Beyond the Bridge: Douglass CLT’s Model for Community-Led Urban Innovation

Introduction

As an increasing number of people migrate into cities, some local municipalities, especially those with historically minority populations, face increasing threats of gentrification through (re)development. Lower-income neighbourhoods are especially vulnerable in the face of ever-expanding urban centres, due to having lower rates of home ownership, savings, and social mobility. These communities are increasingly at risk of top-down development, commonly driven by private developers, city leadership, and state or federal quotas. However, recent trends of civic engagement and bottom-up approaches to local development are changing the odds of cultural and social loss. Douglass Community Land Trust (Douglass CLT) is an example of this shift. The once-threatened community in Washington, D.C., has now regained agency and power over the sight, feel, and development of their area, thanks to a project that had the potential to gentrify the neighbourhood.

This briefing examines how the Douglass Community Land Trust demonstrates a model of bottom-up stewardship, and what lessons local authorities can draw when supporting community-led development. It first outlines the context of the 11th Street Bridge project, explains how a CLT model emerged as a response, and reflects on insights from community organisers involved.

Threat of Bridging: How to build a bridge, and bridge communities

The nonprofit, Building Bridges Across the River (BBAR), was responsible for turning a defunct commuter bridge over the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C., into a pedestrian park bridge. The bridge connects the affluent neighbourhood of Capitol Hill to the West, with the historically disinvested neighbourhood of Anacostia to the East. However, the residents East of the river became hesitant about the connection, citing fears of gentrification and displacement. In response, BBAR began engaging with the community through meetings, listening sessions, forums, and surveys, aiming to foster meaningful community interaction. The result of this was the co-production of the Equitable Development Plan (EDP).

Rendering of the proposed 11th Street Bridge. 

Credit: OMA+OLIN

The plan focused not on alleviating fears of gentrification, but on preventing displacement of the community once development and investment in the area increase due to the 11th Street Bridge Park project. The plan highlighted three areas of focus: workforce development, small business development, and affordable housing. The EDP’s interventions were then categorised into these three areas of focus, and included things such as;

• Workforce Development
  • Prioritising local hiring for the construction of the bridge park
  • Establishing a hiring plan
  • Creating a Community Workforce Agreement
• Small Business Development
  • Supporting and protecting small businesses operating in the Bridge Park.
  • Leveraging the opportunity of Bridge Park to involve local actors in the creation and sustaining of small businesses.
  • Utilising the bridge park to connect business corridors on both sides of the river, and ensuring a synergistic outcome.
• Affordable Housing
  • Collaborating with the public and nonprofit sectors to preserve existing affordable housing and create new ones.
  • Securing funding for the down payment assistance programme.
  • Provide the necessary resources and training to establish a Community Land Trust (CLT) through grassroots initiatives.

Community engagement meeting regarding the proposed 11th Street Bridge, which ultimately led to the development of the Equitable Development Plan.

Credit: Public Square Journal, Lauren Mayer

What is a Community Land Trust?

A community land trust (CLT) is a nonprofit trust established for communities that are at imminent threat of being displaced or losing locally significant infrastructure. It owns the land on behalf of the community, aiming to control new development, rent and house prices, and public area development. The land is leased to homeowners or businesses, customarily on a 99-year lease. This leasehold provides nearly exact rights and exclusivity over the land, as owning the land and the home would. The notable exception, and where CLTs gain their power, is the cap on profits from the sale of property that sits on CLT-owned land, also called an equity gains cap. This approach allows the homeowners to gain some profit upon selling their home, while keeping the majority of the equity in the community, hence making the home affordable for the next owner.

Becoming (more than) a CLT: Insights form an engaged community.

The Equitable Development Plan, notably, relied on focusing resources in enabling the community to set up, manage, and form the CLT as a grassroots trust, as opposed to handing a preestablished organisation over to the community to manage. This empowered the agency of the community and ensured that the trust’s foundations are robust and legitimised in the eyes of the community.

The resulting CLT was named after Frederick Douglass, who was a local resident, social reformer, abolitionist, writer and orator. As Meche Martinez – now the CLT’s Engagement and Capacity Building Manager and an early community participant – explained in our interview, Douglass CLT was a plan that emerged from BBAR’s EDP. However, the organisation instantly evolved into being solely community-driven, ensuring that development in the area reflected the needs and wishes of residents and the broader community, independent of any other organisation’s influence.

Community-First Governance

Martinez shared that the principles of the CLT further translate into the organisation’s structure. Douglass CLT operates on a tripartite governance model, thereby ensuring that community and lessee members have an amplified voice, even within a community-first model. The importance of the core principles and how they translate was a continuous point Martinez made. She emphasised that community control of all aspects of the CLT was baked into its governing structure from the first instance of action, its creation. This highlighted the importance of a consistent approach to discovering, categorising, and solving new challenges. This formula and ethos, as Martinez explained, contributed significantly to engaging with the community; it emphasised predictable good-faith patterns to a community that might be wary of unheard-of governing structures.

Education as a Cornerstone

The importance of education and tailoring all aspects of it to fit the community’s life was also emphasised. Martinez cited this as one of the biggest challenges that Douglass CLT faced in getting established, and continues facing while scaling their operations across the would-be Douglass Commonwealth, a proposed name for the District of Columbia, should it officially become the 51st state. Challenges of education were mainly spread across three categories:

• Introducing and familiarising people with the concept of a CLT.
• Finding suitable settings, such as a time and place that would accommodate the non-uniform life patterns of the community.
• Overcoming scepticism about the shared equity model, starkly contrasting the American norm of individual profit maximising from homeownership.

Ginger Rumph – current Executive Director of Douglass CLT – pictured advocating for CLTs and Douglass CLT in 2019.

Credit: Douglass CLT’s Twitter page

Creative Approaches to Engagement

However, clever solutions, thanks to the community-focused approach of the organisation, arise in response. Martinez recalls one such instance in our interview, mentioning a time when the CLT offered dinner for residents in attendance at a community meeting. They realised that the time of the meeting would coincide with either the purchasing of the ingredients, the preparation of the food, or the consumption of dinner itself. They reshaped the purpose of the gathering from being a perceived nuisance or a time-consuming part of the members’ day to one of convenience and community-building, with the shared meal becoming the main event, and the side dish becoming the meeting itself.

Stewardship and Expanding Trust

Community engagement, like all of the CLT’s challenges, was the primary focus of initial problem-solving. BBAR was a crucial and welcome contributor to solving these issues, Martinez emphasised, as they continued to foster a relationship with the community, and by extension, Douglass CLT, even after the EDP was set in motion and the CLT was established. Providing continuous stewardship, Douglass CLT aided in many projects, especially in fundraising. This further highlighted the need for constant support, as through stewardship, BBAR can ensure that the original goal of the CLT being and staying independent is perpetually sustained. Martinez mentioned that even currently, BBAR is aiding Douglass CLT by setting up a new round of fundraising and helping them with their objective of scaling the outreach of the CLT.

Becoming more than a CLT has been the reality of the Douglass CLT, as they continually redefine the boundaries of involvement and diffusion within the community. Learning from the ongoing stewardship provided by BBAR encouraged the model of Douglass CLT to go further than simply providing and protecting housing. Martinez’s schedule has become a lot more unpredictable, yet fulfilling, due to this. She mentions their model involves the community, lessee members, and business partners becoming ‘permanent partners’, translating to the community interacting with the CLT on more grounds than housing. Being contacted to recommend trusted contractors, help with a tax bill that someone might not understand, or seeking help and support after missing a mortgage payment are all instances where community members, without being prompted or explicitly encouraged, turned to the CLT as a trusted leader of the wider community. To Martinez, this signifies success, however unquantifiable it may be, in Douglass CLT creating an atmosphere of trust, belonging, and stewardship, all the while ensuring an affordable and democratic neighbourhood design.

Implications for Local Government

Although the Douglass Community Land Trust (DCLT) operates in a different policy and legal context, its experience offers clear insights for UK councils working to support equitable regeneration. Community Land Trusts in the UK, such as Granby Four Streets in Liverpool, Bristol CLT, London CLT and the newer Stokes Croft Land Trust, already demonstrate the potential of community ownership to secure permanently affordable housing and protect social infrastructure. The Douglass CLT case provides additional lessons on process, governance, and ongoing stewardship.

1. Engage communities before regeneration pressures intensify.

A key lesson from DCLT is that residents must be involved at the earliest stages of a project, not after plans have already been shaped. UK councils can use pre-planning engagement, local design reviews, or neighbourhood visioning workshops to surface fears, priorities and lived experience before development plans are solidified.

2. Support long-term stewardship structures, not short-term participation.

DCLT demonstrates that communities require stable, trusted institutions to manage land and relationships over time. UK local authorities can strengthen existing CLTs, help new ones form, or embed community stewardship models into regeneration frameworks, ensuring resident influence lasts beyond consultation cycles.

3. Build capacity and confidence, not just invite feedback.

Douglass CLT’s emphasis on education, trust-building and accessible engagement (such as deep canvassing, peer-to-peer outreach) illustrates that meaningful participation requires skills and confidence. Councils can invest in community organisers, training programmes, or partnership networks to develop this capability in local groups.

4. Use partnerships to broaden influence and mitigate displacement.

Douglass CLT’s tripartite governance model, which balances residents, leaseholders, and institutional partners, helped secure credibility and resources. UK councils can explore similar approaches by convening housing associations, voluntary organisations, and community leadership within a shared governance structure.

5. Treat community ownership as an economic strategy, not an “add-on”.

The case demonstrates that community ownership models can stabilise neighbourhoods, protect affordability, and maintain local character in the face of market-driven development. Integrated into local plans, high-street regeneration, or brownfield redevelopment, CLTs can support wider economic resilience, social value and place-making goals.

Together, these lessons suggest that community-led stewardship models offer UK local authorities a practical pathway to regeneration that reduces displacement, strengthens civic participation, and creates more inclusive regional economies.