We now own property! Well technically, we co-own duplexes and lease land from Valley Community Land Trust.

There is a lot to share, but we wanted to start with resources for combining a group equity housing cooperative with a community land trust, in order to create stable resident-controlled housing, with land taken off the speculative market forever and stewarded by the community.

• Our articles of incorporation, which we submitted to the state to form our entity.

• Our bylaws, which set us up as a group equity cooperative with resident and community membership, governed by sociocracy. Here are some bylaws we used as inspiration as well. If you are looking for help filing in MA as a cooperative, we worked with attorney Kyle Sosebee to help us put these together and would recommend him. We also got help from Jerry Koch-Gonzalez at Sociocracy For All around the governance pieces.

• Our ground lease, which limits the resale value of our homes and adds oversight from Valley Community Land Trust for development and land stewardship. It was drafted by Valley Community Land Trust based on the Grounded Solutions model ground lease. Jim Oldham from Equity Trust helped us modify ours as well and they offer consultation for CLT leases if you need technical assistance.

• Our financial projections as of closing.

Please feel free to take anything that you wish from these. Also, feel free to reach out at general@forum.valleyhousing.coop, or sign up for $5 / month to be a community member-owner for access to our forum and the ability to sit in on any meetings or join a circle.

We will have another post soon with more details about the process we went through, including all the community support we got to get us here…

Stay tuned for an invitation to celebrate on the property this fall. Thank you so much for your support <3

P.S. For anyone local Four Phantoms Brewery in Greenfield is donating $1 to Valley Community Land Trust for every "punk house" beer purchased. Try it while it lasts!