Affordable Homeownership: Sharing Best Practices

The Met Council recognizes that affordable homeownership opportunities are an integral part of providing a full range of housing choices. Local governments can play a key role in creating and leveraging innovative homeownership strategies, including those that allow a home to remain affordable to low- and moderate-income households even when the property is resold. These strategies include:

• Community land trusts
• Manufactured housing preservation
• Cooperative housing

In February 2019, the Met Council hosted a workshop highlighting these affordable homeownership models and exploring where opportunities exist to expand or enhance them in the Twin Cities region. The two key sessions, Community Land Trusts 101 and Manufactured Housing and Limited Equity Cooperatives 101, provide the basics of these models and can be used in a city council work session or staff meeting to start a conversation about how to support affordable homeownership. Local experts also provided case studies that describe how these models are working in the Twin Cities region.

Affordable homeownship best practices for local governments

A new report describes affordable homeownership best practices for local governments, along with examples and links to local experts.

Download the full report (PDF, 21 pages)

Key points from the report:

• In 2016, 96% of all residential land uses in the region were single family. The heavy emphasis on multifamily rental as an affordable housing production strategy means that much of the region will see no new affordable housing​.
• Community land trusts and cooperative housing models are important ways to support affordable homeownership opportunities in perpetuity — that is, when homes are resold, they continue to provide affordable homeownership opportunities to a new household.
• There are many ways local governments can support the expansion or creation of a community land trust.

• Conversion to a resident-owned cooperative is one strategy to preserve naturally occurring affordable housing, including manufactured home communities.

• While there are fantastic local examples of these affordable homeownership models in the region, many parts of the region remained unserved by community land trust and cooperatively owned housing opportunities.

Local case study videos

• West Hennepin Affordable Housing Land Trust
• How Bloomington partners with its local community land trust
• Carver County Community Land Trust
• Park Plaza Cooperative: A resident-owned manufactured housing community