Land trust

Thank you.

Well, hello, Land Trust listeners and I guess Land Trust viewers.

I'm your host, Laura Dennell Schickman, Engagement Director at the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County.

We've taken our podcast on the road today to record an extra special episode of Learning the Land.

And I want to start just by saying, giving a huge thank you to Jonathan Hicken and the Seymour Marine Discovery Center for opening up this fabulous studio today.

So I'm joined today by the Land Trust Executive Director, Sarah Newkirk, to talk about a pivotal moment for conservation in Santa Cruz County.

And this is a moment where urgent community needs, decades of planning, and really an incredible opportunity have all come together.

So the stars are aligning in this moment.

The Hoskins community in West Charlotte is celebrating a major milestone, the preservation and revitalization of one of the city's historic neighborhoods.

Mecklenburg County partnered with the Westside Community Land Trust after investing $6 million in ARPA funds in 2023 to secure 32 homes that were at risk of being sold and triggering rapid displacement.

The Land Trust is now working with residents on a redevelopment plan that will more than double the number of homes on those sites to about 70 in total, including townhomes, modular houses, and backyard cottages.

The model lets families buy their homes while leasing the land, preserving long-term affordability.

The neighborhood will showcase its process during the historic Hoskins Community Parade and Festival this coming weekend on October 3rd, Saturday, with residents honoring their past and celebrating a future rooted in community ownership.

And that you've been pioneering in the local home movement as well, which I'm trying to do.

And then you also have been involved in the community land trust in Portland.

And I am a big advocate and started the community land trust in Hamilton, New Zealand, where I was living and still advocating for that to be everywhere.

I just love the model for affordable purposes.

So yes, there's so much more about you, but I'll ask you some questions to find out more.

Homes can be sold.

So how

does affordability, we've mentioned the community land trust.

As KHOL's Sophia Boyd-Flegel reports, High School Butte could otherwise become cut off by a single-family home.

The Jackson Hole Land Trust is looking to add to private and county money it's already secured to buy the development rights for three acres on High School View.

The land would connect to about 20 acres on the steep hillside where the trust already has a conservation easement.

Vice President Liz Long says thousands of people use the trailhead in busy months.

The Presbyterian Church of Jackson Hole wants to sell the land to raise money for its project across the street, 20 townhomes for employee housing.

County commissioners put in three quarters of a million dollars in excise tax funding this week to support the sale.

The land trust asked for hikers to take to the butte every day next week to unlock more money from a non-disclosed family.

Sophia Boyd-Flegel, KHOL News.

So to back up just a bit, and you will know proud of it, but Matt Echevarria was head of the Cattlemen's Association in 1996, 1997.

Jerry Hempstead basically created the resolution for the cattlemen's to take a look at this idea as a land trust.

And Jerry came to me and said, would you be interested in being on this founding board? And at the time, I was fascinated by it because I'm like, oh, my God, this could be actually a win-win.

There could be positives that coming out of it, not the 55 different committees I go to and nothing ever gets solved.

And I think I was originally asked to come in as a founding board member because of my policy and ranching background.

But there are a lot of pieces.

And I remember, you know, Talking about getting a little teary-eyed, I remember talking to my dad about the California Rangeland Trust, and he was a big thinker.

He was a huge supporter of ag leadership and one of Dean Brown's best friends.

And so at that time, Dave Michaels, commissioner of the community development, Tom Young was the mayor, and basically it went that they all went and met with the mayor, Young, proposed that we wanted to address housing on the south side.

And at that time, we had what's called a community land trust, where you didn't own the land, you owned the house.

It was foreign, it was different.

The goal was to keep houses always affordable in the future.

I was everything.

There was no staff but me for a long time.

Well, you know what I remember most during that time, because I was in the Tom Young administration when Jubilee Homes was created, the controversy, and I don't know if it's still the same, was the land trust versus, because they also had the Syracuse Housing Partnership at the same time, and that was a day, oh, Jubilee, you don't own the land.

Has that changed? Are you still on the land?

We do a lot of institutional raises.

And I've been, I mean, so many times, depending on what's going on in social media, but I've had people go like, all right, well, you're not doing this like that land trust, try and hide stuff, you know, sneaky, sneaky stuff, are you? It's like, oh, God, no.

We're a real business.

You know, we don't build on sand.

Of course, it was a different world back then.

There was no due on sale clause.

Land Trust didn't have this extreme perception of deception.

We didn't have all the people pounding us from the government and all the cultural stuff going on where we're bad people because we provide housing for people, which is kind of an interesting irony that the housing providers are suddenly the bad people.