Hi! My name is Grace Canny, I am a Senior Politics major and I am a Community Fellow for Common Roots Housing Trust (CRHT). Communities across the country have struggled with the affordable housing crisis, and Eastern Washington is no exception. CRHT is a community land trust (CLT) designed to develop or renovate homes to increase the permanently affordable housing stock in Walla Walla County, Columbia County, and the Milton-Freewater area. Community land trusts separate the land from the home built on top of it, to ensure homes can remain permanently affordable while homeowners are able to build equity. CRHT focuses its homeownership opportunities on those whose needs aren’t often met by the housing market here, to help our region remain vibrant.
My role at Common Roots for the academic year is to help build the membership of our community land trust. I work with Executive Director Miles Nowlin, along with key Board members to spread the word about becoming a CRHT member. Common Roots is governed by its members who vote on appointments to the Board, changes to the Bylaws, and development of land or properties. Members must live in our service area and should be representative of our diverse community, across age, income, race, education, and housing needs. The democratic governance structure of Common Roots promotes and maintains local knowledge and local guidance.
Recently, CRHT held our first Annual Membership Meeting, where all members convened to elect the new Board for this year. In advance of the meeting date, I worked with our Membership Committee on calling interested community members, encouraging them to join our membership and attend the meeting. I also worked on CRHT social media posts promoting the event. Our hard work paid off and our first member meeting went great! We had folks from Walla Walla, College Place, and some even came from Pendleton too!
Coming in the new year, Miles and I will be doing direct outreach in the form of presentations and info sessions to a number of groups in our community, to get out the word of what Common Roots membership has to offer and the value of a democratically governed community land trust in our region. I have learned a lot in my conversations with community members, as they share their experiences with unaffordable housing. Nearly everyone is affected by this issue, whether it be renters, small businesses, or regional employers, like Whitman College. I am excited to learn more still about the relationships between multi-scalar stakeholders as we grow CRHT membership, and help facilitate equitable governance by supporting members.