. The land group would sell to the housing group at a below-market rate about five acres that are split from the rest of the shoreline property by a road.

David MacDonald, the Maine Coast Heritage Trust’s director of land protection, says the five acres do not have as much conservation value as the rest of the property, and are a reasonable choice for development since they have access to the town’s sewer and water utilities. His organization is interested in the sale, he says, because it will both make some money and provide more affordable homes in the area.

“There’s a commitment to broader community and social concerns in looking at this deal,” Mr. MacDonald says. “We are not saying we’ll solve those concerns, or even put them under our mission, but we do recognize that we are not working in a vacuum when we are trying to fulfill our own mission.”

Mr. MacDonald and other officials at both land and housing organizations emphasize that the dual arrangements are not going to work on most properties. But, as Mr. MacDonald says, where there may be room for cooperation, the groups “need to be open to exploring that instead of running the other way.”

Angry Reaction

Sometimes, though, even when charities can work out a way to collaborate, donors, local residents, and others might protest the idea. In the San Juan Islands, located in Washington State’s Puget Sound, a local land trust, bowing to pressures from supporters, neighbors, and a county agency, in October dropped plans to share a tiny corner of a nearly 1,600-acre property with a local low-cost housing group.

The San Juan Preservation Trust, which this year raised $6-million toward the $18.5-million purchase price of an area called Turtleback Mountain, promised to set aside a handful of the property’s acres for a low-cost housing site.

Tim Seifert, the trust’s executive director, says his group considered raising some of the $6-million by selling 160 acres of Turtleback to a developer, but rejected that plan over fears that a number of big, new homes would be an unwelcome intrusion on the hillside and run counter to the area’s conservation needs.

Instead, the trust decided to carve out a much smaller piece of the property in a much less visible and low-lying area and offer that to a low-cost housing group.

“We thought that we would make up the money we wouldn’t get from the sale in incremental support and interest from donors who appreciated the affordable-housing angle and the fact that the development would be much much more limited,” Mr. Seifert says.

The plan did indeed garner a lot of support and money — including a $500,000 pledge from an anonymous donor who said he was attracted to the project’s dual mission to preserve land and provide affordable homes — but it also received a good deal of backlash.

Some critics said that no matter how worthy a goal, increasing low-cost housing in the area was not part of the trust’s mission, and would subvert the group’s primary aim: the preservation of wild landscapes.

Mr. Seifert says he also heard from farmers with neighboring land, worried about the impact of development in the area; and from county officials who raised zoning issues and concerns that government money earmarked for open space and committed to the purchase of Turtleback Mountain not be used for other purposes.

Mr. Seifert says that the low-cost-housing arrangement was struck from the deal and the Turtleback Mountain property, bought last month, will be preserved intact. But, he says, the trust will not shy away from collaborating with housing groups in the future.

“We learned from this experience,” Mr. Seifert says. “We can say that affordable housing is not in our mission, but that clearly there may be a time — like when we just don’t have the funds to get a property ourselves — when working for the benefit of affordable housing would advance our mission.”