Connecticut is facing a housing and climate crisis. So, advocates of both causes are coming together to create change.
Amy Blaymore Paterson is the Executive Director of the Connecticut Land Conservation Council, or CLCC. Her organization oversees about 120 land trusts in the state.
A land trust is a private, nonprofit organization that protects land, with the goal of making green space more accessible.
Now, land trusts are taking community engagement further by partnering with affordable housing.
“Land trusts have the potential to be tremendous community partners,” Paterson said. “Beyond conserving land, they can be looking at community needs and seeing how they can help to address them as a community partner. And housing is one of those community needs.”
In 2023, CLCC held a summit to discuss collaboration with affordable housing groups. That summit provided a baseline for the Northwest Connecticut Affordable Housing and Conservation Collaboration.
Though some might view affordable housing and conservation as opposite forces, Paterson says they actually make great partners. Land trusts can lend critical expertise to developers, resulting in less urban sprawl and loss of biodiversity.
“Who better than land trusts, who know the land within their community and can provide very good input in terms of the value of the land, where it would be best to build, where to stay away from due to conservation issues.”
A 2023-2024 census conducted by the CLCC found that 14% of land trust organizations were engaged with affordable housing in some way. Paterson is pleased by that figure.
“It’s a great starting point. If we had done something like this years ago, it would have been much less.”
