My role in helping to initiate New Communities was more or less completed with the acquisition of the 5000 acres. Moreover, local leaders now had a firm grasp of the project and didn't really want "outside" help. I don't think this was a racial matter; it was simply local determination and local pride.

During this stage in my life our living situation changed. I felt strongly drawn to focus on the community land trust concept, and I wanted to further Borsodi's ideas. The Committee for Nonviolent Action was not the focal point of my life anymore. Marj and I, along with other friends not part of our CNVA work, found ourselves looking more closely at community economic issues. So in 1972 Marj and I moved with two other families (Ted Webster and his wife and Shimon Gottshauck and his wife-to-be) to Ashby, Massachusetts, where we started an informal housing cooperative. Ted Webster was an accomplished editor who wanted to utilize his skills towards furthering CLTs and Borsodi's ideas. Shimon Gottshauck was a sociologist working on his doctorate at Brandeis University; he had been specifically interested in the New Communities project. We found a site with a large home divided into two apartments, to which we later added a third. We had about four acres to ourselves, with lots of fruit trees to keep us happy.

Meanwhile, although both J. P. Narayan's and Ralph Borsodi's poor health had dampened our hopes of getting the Rural Renaissance project off the ground, Borsodi showed improvement in late 1967. He recovered enough to establish two nonprofit corporations that he hoped would continue the development of his ideas. One of these was the International Independence Institute, which he conceived as the training and educational arm of the project. The Institute would be linked to existing universities, which would carry out the educational responsibilities. Borsodi had talked with the President of Amedabad University in India and won his support for the project.

The other corporation was called the International Foundation for Independence, whose function was to operate as the banking arm for the Institute. It was to handle the money raised from First World countries by J. P. and others. (Except for a small amount Borsodi put in of his own money, the Foundation never became operational.) Money raised by the Foundation would be used to train field workers and to lend commodities like seeds and fertilizers to individual farmers in India and other Third World countries. As a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization the Institute could receive tax-deductible contributions to cover operating costs. It was this corporation that was the operational arm which I and a few friends—mainly Terry Mollner, Shimon Gottshauck, and Paul Salstrom—used to carry on the work. Later Erick Hansh joined us.

Before Borsodi went into full retirement, he outlined his vision of how the Institute would operate. He explained that each village applying for a loan would be required to develop a five-year plan similar to the one developed by the National Planning Board in India, which had to be approved by the Institute. There was one requirement Borsodi set out: all loans would be to farmers or small business people for seeds and fertilizers or small-scale equipment. No actual money would exchange hands, and repayment would be in kind. What is amazing about this 1972 proposal is its similarity to a lending plan designed by Muhammad Yunus a few years later to help poor people in Bangladesh. The important distinction is Yunus's success! Between 1983, when he first opened the independent Grameen Bank, and 1997 over two million people (94 percent women) received over one billion dollars in loans. The Bank, which employs 12,000 people, has maintained a 98 percent repayment record. Now, in 1999, there are Grameen-type banks in over fifty countries around the world.

Unfortunately Borsodi was only able to outline his vision and then once again had to withdraw from organizing work. With both Borsodi and J. P. no longer able to play a major role, we decided in 1973 that the best task for the Institute would be to follow through on New Communities as a model to initiate a Gramdan movement in the United States—in other words, a land-reform movement following the initiative established by Vinoba Bhave in India. We changed the name of the Institute to The Institute for Community Economics and, using our contacts throughout the peace movement, we began a newsletter to promote the Community Land Trust concept in the United States. From the beginning there was a tendency for people to confuse the intentional community network with the CLT concept. Many people assumed they were the same thing, so our first task when speaking to groups was to clarify the distinction.

A Community Land Trust is a not-for-profit organization with membership open to any resident of the geographical region or bioregion where it is located. The purpose of a CLT is to create a democratic institution to hold land and to retain the use-value of the land for the benefit of the community. The effect of a CLT is to provide affordable access to land for housing, farming, small businesses, and civic projects. This effect can be achieved when a significant portion of the land in an area is held by a CLT . . . .

A CLT acquires land by gift or purchase and then develops a land-use plan for the parcel, identifying which lands should remain forever wild and which should support low-impact development. A CLT fosters healthy ecosystems and an appropriate social use of the land. The planners solicit input from residents of the region to determine the best uses of the land—recreational space, wildlife preserve, managed woodlots for a local industry, secure farmlands for the region, affordable housing, or affordable office space. The land trust then leases sites for the purposes agreed upon. The lease runs for ninety-nine years and is inheritable and renewable on the original terms. The leaseholder owns the buildings and any agricultural improvements on the land but not the land itself. Upon resale, leaseholders are restricted to selling their buildings and improvements at current replacement cost, excluding the land's market value from the transfer . . . .

The CLT is a democratic institution, with the potential to hold most land in a region. The leasehold method provides both security and equity for leaseholders by encouraging their long-term investment and helping them to establish deep roots in the community.

—Susan Witt and Robert Swann
Land: Challenge and Opportunity
E. F. Schumacher Society
May 1995, pp. 7-8