Jump to >> Supporting Permanently Affordable Housing | Aging Cooperatively | Legal Case Studies | Legal Services | Legal Guides, Toolkits, and Templates | News and Blog Posts | Videos

We develop resources to make it easier to envision how to build a world where every person has a home.

Supporting Permanently Affordable Housing

In this video, the Northern California Land Trust, Oakland Community Land Trust, and the Law Center cover the legal nuts and bolts of permanently affordable/shared equity housing, including different legal models and funding mechanisms to remove housing from the speculative market.

We're also incubating the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative, a new model of collective land ownership that mobilizes community capital to preserve affordable and democratically controlled housing and commercial spaces. Check out our template bylaws and articles of incorporation for EB PREC, and our Structural and Legal Guide on How to Start a Permanent Real Estate Cooperative. 

Aging Cooperatively

We believe that elders deserve to live with housing security in a community of their choosing and retain self-determination for as long as possible. That's why we brought on a Borchard Fellow for Law & Aging, Julie Gilgoff, to help realize this vision. To find out more, please visit our Aging Cooperatively webpage. 

Legal Case Studies

The Law Center is creating detailed legal case studies of communities and housing solutions that emphasize sharing, affordability, and sustainability. This work looks particularly at models of shared housing, including cohousing communities, ecovillages, and housing cooperatives.  The legal case studies are designed to allow other groups to replicate existing housing models. Click here for one legal case study by the Sustainable Economies Law Center.

Legal Services

Our Center provides one-time legal advice for sustainable housing projects at our Resilient Communities Legal Cafe. Occasionally, we develop longer-term relationships with clients to create particularly unique and replicable housing models, though our capacity to do this is quite limited.

Legal Guides, Toolkits, and Templates

 Legal tools to help you liberate land: Seeds of Land Return Toolkit (2022) 
 How to Start a Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (2022) (structural and legal guide)
 Cohousing Toolkit (2016)
 How to Transfer Real Estate Without Professionals (2022) (bite-sized legal guide)
 How to Get Property Tax Welfare Exemption (2022) (bite-sized legal guide)
 Nonprofit or Cooperative for Radical Real Estate Projects? (handout to help you figure out if you should form a nonprofit or housing coop)
 Sharing Agreement for Co-housing Projects (contract template with cartoons)
Sample Rematriation Easement (2022) (template)
 Sample Cartoon Bylaws of East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (sample bylaws)

News and Blog Highlights

📝 Resources for Radical Home Sellers | May 23, 2023 | blog by Janelle Orsi
📝 Remembering When Land Was There For Us | May 18, 2023 | blog by Janelle Orsi
Sharing Patches of Aliveness | October 17, 2022 | blog by Janelle Orsi
 Social housing is the only way forward | January 8, 2020 | blog by Chris Tittle
 Seeding a 100-year vision for land justice in the Bay Area| April 2019 | blog by Chris Tittle
 Legal structures for social transformation | January 2019 | blog by Janelle Orsi
 Stopping displacement in Oakland through cooperative solutions | May 2018 | blog by Chris Tittle
 Impact Story: People of Color Sustainable Housing Network | May 2017 | blog by Chris Tittle
 Homeownership is dead! Long live the permanent real estate cooperative! | August 2016 | blog by Janelle Orsi
 Community development and the commons | February 2016 | blog by Chris Tittle
 A slow homes manifesto | April 2014 | blog by Janelle Orsi

Videos

 Part 1 of Radical Homeownership (webinar)
 Part 2 of Radical Homeownership (MCLE)
 The Pathologies of Homeownership (short cartoon)