Chinatown Community Land Trust (CCLT)

BOSTON

Row House Preservation – Preserving Chinatown’s History and Character for Boston’s Future

For Chinatown Community Land Trust (CCLT), the preservation of Chinatown’s rowhouses is its top priority and an urgent need since there are fewer than a hundred of these rowhouse properties remaining in Chinatown. These rowhouse properties represent approximately 400 units of housing that have historically been home to generations of immigrant, working-class families from Ireland, Eastern Europe, Syria, and China. Today, these rowhouses increasingly cater to high-income professionals as condominiums or to the short-term rental market.  CCLT is seeking to seize this critical moment to remove buildings from the speculative market and safeguard the living pulse of Boston’s immigrant history before the rowhouse streets of Chinatown are lost.

TLI created an acquisition line of credit facility for CCLT so that CCLT could be nimble and competitive with property acquisitions in Chinatown’s fast-moving real estate market.   With this support from TLI and from the City of Boston AOP program, CCLT is using the innovative community land trust model to provide an avenue for acquisition and conversion of market-rate properties into owner occupant and low-income rental housing.