Chinatown CLT’s first permanently affordable preserved homes!

First CLT homebuyer closings this summer!

Mayor Kim Janey, Rep. Aaron Michlewitz, City Councilor Ed Flynn and other officials joined the Chinatown Community Land Trust and first-time homebuyers at a Welcome Home event on August 16th.

In the face of an economic and displacement crisis, with properties rapidly changing hands, Community Land Trusts offer individual families some of the wealth building opportunities and the security of ownership as well as community stability for generations to come.

Chinatown CLT is reclaiming row houses that had been emptied by speculative investors to become short-term rental buildings, as is returning them to be homes for working class families. Community organizing was key to reclaiming these row houses, with hundreds of community member signing petitions about row house preservation, marching for short term rental regulation, attending zoning hearings and press conferences that created a groundswell of support for these small property acquisitions.

“We are a family with two young children who have been living in Chinatown since 2016,” said new homeowner Meidan Lin.  “We can now have a stable home for our children’s education, medical care, our jobs—we feel a sense of security in our heart.”

Rowhouse preservation is part of how Chinatown is using historic and cultural preservation as an anti-displacement strategy.  In addition to reclaiming individual properties, community members are organizing to call for a Row House Protection Area in the zoning code, a subdistrict category that exists in neighborhoods like the South End but not in Chinatown, which was not recognized as a residential neighborhood for 150 years.