June 1982 RAIN Page 7 for the common good. We saw evils inherent in the private ownership system that lead to the exploitation and destruction of land for short term profit and that left large numbers of people impoverished and powerless. We heard of others who were trying to solve some of the problems of land tenure and some of these new ideas rang with a truth as old as the hills. Property can be defined as the value created by people. You can "own" only that value that you make. Everything else, particularly the land, the air, the water, is the birthright of all living things, and cannot be owned as property but should be used as "trustery" — in trust for all, present and future. The relationship we wanted of people to land is not of ownership but of stewardship. We formed a non-profit — but not tax-exempt — corporation (New Society Garden, Inc.) to own the land and purchased houses. We discussed our relationship to the land and to each other. We developed processes for making decisions in an atmosphere of respect and mutual benefit. We wrote consensus decision making into our bylaws. As a group we were able to accomplish things we couldn't have done alone, we were more powerful. Members in the household collectives shared incomes and decided together how to pay expenses. People were supported to work on projects like anti-nuclear power campaigns or starting a recycling business. When that no longer seemed the best way to meet diverse needs we changed it. Our involvement together helped to bring us out of ourselves, to broaden our horizons and to develop us as individuals. We felt strength in support and sharing. Out of our progress came our hardest problems. We did not like our landlords. Landlords profit by exploiting the need of the landless for housing, landlords interfere with freedom of expression whether it is driving nails into walls to hang pictures or putting political slogans in the windows. Landlords are loath to spend money on paint or insulation or fixing the leaky faucet. Landlords have the power to raise the rent and evict. The landlord- tenant system institutionalizes roles of power and powerlessness. So we abolished the role of landlord and decentralized the function. Each house would be maintained by the collective of people living in it. Each collective would be responsible for selecting who would live in the house and for paying the bills. We failed to acknowledge the services provided by the landlord role; provision of capital, property management and long term maintenance. We also failed to account for the skill and work required. Most of us have been trained as tenants our whole lives, some as property owners. We did not succeed in putting off those roles. The dichotomy of owner-renter roles was reinforced by habit, by the expectations of new people moving in and ultimately by the other legal and economic structures in our society. Our collectives lacked cohesiveness and long term commitment because we were committed to preserving our individual mobility. We wanted the corporation to have the responsibilities of ownership but did not want to exercise that commitment as individuals. As people left the communal/collective situation it became difficult to find new members to share the costs, much less the responsibilities. The corporation had to become more the landlord. The Board of Directors, made up of some of the residents and other people from the community, had to look for new tenants when a house became vacant, to replace the furnace when it broke, and to raise the rent to We learned that the visions we try to bring to life cannot be too far divorced from present methods. pay the costs. We had to have work parties to clean up the accumulation of years. The work didn't hurt us, the lost idealism did. Responsibility and accountability also need tools and structure to work. Our excitement about this new land tenure system diminished. Our structure did not permit any individual to have equity except in the form of a loan to the corporation. This limited the sense of individual involvement and hampered the ability to attract capital for new houses. As we began to make payments on the principal of the mortgages we found we had to pay corporate income tax, taxes that would not be paid by individuals owning their own homes. And finally, as the economy changed (particularly the skyrocketing interest rates) it became impossible to consider growth of the land trust as we had envisioned it. We learned that the visions we try to bring to life cannot be too far divorced from present methods. We learned that we must allow and expect ideas to change in the face of experience. We can make our work easier if we are able to restate our goals to be compatible with currently acceptable legal and economic arrangements. There are lots of options and I would like to briefly present some that I have heard of; LAND TRUSTS have become a great deal more sophisticated in the last decade and have developed a variety of tools for saving land. Usually they are tax exempt organizations that hold or convey land for some public benefit. In rural settings land trusts work to preserve special land as scenic, wilderness, forest or agricultural areas. In cities land trusts hold land as historic places, open space, and in some cases provide land for such things as low income housing projects. HOUSING COOPS are organized to benefit their members. Limited equity coops are usually designed to provide housing for low and middle income people. Unlimited equity coops are more favorable investments, much like condominiums. JOINT OWNERSHIP AGREEMENTS can allow people to share the benefits and responsibilities of property much like a partnership. CREATIVE COMBINATIONS can overcome some of the hurdles in the current real estate market. For example, tax-exempt land trusts can convey donated land to communities to use as gardens or for low income housing cooperatives. Housing coops can attract capital by forming limited partnerships with investors for the tax shelters. Other types of organizations focus action on aspects of land use, environmental and economic issues. We can see some of our visions become reality, but not by charging off blindly like Don Quixote to conquer evil and defend virtue. We need to be clever, to learn well the use of the tools available to us, and to persevere. □□
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