Our Organization
The Greater Wenatchee Area has been facing a crisis of housing availability and affordability that has steadily grown for years. Community problems like these don’t get solved passively but with bold unified action.
COMMON GROUND Community Housing Trust was formed with support of Our Valley our Future and Serve Wenatchee Valley to move forward within the Eastmont (Orondo) and Wenatchee School District Boundaries.
About Common Ground
COMMON GROUND Community Housing Trust is focused on providing affordable housing within the Greater Wenatchee Valley. In everything we do, we believe in thinking innovatively about our housing crisis.
We act on this belief by working in partnership with our community to:
Acquire and develop land.
Build attractive, quality homes.
Make them attainable for low- to moderate-income households.
Steward them so they remain permanently affordable.
Because everyone in our community should be able to live where they work and play.
About Community Land Trusts
Simply put, a Community Housing Trust is a community-led development, of individually owned buildings, on community owned land.
You will see the terms Community Housing Trust (CHT) and Community Land Trust (CLT) used interchangeably. This is because the way they are structured is essentially the same but the purpose for holding the land in trust is different. The Chelan/Douglas Community Land Trust holds land in trust permanently for recreation and conservation purposes. COMMON GROUND Community Housing Trust will hold land in trust permanently to provide affordable home ownership opportunities.
In the history of the community land trust, ownership came first. The CHT’s unique form of tenure appeared in theory and practice long before “community” was grafted onto the model’s organizational stem and long before “trust” was given the operational meaning it has today. The search for the model’s origins must begin, therefore, with its unusual approach to the ownership of land and buildings.