The ReAL (Residents Acquiring Land) Edgemere Community Land Trust emerged from decades of planning, grassroots organizing, and storm recovery efforts in the Rockaways. In 2021, a group of longtime Edgemere residents, including homeowners, gardeners, and community advocates, came together with a bold proposition: the community itself should lead the development of affordable, resilient housing in their neighborhood.

In 2022, through a competitive process, the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) selected ReAL Edgemere CLT to steward 119 city-owned lots in the neighborhood. The selection marked a significant victory for community-led development in Edgemere, positioning residents to take a leading role in shaping their neighborhood's future.

Throughout 2023, the CLT conducted a series of community workshops to engage residents in discussions about housing needs, design preferences, and climate resilience strategies. These conversations revealed several key priorities: the need for deeper subsidies to account for flood insurance costs, desire for housing designs that can withstand future storms, and the importance of maintaining Edgemere's low-density character.

Background

Edgemere's history has marked both by cycles of boom and periods of disinvestment. Originally developed as a vacation destination in the late 1800s, many of the neighborhood’s bungalows fell into tax arrears and in rem foreclosure between the 1960s and 1990s before being cleared by the city and languishing for years as vacant lots.

The devastating impact of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 prompted a reimagining of Edgemere's future. Through an 18-month community planning process that engaged over 400 residents, the city developed the Resilient Edgemere Community Plan in 2017. This plan established several community priorities including protecting the neighborhood from flooding, creating resilient housing while maintaining the area's low-density character, and increasing neighborhood amenities. In response to resident advocacy and concerns about the quantity of undeveloped lots in the neighborhood, the Resilient Edgemere Plan also included a proposal to convey over 100 vacant lots to a resident-controlled community land trust.

The CLT model offers a powerful framework for maintaining permanent affordability while building community wealth. Similar to New York’s Mitchell-Lama cooperatives, CLTs create homeownership opportunities for low- and moderate-income families who might otherwise be priced out of the market. However, unlike Mitchell-Lama buildings which can opt out of affordability restrictions after a certain number of years, CLTs maintain permanent affordability by separating ownership of land from ownership of homes. The CLT retains ownership of the land and leases it to homeowners through long-term ground leases that ensure homes remain affordable when resold.

Next Steps

Currently, the CLT is working to translate these community priorities into concrete housing development plans. The organization is selecting a development partner that shares its commitment to community-led development and climate resilience. As the city’s largest resident-led effort to steer the new construction of affordable homes, the CLT aims to create over a hundred new housing units across 32 initial development sites in the next decade, with designs that respond to Edgemere's unique environmental challenges and with a process that builds community capacity throughout.