Permanent, affordable housing and community spaces in the hands of the people
Community Stewardship
The El Sereno Community Land Trust (ESCLT) is guided by the organized community in El Sereno, Los Angeles to provide opportunities for the residents of El Sereno to secure community spaces and housing that is decent, affordable, and held in stewardship by community members on a long-term basis.
Preventing Displacement
We seek to acquire multi-unit and single-family homes to stay secure for future generations in perpetuity (100 years). We also seek to acquire open space to help nourish the land back to its natural habitat.
Why El Sereno Community Land Trust?
The El Sereno Community Land Trust (ESCLT) emerged from grassroots organizing in communities facing displacement and exclusion from decisions affecting their lives. We serve neighborhoods on the east side of the Los Angeles River, where rising housing costs and systemic disinvestment have long-fueled homelessness and instability. Our model centers a collective relationship between people and land that builds power with community, not for or over it. As a Community Land Trust, we remove land from speculation, protect residents from displacement, and empower those most impacted to lead the development of permanently affordable housing under community control. As an Indigenous-led Community Land Trust, our work is grounded in ancestral ways that relate to land not as a commodity, but as a living, breathing relative. This relationship shapes every aspect of our work and deepens our commitment to the resilience of future generations for the times up ahead.
Problem
Since its founding 250 years ago as a colonial settlement on the erasure of Indigenous Tovaangar, Los Angeles has subjected Indigenous, Black, and communities of color to systemic displacement through real-estate speculation, environmental injustice, gentrification, and freeway expansion. Today as a global city, Los Angeles continues pursuing an economic model that relies on the dehumanization and disposability of the land’s non-White residents to generate profit, further deepening income inequality, unemployment, and the erosion of affordable housing. The economic and social instability created by these forces threatens not only the well-being of historically marginalized communities but also the shared future and life outcomes of all residents as a whole.
Solution
Advance systemic change by engaging tenants in policy advocacy and narrative change through popular education, grassroots organizing, and democratic governance models that promote permanent affordable housing under community control.
Develop sustainable housing models that incorporate green construction techniques, such as earthen-built homes that are cost-effective, fire-resistant, earthquake-resilient, scalable, and energy-efficient.
Co-design a Tenant-Led Property Management Program that reimagines the traditional landlord-tenant dynamic into a horizontal, equity-based model, empowering residents to steward the long-term resilience of their homes and neighborhoods.
Cultivate open-space initiatives guided by Indigenous plant and water knowledge, fostering cultural connection, environmental co-education, and community healing.
Impact
We are re-imagining and reliving what it means for community to belong to the land, and for the land to belong to community.
In a city built on displacement and land speculation, we return land to collective stewardship grounded in Indigenous values and community leadership.
Our work creates permanently affordable, dignified housing under community control while nurturing generational wealth, environmental resilience, and cultural continuity.
Our collective governance models are both scalable and deeply rooted in local context, designed to be shared with Community Land Trusts, cooperatives, and housing justice organizations across the country.
By learning from residents most impacted by housing injustice and environmental racism, we are building more than homes; we are laying a lasting foundation for racial equity, community stability, and self-determined futures in Tovaangar, Los Angeles, and beyond.
