Pushing back the frontiers of property: Community land trusts and low-income housing in urban Kenya

• The paper contributes to the debate on property theory and low-income housing.
• Community land trusts present a powerful innovation in low-income housing provision.
• Land trusts feature intricate legal framework and daunting institutional design.
• They also demand lasting commitment and stewardship that may be hard to guarantee.
• Further development of community land trusts requires relevant institutional reforms.

Property lies at the heart of the urban development process. While it creates the wealth needed to finance the urban economy, property can also be a source of disenfranchisement, especially among those unable to cope with the rules set by the market and facilitated by government policy. The hegemony of individual property particularly presents a paradox. Whereas individualised tenure theoretically confers the highest possible benefits in the property rights bundle, individualisation can also precipitate a wave of dispossession among poor households unable to neither meet stringent development regulations nor withstand market vicissitudes. This paper explores the possibility of developing alternative forms of property capable of meeting the practical housing needs of the urban poor. Specifically, the paper discusses the community land trust (CLT) as an innovative form of property capable of facilitating low-income housing provision. Based on an analysis of the Tanzania-Bondeni community land trust recently implemented in Voi, we argue that CLTs constitute a powerful innovation for low-income housing provision in urban Kenya. However, CLTs employ an intricate legal framework and institutional design that can be daunting, while their long-term success demands community commitment and effective leadership that may be hard to guarantee.