- Valerie Cronus Bigot wanted to buy a house in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

- Two of our three kids went to Antioch, graduated from Antioch along the way, 25 years of maybe longer.

We've been coming up here, fell in love with the geography, fell in love with the town.

It's been a long time coming, but realizing we couldn't afford it.

- Yellow Springs is a competitive housing market with the median sales price of $450,000.

According to online real estate company, Redfin, this is where Yellow Springs Home Inc.

Steps in.

- Our mission is to strengthen community and diversity by providing permanently affordable and sustainable housing through our community Land Trust.

- Emily Sebel is the executive director at Home Inc.

This community development corporation has been operating for nearly 30 years.

She explains how these land trusts keep homes forever affordable.

- So we're taking land and putting it into a trust that has community governance.

We're preserving public subsidy for the for the greater good and we're thinking generations ahead because land is very powerful.

- These land trusts make it possible to afford the sought after community of Yellow Springs.

- The desire I had to live here, I didn't question when a house became available.

We're moving in here - About 40 homes developed by Home Inc.

With more than 80 residents house in such a desired market.

We took a tour in some of these communities to check out these developments.

First stop was the, - The Glen Cottages pocket neighborhood, which is 12 units.

It's half rental, half worth sale, all part of the community Land Trust.

- Okay.

- And it was designed to be really inclusive and to create a sense of community and pedestrian connectivity.

- The cool part about this Land Trust is that it brings in about a hundred thousand in annual property tax revenue.

Right.

In addition to that, I think you guys invested 7 million in the 26 years that you guys have been here.

What does that impact mean to the community?

- I think there are a couple of different ways that it impacts the community.

Obviously we're improving the local housing stock, creating housing that meets big gaps in our market in Yellow Springs property is really valuable.

So even someone making the median income can't afford the median home sale price.

- Tell me a little bit about the hope or, or where you guys are trying to expand to.

- Right now we have construction underway on a 32 unit new project about a block that way, if you wanna check it out.

- Yeah, let's do it.

- This is the future site of the Cascades Projects.

- Okay.

- Which is over 10 years in the making.

It's at least a $10 million project.

Wow.

And we're doing it in phases.

The funding stack does not include tax credits.

- What does it mean to you to know that the land trust is expanding to a new land here?

- Oh, it's awesome just to be at the point where we're able to move forward with this long awaited project that is so wanted by seniors and so rooted in community and is a wonderful feeling.

- New construction is also underway in the Avondale neighborhood in Cincinnati.

It will add to the stock of an alternative land trust.

- So we're land trust, but we, we feel like we've evolved to have a solution for land trust to deal with rental housing.

- Cool.

So it's like a land trust hybrid?

- Yes.

It's definitely a land trust hybrid.

- Marjorie Spinney is the co-founder of the organization Renting Partnerships, which has a land trust that builds financial equity through resident participation in community management.

- It has elements of owning and elements of renting.

Essentially what we do is we project a budget, which includes turnover and vacancy allowances like any rental housing property, what we do in our lease is contract with residents.

- This contract is called a rental equity agreement.

You agree to at least five years.

That's the only way you can access those credits and you commit to the upkeep of the property as well.

Attend monthly resident meetings and more.

- And what we have proven over the last 20 some years is that those commitments save enough money on the turnover and vacancy costs of operating a property.

Then we can fund financial credits for our - Residents, which helps residents like Joy, a single mother of five who lives in one of Marjorie's rental properties.

She said her family spent two patient and prayerful years for better housing.

- I'm very just proud of the Lord for answering prayers and just having faith in me and just being able to have a beautiful home and it's safe and the environment's good for the kids.

- The structure and reliability of renting partnerships is something she didn't have before.

- Right before COVID, we moved into a duplex in Spring Grove Village.

It was a lovely neighborhood, but the, the duplex itself was PR in pretty bad shape and our landlord was a very busy man and he was very hard to get ahold of.

- She says a community land trust is a great example for her kids.

- When Margie explained the way the program works, how tenants are looked at as like a team or family, you have a voice and how you can earn equity by doing, by contributing to the home.

As a mother, I'm like, ooh, you know, some incentives, like they could see that hard work pays off, - Whether it's in Cincinnati or Yellow Springs.

This all in this together mindset towards land trusts can impact residents in unique in profound ways.

- What makes a good community is that you have a relationship with the land that the landscape can be, can speak to you too.

The landscape was part of the health of the community.

Then.