H.O.M.E., Inc: Sustainable Human Settlement Development

H.O.M.E. is a program that provides opportunities for homeownership and community to low income people. In an effort to create sustainable human developments, the group organized people excluded by poverty from home ownership into a land trust they called The Covenant Community Land Trust (CCLT). The CCLT owns the land, and the people own the homes. The land trust is used for harvesting fuel and for growing food in organic gardens. This program provides an alternative way of life for people with few resources who have failed in traditional government programs.

The purpose of H.O.M.E.'s housing initiative was to provide four basic needs to the low income community: housing, food, fuel and employment.

H.O.M.E. and the CCLT have built 28 homes, each with access to five or ten acres of land. The wood is harvested from CCLT land and processed in H.O.M.E.'s mills and shops, providing jobs and multiplying the money in the excluded community. In 1988 the CCLT and H.O.M.E. brought homeless people to a series of workshops where they wrote legislation which was incorporated in the Maine Omnibus Housing Act of 1989 and provided support for land trusts as a way to meet housing needs of low income people. H.O.M.E. then organized the Maine Homestead Land Trust Alliance which in turn began organizing land trusts in poor communities elsewhere in Maine. There are now 9 CLTs in Maine, that have built 83 houses including a land trust of mentally ill people in the City of Bangor, providing 12 units of housing.