About Us

Pahali Community Land Trust is community- and resident-controlled. 

Pahali is a 12-year-old community land trust serving the residents of East Palo Alto with the mission of "placekeeping for the local placekeepers." Pahali operated as a volunteer-run organization until 2020, when it entered into an administrative merger with East Palo Alto Community Alliance & Neighborhood Development Organization (EPACANDO) to provide the CLT with administrative and staffing support. Through this partnership, Pahali Community Land Trust has expanded its capacity to empower community members to increase control of their housing situations.  

Pahali’s purpose is the stewardship and expansion of the East Palo Alto community’s portfolio of permanently affordable homeownership opportunities. One-third of Pahali’s governing board is elected by its community membership, one-third elected by resident(s) on CLT-owned land, and one-third appointed by the board. 

What’s in a name?

*PAHALI is an acronym for the legal name Preserving Affordable Housing Longterm, Inc.. Pahali is also a Swahili word that means “place.” The name is an intentional reference to African-American roots of the community land trust movement in the United States and to the African-American leadership of the establishment of self-governance for East Palo Alto residents; and establishment of policies and civic institutions to sustain economic and cultural diversity and counter the forces of displacement.

Our Mission

Pahali Community Land Trust is a group of local placekeepers and supporters; serving the region, focusing on East Palo Alto.  Pahali uplifts and supports housing-insecure residents of East Palo Alto by developing and preserving permanently affordable, community-owned housing. Pahali Community Land Trust aims to preserve homes that enable long-term residents and homegrown community leaders to avoid displacement. Pahali's work carries forward East Palo Alto's legacy and destiny as a just city and an inclusive community of color.

Pahali CLT aims to orchestrate the creation of dozens of permanently affordable homes owned individually or cooperatively by long term residents and local “placekeepers”—community members who anchor and sustain a community of practice to secure East Palo Alto's legacy and destiny as a just city. Local placekeepers assure this invaluable resource of permanently affordable homes will chain forward place-security for future generations’ community members.  Pahali Community Land Trust will continue to partner with organizations who support the creation of permanently affordable ownership opportunities for long-time East Palo Alto residents who would otherwise be in jeopardy of displacement. This important but relatively uncommon form of housing now accounts for 1% of our community’s total housing supply, proportionally largest in the greater Bay Area. We aim to double that, and soon!

Our Vision

The CLT envisions an East Palo Alto where all residents enjoy housing stability. empowering them to be stewards of their homes.

FAQs

  • A community land trust (CLT) is a not-for-profit organization that acquires and holds land in perpetuity on behalf of the community for housing and other community serving purposes. Typically, the CLT leases the land to homeowners or community based organizations who own the structure. The land-lease includes provisions that restrict the resale price of any structure(s) in order to assure permanent affordability. A goal of the CLT is to preserve affordable homeownership opportunities through the long-term leasing of land under owner-occupied homes.

  • A housing co-operative is formed when people join as a democratic governance body to own or control housing and related community facilities. Each resident is a voting member of the co-op and owns a share of the co-op that entitles them to live in one of the co-op homes. Each month, members pay an amount that covers their portion of the operating expenses of the co-op corporation.

  • The community placekeepers are East Palo Alto residents who have demonstrated commitment to community service and/or social and economic justice. The work-in-progress assumption is that the co-op should strive for a sustainable diversity of age, sex, gender, income, race, and ethnicity, with a preference for long-time East Palo Alto residents to the extent allowable by law. Placekeepers could be returning young college graduates or displacees to anchored-in-place, third-generation residents.