Our story
The Northern Manhattan Community Land Trust (NMCLT) emerged as a grassroots organizing effort in 2017.
We recognized the urgent need to take land off the speculative market in order to provide permanently affordable housing for our multi-racial, working-class community of Washington Heights and Inwood. The neighborhood of Inwood was facing a predatory rezoning by New York City at the time that since has increased pressures of displacement and caused hundreds of people to move out of our community.
The fight against the Inwood rezoning entered a new phase after it was approved in August 2018, with some community members challenging the city’s land use action in a court case that won at the Supreme Court and was overturned by the Appellate Division in summer 2020.
It was in the period after the August 2018 rezoning vote that the founders of the NMCLT got to work building the organization as an alternative to predatory development now taking place throughout Northern Manhattan.
Our mission
We seek to acquire land in order to:
Provide community control of the land to meet our Northern Manhattan community’s needs
Provide community-controlled, sustainably affordable housing
Build the social and economic capacity of community residents to own and manage their housing
Improve the collective life of the community by fostering the development of people, community, and cultural organizations; local economic development; and the environment
Anchor working class people, immigrants, and people of color against displacement.
