OUR STORY
The East New York Community Land Trust (ENYCLT) formed during the height of the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, when our community’s housing crisis reached a breaking point.
Remembering the destructive 2016 rezoning of East New York and the reverberating impacts of the 2009 foreclosure crisis, an intergenerational group of organizers and leaders living in East New York and Brownsville formed the steering committee of what they soon called the ENYCLT.
As their community dealt with overcrowded hospitals, lack of employment and rising household debt, the steering committee wrote bylaws and elected its first board of directors. We have since transitioned our steering committee to a growing dues-paying general membership.
OUR MISSION
The ENYCLT is a membership organization that stewards the built, social and natural environment through community organizing, planning, education, and democratic control of community-owned land. Our mission is to protect, stabilize and expand the stock of affordable homes, locally-owned small businesses, worker co-ops and green spaces in East New York and Brownsville for the benefit of longtime low-income and working class Black, Latine, Asian and other communities of color. We focus on building our members’ capacity to collectively own and democratically manage land and housing, ensuring that the community holds the power and is able to shape its own thriving future.