This article is published in conjunction with issue #68 of Spacing magazine, which is focused on the state of the arts in Toronto. Look for it soon on the shelves of your local bookstore, or in your mailbox if you are a subscriber.
Artists are increasingly being displaced from Toronto, and cultural spaces are closing faster than new ones can open. New models are desperately needed. Building on the success of Toronto’s community land trust (CLT) movement, a group of Toronto artists and planners is adapting the CLT model as a possible solution to the cultural space crisis.
Toronto’s space crisis
The COVID-19 pandemic subjected Toronto’s cultural economy to what scholar Andy Pratt characterized as a “cultural heart attack.” Mass lay-offs, canceled artist contracts, and shuttered venues left artists and arts workers, and the communities they serve, in freefall. With help from CERB and other rapid relief programs, some artists were able to adapt and create digital, site-specific, and socially-distanced performances, educational programs, and activations (while making an incisive case for universal basic income).
Performing arts venues, especially music venues, already operating on the thinnest of financial margins, went from low to no ticket sales overnight. Toronto’s foremost cultural space provider, Artscape, overleveraged and financially reliant on venue rentals, announced it would be placed into receivership in August 2023. The vast majority of Artscape’s portfolio, hundreds of units of affordable artist housing and live/work space and multiple cultural hubs, was preserved in the end, but the situation elucidated the fragile state of the city’s cultural infrastructure.
Even before the pandemic, escalating land values caused by real estate financialization resulted in vertiginous commercial rent hikes, with no Provincial tenancy protections and no end in sight. The pandemic exposed a massive vulnerability in Toronto’s cultural sector – the patchwork of ad-hoc provisional arts spaces primarily reliant on short-term commercial leases that forms the fabric of Toronto’s cultural infrastructure. At the same time, the community land trust model was thriving within the affordable housing sector, and artists had started to take notice.
What is a community land trust?
A Community Land Trust (CLT) is a largely non-governmental, not-for-profit, community-based organization that holds land for the benefit of a place-based community. The community land trust model has evolved from its agricultural origins. The first CLT, New Communities Inc., was developed by African American farmers in Georgia in the late 1960s and represented the largest tract of land ever owned by African Americans in the United States until that time. Promoting self-determination, racial justice, sustainable land stewardship, and collective wealth-building, the CLT model was embraced by housing activists as a new legal model for collective land tenure, in close collaboration with the cooperative movement of the 1970 and 80s.
CLTs create affordability by taking land off the speculative real estate market, removing the profit imperative, and offering permanent security of tenure. As community-owned and governed not-for-profit corporations, CLTs facilitate participatory land stewardship, mutual aid, and collective care. The role of community is key to the model.
Toronto’s CLT Movement
Toronto’s first generation of CLTs was developed in conjunction with the co-operative movement in the 1980s. Over the past decade, a new generation of community land trusts, led by Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust (PNLT), has emerged against a backdrop of real estate financialization, accelerated gentrification, and widespread residential and commercial displacement. Toronto’s most established second generation of CLTs, including PNLT, Circle CLT, and Kensington Market Community Land Trust (KMCLT), have collectively secured over 800 affordable residential rental units to date, with new prospects in development.
Though primarily focussed on affordable housing, these new generation CLTs are serving a diverse range of communities and land uses. KMCLT, Toronto Chinatown Land Trust, and Little Jamaica Community Land Trust are focussed on acquiring mixed-use properties that offer both affordable commercial and residential units. Toronto Indigenous Land Trust is focussed on Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination and the land-based needs of Indigenous women, children, and 2-Spirit communities, such as housing, community space, and land for ceremony and cultural events. The list of new Toronto CLTs is growing in real time (e.g., South Etobicoke CLT, Gete-Onigaming CLT, Eglinton-Vaughan CLT, etc.), fostered by mentorship from established CLTs, and supported by research, advocacy and technical assistance from the Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts, a national organization created to support the CLT sector.
The Community and Cultural Spaces Trust (CCST)
Community and Cultural Spaces Trust, Toronto’s first cultural CLT, was founded in 2022 to create and facilitate sustainable processes for acquiring and maintaining space for community, cultural, and arts organizations in the Bloor-Dufferin neighbourhood. CCST developed out of an historic community benefits negotiation instigated by a local resident group called Build a Better Bloor Dufferin (BBBD). In response to the sale of publicly owned school lands to private developers, BBBD negotiated an unprecedented settlement of $15 million dollars to acquire affordable housing and $2 million towards community cultural space to be located in Ward 9-Davenport. The community benefits contribution was secured by the City of Toronto through the (now defunct) height and density bonusing allowance (widely known by Ontario planners as “Section 37”) in the previous iteration of Ontario’s Planning Act.
CCST is currently undertaking a local cultural space needs assessment to determine priorities for the ward. A grassroots, volunteer-run organization led by Ward 9 residents including artists, cultural workers, organizers, and experts in urban policy, real estate, and infrastructure, CCST has engaged social science, architecture, and urban studies students from the University of Toronto’s Department of Geography & Planning to support an analysis of real estate needs, space requirements, and tenancy security among arts organizations in Ward 9. This work will support the development of feasibility studies, risk assessments, and cost analyses to prepare for future acquisition and investment opportunities. CCST is also building its board of directors, preparing to further engage the community, and carefully developing policy and governance practices to strategically steward the funds in a way that maximizes impact and minimizes risk. CCST is currently exploring various CLT models and developing organizational infrastructure with a future goal to hire staff and acquire property.
Challenges and Opportunities for Cultural CLTs
Despite the initial success of cultural CLTs in the UK (e.g., Creative Land Trust), the US (e.g., Community Arts Stabilization Trust and Artist Space Trust), and in Vancouver (221A/Cultural Land Trust), cultural CLTs face some unique challenges. Like residential CLTs, cultural CLTs need substantial funding in order to remain affordable, requiring government investment in start up, land acquisition, operation, asset management, accessibility, and climate resilience. Revenue generation and cash flow models differ significantly from residential CLTs, so new financial and business plans need to be developed and tested. CLTs are currently not legally recognized in Canada, Ontario, or Toronto and there are currently no funding programs to support cultural CLTs.
While interest in the CLT model continues to grow and gain political attention, it’s important to remember that CLTs are not a panacea, but one of many strategies needed to prevent displacement of low-income and working class people. CLTs are a unique type of non-profit that is extremely challenging to develop and maintain, and they require a great deal of community engagement, leadership, and membership management.
Unlike most non-profit arts organizations, CLTs are not sole proprietorships founded by a single artist, and they do not move quickly or hierarchically, but require communication, collaboration, and community consensus.
The CLT model may continue to evolve and be adapted to a wide range of legal, geographical, and political environments. However, the radical, democratic, racial justice, and community roots of CLT must not be forgotten. When democratic community control by low-income and working-class tenants is neglected (or intentionally omitted) and financial, political, and landowner interests are prioritized, the community land trust model is at risk of being eroded beyond recognition. As artists and cultural workers explore the CLT model, community ownership will need to be a core precept.
As cultural CLTs increasingly gain public recognition and proliferate, alongside their residential counterparts, artists and community organizers need to ensure community ownership and stewardship is not bypassed in the rush to stem the loss of cultural spaces. Despite the challenges, Cultural CLTs are a promising new strategy for artists, arts organizations, and communities to create permanently affordable cultural spaces in cities like Toronto.
Erika Hennebury (RPP, MCIP) is a planner and arts worker, currently working as a Senior Cultural Affairs Officer, City of Toronto, Economic Development and Culture and co-lead of the City’s Office for Cultural Space. Hannah Fleisher is an urban planner who focuses on housing development, and community and strategic planning in Not-For Profits, charitable organizations, and the public sector. Special thanks to CCST Board members Maggie Hutcheson and Erella Ganon.
