Entrusting Land for Public Purposes

I realized this week that I’ve been in the land trust business almost all my life. Beginning with populating common use trails to surf spots along the Southern California coast in high school, and continuing on to become a nonprofit manager specializing in acquiring land and properties for childcare, housing, parklands, schools, and coastal access, I have learned how to use trust for public good.

That’s important to note because we seldom call it establishing land trusts. Lately, that term is popular, often sounding like a magical elixir to our current housing crisis. This post is intended to provide the broader perspective on how land control and access has facilitated positive public purposes.

Let’s start with a recent decision by the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors to grant $1.4 million from its Agricultural and Open Space District funds to the Camp Meeker Recreation District to undertake a seven-year development of a 362-acre parcel next door to the housing development in western Sonoma County. While the purchase of land to preserve agriculture and open space has long been the focus of the Board of Supervisors use of these funds, it has only recently begun to award funding to prepare its properties for public access. It came to my attention because I have been a board member for twenty years of Stewards of the Coast and Redwoods, a nonprofit which obtained a contract from the California Resources Department ten years ago to operate two local state parks when they were threatened to be closed during tough budget times. The actions of the Board of Supervisors is entrusting the Camp Meeker Recreation District with land control and adaptation for needed public purposes.

In many other ways over the past sixty years, land has been entrusted to community groups (mostly nonprofit organizations) to use for public good. Recognizing the existence of under-utilized land and buildings in colleges, I became active in the development of child care programs on campuses, alternative food services, and community gardens. Leaving college, I continued combining public resources, land and buildings, to further the aims of a wide variety of social needs. Once California linked housing development along its coast with property owner cooperative access, offers to dedicate trail land parcels became possible with local land trusts and with a statewide nonprofit which I chaired for many years. Property tax relief for nonprofit-owned parcels being used for public purposes became possible. Public bodies declared surplus land parcels which they transferred to nonprofit low income housing developers. Childcare and charter schools were given long-term leases from public school districts. In the last ten years, California has purchased thousands of poorly performing hotels for use as homeless transitional and permanent supportive housing.

The use of land in trust with those serving the common good has taken many forms, and served many purposes. Let’s hope that we can continue to combine these valuable resources for many years to come.