How can community land trusts advance land justice, expand affordable housing, and give communities a greater voice in shaping their futures? In this episode of The Common Wealth, host Dana Thompson talks with Angeline Lawrence, an urban planner, business strategist, and community wealth-building practitioner, about community land trusts and their potential to strengthen communities in Detroit, in the state of Michigan, and across the country. Angeline discusses her personal connection to Detroit’s foreclosure crisis and her documentary, No Place Like Home: A Detroit Story of Loss, Learning, and Land Justice. Their conversation explores the connection between CLTs and land justice, the experiences of people living in community land trusts, and the opportunities and challenges involved in expanding community ownership and affordable housing. Listen to a compelling conversation about land, housing, community ownership, and the role residents can play in shaping the future of their communities.
How can community land trusts advance land justice, expand affordable housing, and give communities a greater voice in shaping their futures?
In this episode of The Common Wealth, host Dana Thompson talks with Angeline Lawrence, an urban planner, business strategist, and community wealth-building practitioner, about community land trusts and their potential to strengthen communities in Detroit, in the state of Michigan, and across the country.
Angeline discusses her personal connection to Detroit’s foreclosure crisis and her documentary, No Place Like Home: A Detroit Story of Loss, Learning, and Land Justice. Their conversation explores the connection between CLTs and land justice, the experiences of people living in community land trusts, and the opportunities and challenges involved in expanding community ownership and affordable housing.
Listen to a compelling conversation about land, housing, community ownership, and the role residents can play in shaping the future of their communities.
There's a saying among the CLTs that the CLTs is a developer that never leaves. Welcome to the Commonwealth. Lively and informative conversations with change makers and thought leaders, from grassroots leaders to policy makers about what's actually working to build fair, thriving urban communities in Detroit and beyond. I'm your host, Dana Thompson.
Angeline Lawrence is a Detroit based producer, urban planner, and community economic development strategist, and the creative lead behind the documentary film No Place Like Home A Detroit Story of Loss, learning and Land Justice. Additionally, she's the founder of the Entrepreneur Exchange Group, where she consults with entrepreneurs, non-profits, and community based organizations to develop business and strategic plans and growth strategies. Angeline, thanks for joining me today. Thanks for having me. I know you are a double wolverine. You went to the University of Michigan undergrad and to the planning school. What piqued your interest in planning? I think trying to recreate where I grew up, uh, as a kid, I grew up in North Carolina and the Blue Ridge Mountains, and we had the downtown and I could walk from my grandparent's house all the way downtown. You know, sidewalks were everywhere. And so when I came to Michigan in the tenth grade, it was very hard not to be able to walk and have the same freedom. And so I was always looking at the way, um, neighborhoods were laid out, um, you know, where the stores were, what was the distance? Um, just trying to understand how cities were really created. And in undergrad, I took a class with Professor James Shaffer. He taught on basically how major cities are developed, and then how the smaller cities around them are. And he likened it into like a donut. So like Detroit is that center of that donut. And as pressures and development, um, radiate out the inner ring, we call them inner ring suburbs that surround the city make up the doughnut. So you have these pressures where the populations are moving from the city out to the inner ring suburbs. And then as those areas are built up or the market changes, then they're moving back, which is what we're seeing. So there's that pressure going back to the center, where you have people moving back into the inner cities. They want the city life. They don't want to deal with maintenance. They want to be closer to cultural and sports activities. So we're seeing that in real time as that donut is Um contracting and expanding, um, within my little, uh, city where we live now, the demographics are changing. You know, you see people from different religions, different faiths, different ethnicities. And when we first moved there, it was, it was mostly African American. You know, so you see these changes. And that's the doughnut that I learned about in that class. And it just made me want to dig more into it, something that was already kind of in me to kind of bring that out more. And so, you know, my dream was to come back and help the city. Mhm. And, um, so that's really how I got into urban planning. So you moved from Hendersonville, North Carolina, to Detroit? Yes. Okay. Um, in tenth grade. Mhm. Okay. I was actually born in Detroit. Okay. Um, my parents split up, and then, um, my mother and I moved to North Carolina. Okay. Then they kind of reconciled and we moved back. I shouldn't say the decade, but you could say the decade. Michael Jackson was a thing. I put it that way. The eighties. Yeah. So it was a great decade. Yeah. So I went to Western High School and, um, it was a great time in Detroit at at that moment to see, you know, black businesses, thriving neighborhoods. And then when I went away to school and came back, things had started to change. In what way? To me, you didn't have the same amount of businesses, like when I grew up and would visit Detroit, we had Trapper's Alley. And when I came back, I was like, well, what happened to Sally? Yes. You know, I love Trapper's Alley. So, um, for our audience, what was Trapper's Alley and where is it? So Trapper's Alley is in Greektown and is now a casino. It was this multi-use commercial. It had art, it had shopping, it had food courts. Anything you wanted downtown. And that's how I grew up seeing Detroit. But when I moved back, things were starting to change. And then when I came back from school, they had really changed. Um, it was just thinking, well, how can I help my city get back to where it was and be better? Can you talk about what that change looked like in the neighborhoods in the city? It was a majority black city, right? So a lot of the businesses were black owned. A lot of those businesses either sold out or they, they closed. Um, some were, were bought by other people and then they would just go away. We had banks and then we didn't have banks like the banks like really important branches. Mhm. Um, we still had like a service credit union Service Center, but the actual banking institutions were gone. Wow. What inspired you to work with small businesses? That's another great question. As I was working on projects with the city, reviewed Tiger Stadium and Comerica Park, and in each of these major projects, small businesses were always displaced. And so just as an area was trying to get established, here comes big development. And yes, we need big development, but we also need small businesses. And so it really led me on a path to try to help our small businesses, as I was a planner with the Planning Commission and we worked under the City Council. I would always get a lot of calls about resources, about loans, about funding or grants for small businesses. And it just led me to dig a little deeper. I believe it was two thousand and eight. Uh, black enterprise, which is a black owned or black led media company that focuses on entrepreneurship. They actually had their conference in Detroit, and it inspired me to think about, well, how can we help our small businesses, um, to position themselves to grow? Around that time, we were dealing with the Great Recession. I used that as an inspiration to think about, well, what can we do with dollars that we have? Um, since we are, since Detroit is a entitlement city, that means they get so much allocated from HUD through Community Development block grant. And so there was a small amount that we could reprogram. And I was able to think about, well, what if we did a micro loan fund? There was already a microloan fund that existed. They were in Tech Town and they were also in in Ann Arbor. They did provide small loans to individuals that had an idea, and they weren't as strict and stringent as a conventional business loan. And so, um, trying to tie those two together, I was able to, to get a colleague and I, we presented at city council and he, um, he's no longer with us, uh, the late, um, Anthony Jeffrey, he brought up Black Wall Street because he grew up in Oklahoma and everybody just perked up and he just started going in about Black Wall Street and the importance of business ownership. And we got that money, um, reallocated. We were never able to get the money pulled down, um, drawn down. So and all that jargon with government. Sometimes the money will be in your budget in one pot, but it has to be moved over or drawn down by another department. If they refuse to do that, then you can't spend the money. It'll still be in your budget. And that's what ended up happening. So long story short, since that didn't get to happen, then I just kind of went out on my own and was looking for other organizations. And from there it was a journey of my own business and working with a nonprofit to start like an association. Fast forward a couple of years ago, I worked at Techtown and was a part of their organization and providing trainings and workshops for small business owners. So it came full circle, but it was very frustrating when you see the resources that are there and you can't, for whatever reason, get people to understand the need to deploy them. Do you have a sense of why? Politics and not necessarily the type that you vote? Sometimes it's just office Inter-department city. You know people, right? Right. Today, it's so wonderful to see they have a Detroit startup fund, you know, that they just launched last year. And it's sometimes it takes you longer to get to the things that you know is needed and disappointing. But it, it planted a seed to, to grow. Absolutely. That's what I was thinking that you yourself are very entrepreneurial. The fact that you would try to make sure this funding is available for small businesses while you're a city planner, because you see the need and you are, you know, one of the early people who recognize the importance of small businesses. And that's how you and I met. Yes. When you were writing for the Detroit Black Pages, and you came and spoke to me about the small business legal services that I was providing to, to businesses at Wayne State University when I was there at Wayne State. So from that work with small businesses and understanding the importance of entrepreneurship, is there a connection with your passion and interest and background in entrepreneurship and community land trusts? Yes. So my time and working with small businesses at Techtown, I kept hearing some of the problems that they were experiencing in terms of trying to grow their companies, retaining workers, not necessarily employees, but workers. And so I remember we had a, a black history event and it was during Covid and we had it online, but we had a speaker who was from Chicago who had her and her husband had taken a year to only buy any everything in their household from a black owned business. And she she wrote a book about it. So during that time, they also talked about other models like cooperatives. Cooperatives was always in the back of my mind. Um, I remember in Detroit when I first got here, my dad, that was one of the first things my dad showed me. He was like, these are cooperative owned, um, apartment buildings that black people own. It was like right downtown. So that was major for black people to own actual residences near downtown. And they're still there today. So that was a seed. So I was like, okay, I gotta get back to that. And so I had some time and I kept digging into the cooperative piece, collective ownership. It went from trying to help small businesses grow to, okay, well, how do we really build? How do we help them build wealth? How do we help impact our community? So there was this nexus of ownership, community development. And that's where, um, the land trust piece came in. As I was digging into the cooperative piece. Then I learned about New Communities Inc., which was the first community land trust that was established by African Americans back in, um, nineteen sixty nine, nineteen seventy. And they had also done some research and had gone, um, to Israel to look at the ownership models there. Um, because of the racism that they were facing, the economic injustices that they were facing to hear how the one of the founders went on the road to raise a million dollars back then. That's, the power of collective ownership. That's the power of collective and cooperative economics. You raised a million dollars to buy. I don't know, was it twelve hundred acres or more of land back then? What's wrong with us now? That's so interesting. Um, when you think about New Communities Inc. and the fact that this First land trust really was, like you said, born out of the civil rights movement and was rural, it was in a rural area. Um, and because a lot of black farmers were not able to have access to land, right. Um, and to see how the land trust movement has really blossomed. And it's important to urban development and urban communities like Detroit. So, um, where were those? The first one I learned about was The Dream of Detroit on the west side near Linwood, where the uprising occurred. Um, twelfth Street in nineteen sixty seven. Rebellion? Yes. Mhm. I learned so much in doing this research. Different people will say uprising. Others will say rebellion. Some will say riots. Mhm. And so I, I stick with uprising because of the the economic conditions and social conditions that they were experiencing during that time. So you getting all this pressure, um, you're, you're being harassed, extremely harassed, then you can't get a job even though you try to apply. The economy is kind of being suppressed and, um, the event that led to it and after hours party and one thing led to another. There are so many different accounts, but it's like a full circle moment for a land trust to be in that area because of what was occurring during that time. And then for you to come back around to now trying to do more community ownership, more wealth building more building the community up. And it's so diverse. They're just, um, Mark crane and the dream of Detroit, and they literally started by boarding up homes in the area. You know, they, they, they weren't even an organization when they first started. It was some, some residents, some people that were working together and they slowly built and formalized and became a nine five O one C three. They've gotten funding now for their land trust to do housing. They've done a lot of great work. The other um is Genesis Hope. It's the Common Grounds Community Land Trust. It's three organizations that are together. Um, I think it's called Mac. Mac development, um, as well as Genesis Hope and then, uh, doing development differently. So they are on the island, greater Island View village area on the east side. So in Detroit, there was an effort for redevelopment with the strategic investment areas that, um, some philanthropic and other nonprofit organizations were supporting and providing development dollars for certain areas. Well, the Greater Island View Villages was just north of that. And so quickly they recognized, you know, with over, uh, Three hundred acres of vacant parcels, vacant land. We've got to do something or we will get pushed out. And so they started their work and engaging with the community. They were funded through different foundations. Um, and they used an outside consultant to really help them to put their community land trust together. So these two organizations are organizations you highlighted in your documentary. Let's talk about the documentary and what inspired you to, uh, tell these stories. Um, initially I wanted to highlight the cooperative movement. Um, given the opening of the cooperative in Detroit, um, Detroit People's Food Cooperative, I went to the DC, they had a, a national, uh, cooperative conference And I got this book. It was a free book, and it's talking about all these different ownership models and, um, models that create wealth. And I opened it up to community Land trust. And so I went down another rabbit hole. And so as I'm looking at, oh, wow, community land trust housing, they had a documentary, it documented New Communities, Inc. and so I and trying to tell this story, I was like, well, I'll just pivot and talk about community land trust because as I kept digging and I found all these awesome organizations right in my backyard and these leaders who we share a common thread of, they were from Detroit. They went away, they came back. They wanted to help their community. I reached out to them. They were like, sure, yeah, I'll talk to you. You know, I had to kind of kiss the ring, so to speak. Um, there, there is a pecking order. And, um, so I determined the Determine the pecking order. What's the pecking order? I don't, you know. You gonna ask me that? So Reverend Ross was the first person that I was able to reach out to. She didn't want an interview. I did talk to her. I had a great interview. She didn't want to be on camera, but having spoken to her, opened the door to others. They felt, well, okay. Well, Reverend Ross talked to you then she said, you must be okay. Mhm. She's the executive director of the North End Woodward Community Coalition. Yes. To see the work she's done in North End was amazing. Janine Hatcher of Genesis hope. She was very open. Um, I also became a member of the Community Development Advocates of Detroit, um, and even got a chance to work with them, uh, with another consultant as they were doing their regional housing plan. So housing and community ownership was just all around me. And as I was hearing their stories, I was like, okay, I'm just going to pivot and really document the work that's occurring because it was happening in real time. Like they were actually trying to buy parcels. They had, um, a lot of them already had their community engagement meetings. So now they were moving to the phase where they were, um, had already submitted proposals, uh, with the land bank, with the Detroit Land Bank authority trying to get the land or they had the land and they were trying to figure out, well, now how do we put the properties into this trust? And then actually do the mechanics of splitting the land from the structure. So finding out all those that information and getting that, getting them right in the moment of what they're doing. Um, it was awesome. It was a great pivot and it, it really hit at the right time. And there's also what we call the Michigan, um, Community Land Trust Coalition. So there are land trusts across the state. Um, I was able to connect with Dakota Rail from ICF in Grand Rapids and again, just open arms. I interviewed her, we actually went to a homeowner who had purchased a home through their land trust. You know, what was that experience like for the homeowner of a land trust? Oh my gosh. Again, another thread of she's from Grand Rapids, left, came back home. She experienced, um, life changing situations through, you know, divorce. And now she's a single mother trying to afford a home in Grand Rapids, the second largest city in the state. Right. It's expensive. Mhm. Um, areas have been gentrifying left and right. It was hard for her to afford that. And then you you're dealing with people knocking under you, over you besides you. Mhm. You know, she said, I just didn't want that environment for my daughter. Her real estate agent was able to help her, and I. CCF was very instrumental in helping her get qualified. And she was able to purchase the home, and she had been there for a year, um, by the time I interviewed her. From your work with, uh, being a city planner, working with entrepreneurs, becoming a storyteller isn't necessarily a natural progression. So how did you get there? Baby steps. Okay. As I was trying to pull this documentary together, my thoughts were everywhere. Like, oh my God. And so I reached back to a friend that I worked with at Techtown who was a storyteller. And as I'm telling her, my whole life story and how I got down this rabbit hole, she's like, well, we're missing you. We're missing your story. We need to know about you. And so I really struggled with putting me in it because and sometimes when you go through things, you don't understand the impact that it's had on you. You just bury it down and keep it moving. And so my husband and I, we were expecting our fifth child. We have six children. We have three boys, three girls. The girls were the last set and we were living on the east side. We needed some repairs on the home. That was actually my first home. I bought from my dad, and that was the home that you came back to. That was the you were in the tenth grade. Mhm. That's right. That was the home that when when we moved to Detroit, he moved us there and on the east side. And, um, as I was, you know, working and doing the things, I ended up having my first son and then my husband and I, we got married, but I ended up, um. I had bought the home before I had my son. You know, it was supposed to be, I want to say my forever home, but it was a family home. And so, um, long story short, when I went on maternity leave, which was unpaid, we got behind on the mortgage. So we we lost it. Eventually it was foreclosed and I just had buried all of that, you know, because we moved on, we moved to where he grew up. And, you know, the kids are halfway out the house. We're like one foot empty nester, one foot nothing. Yeah. And, um, I just buried it. You know, it's a traumatic experience. Yeah. And so she's like, you gotta put yourself in it. You've gotta tell your story. And I remember she said, I'm going to need you to go back to your to your house, to your old house. Granted, I didn't know if the house was there or not, and so I was like, okay, I'll go buy. So I went by and it was a vacant lot and the land bank owns it. Although I kind of felt relieved because I did want to see it the way I didn't remember it. Mhm. Right. I didn't want to see it that way. It was like a little brick bungalow. Cute brick bungalow. So then after right after you left, then was it vacant? I'm not sure. Okay. I don't know if someone had bought it and they lost it. I don't know what happened, but it was vacant. It's hard. And then the more I talk about it, then I hear, yeah, well, I, you know, I lost a home too. It's like, because this is like shameful, you know. Well, it can be when you, if you think about it, um, on an individual basis, but when you understand that it's steeped in systemic racism and issues around, um. I mean, the fact that you had a subprime mortgage, the subprime mortgages were targeted to black communities in Detroit. Um, and that really, um, helps you to see it's not the individual person, um, that there is a wider systemic issue that needs to be addressed. Um, and, and that clts are one solution to addressing this wider systemic issue. As I've been doing research not only within Detroit, but there was a Lincoln land policy or Lincoln Land Institute, um, study they released last year. They did a survey of about one hundred and fifteen clts throughout the United States. To date, there's over over three hundred that are Formerly operating as a CLT. Many have found that working with the community and getting them educated around community ownership and permanently affordable housing is one way to stay. The dislocation that you will find in areas that are starting to turn around. Many of them are outside of major cities. There may be neighborhoods. They may be small cities that are now feeling the pressures of an area that had been redlined and disinvested in. And now, since it's so cheap, you have these developers coming in there buying the homes, they're renovating them, um, along with the mortgage crisis that, you know, led that. And in many other cities, the tax foreclosure crisis. And it's hard in this climate with the shortage of supply, the expense, the cost for families that are working to even afford a home, many of them are house cost burdened. Um, they're paying more than thirty percent for their basic needs, um, more than thirty percent for housing. Um, so a land trust is a way that can help families that may not qualify for a traditional mortgage. They'll have the ability to get into a home with a subsidized home, and they can stay in that home. And then when they leave, they pass that subsidy on to the next family. So it's a way to keep, as they have these down payment assistance programs and other subsidies that are given, is able to keep these subsidies tied to this, this property, so that the next family that needs it can then enter in and get their own home. You know, it's been an eye opening experience to know that this is something that has been occurring for decades. How did you decide that you were going to make a documentary film? Um, I'm a trustee with a nonprofit foundation called M e d F, and it was established to provide grants and scholarships for Detroit families and students. Um, Metro Detroit. And so a couple of years ago, they, uh, we celebrated our thirty year anniversary. So they wanted to do, um, a short film or like a short film piece that we could show our donors at the event. And so I volunteered, um, to help, and I hadn't really shared it with a lot of people, but I was learning how to write, how to scream, write, write, how to write scripts. And during the pandemic, I had taken these classes or whatever. I had all these books and I was like, okay, great. So now this will be like real time. I could, you know, apply some of what I learned. And so from that project, it really opened me up to, I would really like to do this. I would like to tell a story in a different way. Um, I've done my own little podcast before. I've done online, um, magazines. And so I've always liked to be creative. And that project really opened me up to see the power of storytelling and how we don't always know what's happened before us, how we got to where we are. But being able to document that and provide that information for others to learn from was important. So what would you like people to take away from the documentary. I would love for them to understand that in these times that we're not by ourselves and that we don't have to try to figure it out by ourselves. And the one interview with the homeowner from Grand Rapids. At such a vulnerable time, she was able to find a home, but work with the organization that never left. There's a saying among the clts is that the CLT is a developer that never leaves. They actually steward the land, so they help to maintain the land. They provide that wraparound service. So you're never by yourself as opposed to just being an individual homeowner. When you've got to shoulder everything you something leaks, you got to fix it. But with the CLT, they have, um, methods in terms of like a reserve account where part of your payment goes into this reserve account and you can use it for for any improvement that's needed, whether it's like a furnace or um, my one interviewee, she used it to put up a privacy fence and she's like, I wouldn't have known how to start that without the CLT helping me. They actually helped me through the process. So yes, these are hard times. Yes, this is difficult, but we've done this before. And that's my favorite saying because the more I research and find out, I'm like, we're not new. This is not new. We've been here before. We've done this before. We can do it again. So wonderful. Well, thank you so much for speaking to me today. Um, you know, and sharing your story and sharing your expertise with the audience. Um, we really are looking forward to the documentary and learning from it and hearing the stories of resilience and hope.