Beverly-Vermont Community Land Tsut (BVCLT)’s origins are inseparable from the history of Urban Soil / Tierra Urbana (USTU) and grassroots organizing in the Vermont/Beverly corridor beginning in the mid-1990s.
In 1996, community members and future resident-owners acquired a 47-unit building that would later become Urban Soil / Tierra Urbana Housing Cooperative (USTU). The property transitioned into a limited equity housing cooperative, creating long-term affordability and resident control in one of Los Angeles’ most rapidly changing neighborhoods.
As property values rose and speculation intensified in Koreatown, cooperative residents and neighboring community members recognized that true permanence required separating the land from the improvements. Affordability could not rely solely on cooperative structure-it needed protection from land speculation itself.
With early incubation and technical support from CRSP (Cooperative Resources and Services Project)dba Los Angeles Ecovillage Institute (LAEVI) , alongside leadership from cooperative residents, LA Eco-Village members, and neighborhood organizers, the groundwork for a community land trust began to take shape.
In the late 2000s, these residents and organizers formally established the Beverly-Vermont Community Land Trust, transferring the land beneath USTU into the trust. This structure – cooperative ownership of the building and CLT stewardship of the land became the first limited equity housing cooperative on community land trust land in Los Angeles.
This foundational decision to “split the land and the building” ensured that affordability would extend beyond a single generation. It created a permanent, community-controlled structure that removed land from the speculative market while preserving democratic resident governance.
From its inception, BVCLT was not created as a traditional housing developer. It was built by residents and organizers as an organizing vehicle to decommodify land, stabilize communities, and advance long-term collective stewardship.
Vision
We envision a world where multi-racial working class communities exercise collective decision-making power over how land is used in our neighborhoods so that we can live healthy, resilient lives in right relationship with the place that we call home.
Mission
BVCLT’s mission is to build community power to keep working class communities of color in their homes and neighborhoods through permanent affordability and democratic community ownership in Koreatown and the surrounding transit-oriented neighborhoods in Los Angeles by:
- Advocating for the decommodification of land and removing land permanently from the speculative housing market.
- Creating just, equitable and ecological housing developments and alternative community ownership models.
- Serving as an incubator for member-led programs and campaigns through centering the leadership of those most impacted by gentrification, displacement, and racist, extractive housing policies.
CORE Values
- Centering The Most Impacted: Communities who are directly impacted by displacement lead us.
- Systems Level Change: We make systems level change to get to the root causes of systemic inequities.
- Building Community Power: We build community power to control how land and housing is used in our neighborhoods.
- Decommodify Land & House: We believe that land and housing is not a commodity, but rather a basic need that should be afforded to all people, especially those historically excluded from access to land and stable housing.
- Deep Democracy & Accountability: We practice non-hierarchical, deep democracy within our organization and in our movement building.
- Ecological Justice: We model ecological justice in our work by aiming to correct injustices in the built environment and bring our neighborhoods into right relationship with our surrounding ecosystems.
