The founders of Flo-op celebrate the creation of permanent affordability protections for their duplex home, owned by the housing cooperative on land held in trust.
For the third year in a row, we celebrate private gifts of value in property that have created permanently affordable housing, in this case a duplex in Florence, Massachusetts, using shared-equity ownership. When the owners of one of the units were ready to sell, the remaining residents sought Equity Trust’s assistance to help them transfer the property to cooperative ownership and create permanent resale restrictions to keep it affordable in perpetuity. As with the stories we shared in 2021 and 2022, the project was possible because of these residents’ commitment and willingness to donate some of their equity in the property to fund the protections.
The approach we used involves two levels of protection and affordability. First, the property was removed from the speculative market by separating ownership of the land, to be held permanently in trust by a nonprofit, from the privately owned house. Since no community land trust currently serves the Northampton area, where Florence is located, Equity Trust agreed to hold the land temporarily, and will transfer it to a local CLT to be formed in the coming years. Second, the duplex itself was acquired by a limited equity housing cooperative—Flo-op Cooperative—providing a second level of access and affordability to individuals who wouldn’t otherwise have financial capacity for ownership.