Here to Stay Land Trust

Center For Changing Lives has partnered with Logan Square Neighborhood Association, Lucha and, Spanish Coalition For Housing to create the Here To Stay Community Land Trust

Center for Changing Lives is a founding member of the Here to Stay Community Land Trust in Hermosa and West Logan Square. We buy properties and sell the buildings on those properties to moderate-income buyers from the community at a discounted rate, ensuring long-term affordability and extending the benefits of homeownership to a community to which they would otherwise be inaccessible.

Our vision is to interrupt the patterns of displacement and gentrification in black and brown communities by providing a mechanism for the community to own land and compete with cash buyers to create affordable homeownership for legacy families.

Against the backdrop of rapid displacement and gentrification of our legacy families in 2018 LSNA led a community planning process for West Logan Square and Hermosa, funded and supported by LISC-Chicago. The affordable housing committee identified policies, programs, and organizing campaigns that would together form a robust response to the gentrification of the community. The plan, published in October of 2018 was called Here to Stay and one of the signature projects of the plan was the development of a Community Land Trust of the same name. Members of the committee included staff and leaders from all four founding organizations and after extensive research and organizing, they determined the best way to establish the community land trust was to develop a separate 501c3 non-profit organization that was incorporated in September 2019. Here to Stay’s first acquisition for its portfolio happened in fall 2021.

By closing the affordability gap, Here to Stay presents a permanent solution that allows low- to moderate-income legacy families to remain in the community they’ve called home for decades by providing affordable homeownership and naturally occurring affordable rental opportunities (from the rental of the units in two and three flats).

To learn more, visit Here to Stay Community Land Trust.