- 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.

- In late 2024, we met with Emily Sebel, the Executive Director of Home Inc.

The Community Development Corporation, has been operating for more than a quarter of a century.

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 - With more than 40 properties in their portfolio.

Home is breaking ground on a new development called the Cascades that would expand their land trust in Yellow Springs.

- 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.

- And in August of 2025, they officially completed phase one of the project with their open house ceremony.

Emily shares what the Cascades will provide in Yellow Springs.

- So now we have eight new rental units.

Eventually we're gonna have 22 rentals on this site and 10 for sale town homes.

This housing is specifically for seniors, this rental housing, and that's been identified as a, as a pent up need and demand.

But to just be at the point where the first resident is moving in was phenomenal.

- The first resident is a retiree named Sharon Moler.

She was a tenant at an older home of Home Inc.

That needed repair.

So they moved her to the Cascades, which better fits her needs.

- You had to go around the base to get to the basement to do the washing and walking is becoming kind of dangerous for me over the rough ground.

So they transferred me to here.

- We would say you moved here because of walkability.

- Yes.

Yes.

And, and the fact that the washer and dryer are right where I can reach them without me putting my life on the line to get to them.

- And now she can walk around easier and 10 her garden.

Sharon describes her feeling of moving to the Cascades as - Delight.

Absolutely.

Happiness.

I'm delighted that, that there are things growing around my little apartment and that there are other people here that like to grow stuff too.

- During our reporting in late 2024, we also checked out an organization in Cincinnati that approached Land Trust differently.

- So we are a 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 and community management.

- We're finishing up construction on a 10 unit building in Avondale.

- They finished construction in the early summer of 2025, and residents were moving in that June.

So we revisited the new development on Chaon Place in Avondale.

As of October of 2025.

Every unit will be filled.

The new development can secure affordability.

No matter if market forces raises rents.

- We need to focus on building communities and making housing a place that people can call home.

And I think people are being, are, are losing that opportunity because we've commoditized the housing.

- One resident, Brenda Dixon says the new development didn't just give her an opportunity for affordable housing, but it gave her the opportunity to be closer to family.

- The new place and everything is brand new and you know, this is nice quiet building and I just really enjoy it.

Plus I'm just right up the street here from my daughter and my grandson, so I like it.

I do.

- Bring me back to the moment when you knew that you were approved to, to live here.

- I was elated.

I had never heard actually about a rent renting partnership.

I just really, you know, I just, I feel, I, I feel safe here.

- Examples like Brenda and Sharon are great cases for why land trusts are where affordability and equity share common ground - Residents are involved in the leadership of the land trust.

And it is deeply democratic.

It's a deeply democratic way of, of approaching land ownership as well as making decisions that impact people's lives.

I think it's a great tool in the toolbox and I think that there are so many things that that can be done with, with, with this tool even beyond just affordable housing.