A non-profit community land trust formed by and for Altadena residents
WHAT WE’RE WORKING TOWARD
Our mission is to prevent displacement and to strengthen the social fabric of an historically Black and multi-racial community of working families and neighbors through community ownership of land.
The Altadena Community Land Trust (ACLT) seeks to help replace Altadena’s stock of naturally occurring affordable housing that was lost in the Eaton Fire. We believe in the right of Altadenans to return to their neighborhoods through renting, homeownership, and cooperative housing. By building permanently affordable housing, ACLT will be able to help stabilize our town’s housing market to support the return of Altadenans displaced both by the Eaton Fire and by pre-fire gentrification.
PHASE ONE
Critical Response Projects
In Phase One of our work, we are exclusively focused on two vital efforts: helping to stabilize our neighbors who are at the highest risk of displacement via a first-in-the-nation direct cash assistance program, and moving with urgency to acquire and build a bungalow court pilot project of four homes that will serve as proof of concept for how we begin to replace Altadena’s lost stock of naturally-occurring affordable housing that was home to 10,000+ renters and tenants who currently have limited or no pathways back.
Altadena cannot rely on market forces to guide a fair and equitable recovery.
We believe that rebuilding and relief dollars should function as an investment in permanent affordability in Altadena, and should directly benefit Altadena residents.
Our objective is not just to rebuild lost housing, but to restructure ownership and stewardship so that Altadena’s recovery strengthens long-term housing stability for generations to come, rather than accelerating displacement.
We know that without deliberate and urgent intervention, the market is likely to:
Rebuild single-family homes at price points inaccessible to most pre-fire Altadena residents
Eliminate virtually all remaining naturally-occurring pre-fire rental housing
Rebuild pre-fire rent-stabilized housing with units priced at double or triple pre-fire levels and inaccessible to Altadena residents
Increase investor ownership of Altadena and speculative land turnover
ACLT’s role is to take land off the speculative market, and steward that land in service of permanent affordability for residents. We are working alongside trusted local organizations like Altadena Tenants Union, the Eaton Fire Collaborative, and others as one spoke in a larger wheel of short, medium, and long-term housing stabilization efforts.
We believe that community recovery requires all of us and should include all of us.
Recovery work 100% led by Altadena residents, for Altadena residents: fire survivors, homeowners, renters, and tenants.
