The number of community land trusts in California has tripled over the last 10 years.

The trusts buy land and sell or rent the buildings on it to low and moderate-income residents in order to preserve the housing as affordable, and most of the newest ones are springing up in working-class Black and Brown communities, according to the California Community Land Trust Network.

Muhammad Alameldin, a policy associate at UC Berkeley's Turner Center for Housing Innovation, says community land trusts could be a tool to help close the homeownership gap between Black and white individuals.

Indigenous tribes, immigrant neighborhoods, and inland cities where living costs are growing are also among the communities experimenting with community land trusts.

The construction of condominiums has slowed nationwide in the past 15 years, restricting other options for entry-level homeowners.

While only a few thousand Californians currently live in housing units overseen by community land trusts, supporters say the model is cheaper than building new affordable housing and can help stabilize communities at risk of gentrification.

When residents own their homes, the trust retains control over the land, leasing it to homeowners long-term, any home sales must be to other low-income or moderate-income buyers, or back to the trust.

Community land trusts are not new in California, but concern over corporate control of housing and the cost of new construction has driven increased interest in them, experts say.

The trust also must navigate a financial and legal system that doesn't favor cooperative ownership.

California lawmakers this year scrapped a $500 million program that would have given tenants and community land trusts grants to buy properties at risk of foreclosure.

Community land trusts are instead seeking out local funding streams, and they are spreading to new areas in California where the cost of living is rising.

In Humboldt County, the Wiyot Tribe has set up a land trust focused on conservation as well as housing.

Tribal Administrator Michelle Vassel says, "As housing prices are pricing our people out of the Tribe's ancestral lands, this land trust is an attempt to make change in our community."

For CalMatters, I'm Felicia Mello.