I'm thrilled to finally be able to share this landscape scan, needs assessment and strategy brief that I co-authored with Melody Osuna, Esq. and Shashi Hanuman, Esq. of the Public Interest Law Project. As legal practitioners in California working on land use and community ownership of land issues impacting lower-income communities of color we know that who owns land often determines whether or not equitable outcomes can be achieved.

This report was developed to support public interest and legal services attorneys and housing justice advocates in our work to advance new and existing legal, policy & organizing strategies to promote self-determination via community stewardship and ownership of land and housing. While this is our primary audience, we hope that urban planners, academics, philanthropy, and other intersecting professionals will also find this report to be of use and of interest.
By way of summary, this report covers the following topics:
Review of publicly available data on ownership and control of land, including population demographics, in California
Selected strategies supporting community-based acquisition and control of land efforts in California
Role and capacity of the legal aid sector to support systems changes around ownership and control of land in California
Initial recommendations to strengthen legal services work in this area and ultimately advance more community-driven and racially equitable ownership and control of land in California
We quickly realized that the lack of publicly accessible and consistently collected data on this topic was a major obstacle to answering our most pressing questions. This report just begins to scratch the surface, laying out what is publicly available and identifying key areas where data, transparency, and more research is needed to adequately inform policy solutions and effective strategies. Our hope is that this will be a valuable one-stop resource for lawyers and advocates to quickly access and understand information on the current landscape of land ownership, legal services work in this space, and where to go for more information. Hoping this will be just the beginning.
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