Community ownership and governance of affordable housing: Perspectives on community land trusts.

Theories of communitarianism have become increasingly important in understanding UK housing policy and regeneration practice, as governments promote active citizenship and community empowerment in the management and governance of housing. Community land trusts (CLTs) have been embraced by communities and governments as a potential vehicle for the delivery and management of affordable housing in locations where there is thought to be insufficient supply. Rather than rely on provision from state or private actors, CLTs directly undertake development in order to meet the local needs of their area.This thesis studies how and why people form, or attempt to form, CLTs in England and Wales, contributing to an emerging body of academic work on CLTs at national and international levels. It draws upon theories of community (Etzioni, 1995a; Tam, 1998) and neighbourhood governance (Lowndes and Sullivan, 2008) to illustrate the underlying rationales of CLTs and describe their negotiation within and between communities, financiers, and local and national governments.The research finds that the intrinsic rationale for CLTs is the alteration of power relations that privilege the autonomy of a defined, constructed or imagined community in the governance of local housing, influencing its tenure type, use and occupation in line with the needs of a CLT's instigators and beneficiaries. However, the creation of a CLT, as a form of communitarian governance, is a relational and political process that involves positioning for resources and legitimacy within wider social, cultural and political contexts. This gives rise to a variety of organisational forms and outcomes that reshape our understandings of a CLT. It should be understood as an approach with diverse rationales and characteristics rather than a uniform model. The potential effectiveness and composition of CLTs is likely to depend on the linkages made with broader structural forces, indicating that agendasof communitarianism and localism may be as dependent on the role and influence of external forces as they are on the active citizenship of local people.