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I was taking care of my mother and my daughter. Some people call us the sandwich generation. I call us the mammogram generation- we're squeezed. I was really scared. I knew when they took away rent control, everything would go berserk...When they took away rent control and he doubled the rent and then not that much later, raised it again, I was so afraid. I took a homebuyer class... A girl at my job...gave me a flyer. They're building ten new homes by lottery. I got a notice. I got number 10! A lot of things were falling apart in my life. But God was watching out for me...I'm paying less now in my fixed mortgage than I paid in rent before I moved here in 1998.. .I know I can afford to stay where I am today, and that 's huge.
Diane Dujon, homeowner
Dudley Neighbors Inc.
(Author Interview, 2007)
In the Great Recession of 2007-2009, Boston's communities of color were hit hard. A 2009 map of foreclosures looked like a map of the communities of color-Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan. The one island of stability was a section of Roxbury called the Dudley Triangle-home to the community land trust of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI).
Originally established to respond to the community's vision of "development without displacement," the land trust model was adopted to help residents gain control of land and to use that control to prevent families from being priced out as they organized to improve their neighborhood. They were successful. Today, DSNI's community land trust-called Dudley Neighbors, Inc. (DNI)- accommodates 225 units of permanently affordable housing, commercial and nonprofit space, a park/playground, a mini-orchard and garden, a 1.5-acre urban farm, and a community greenhouse. The land trust has proven to be crucial in the community's progress, an anchor for the continuing neighborhood investment toward its vision of an urban village and in preventing displacement in a hot real estate market.
DNI's recent performance in the face of the collapse of housing markets was just as stunning and less anticipated. Protective features of the land trust mean that there have been no subprime mortgages, and therefore no foreclosures due to predatory loans. Other features allowed the land trust to work with...