Monday, October 12, 2026
Thurston Housing Land Trust (THLT) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to create and protect affordable homeownership for low- and moderate-income people. We do this through the community land trust (CLT) model.
Land trusts are nonprofit’s that protect land for various values. Around here, you may be familiar with conservation land trusts Capitol Land Trust or Nisqually Land Trust, which protect fish, wildlife and habitat in our region.
We are another type of land trust in Thurston County, one for housing.
CLTs hold land in community stewardship for long-term public benefit and keep it out of the speculative real estate market with the goal of preserving lasting access and affordability over time. CLTs like THLT retain ownership of the land while a new homeowner purchases the home. This reduces the purchase price while allowing the homeowner to build equity and keeping the home affordable to a future homeowner.
THLT was formed in 2018, received our 501(c)3 nonprofit status in 2019, hired our first part-time staff in 2022, acquired our first single-family home in 2023, and purchased a multi-unit property in 2024. Last fall, we completed a strategic plan and are focused on purchasing existing homes and building new housing within Thurston’s urban growth areas, particularly around Lacey, Tumwater and Olympia.
As parents, employers, friends, and neighbors — we want to help more people in our community become homeowners. Housing is an issue nationwide, and it has been for a long time. Headlines consistently underscore the tight housing market throughout the country, including here in Washington.
Despite multiple years of state legislative reform to increase the housing supply, there continue to be urgent calls to build more housing. The Washington State Department of Commerce estimates that Washington needs to build a whopping 1.1 million housing units by 2045. That’s thousands more homes than we built in the prior 20 years.
The housing crunch is pronounced around Puget Sound, including in Thurston County. Of the 1.1 million housing units needed across Washington, over 54,000 units are needed in Thurston. Additionally Thurston County is continuing its trend for over half a century of outpacing the state’s growth rate of 14.6 percent. We need houses.
Housing costs make it harder. Thurston county’s median home sale price recently reached about $547,000 — more than five times the annual household income. A relatively affordable price-to-income ratio is around 3, as existed for much of the 1990s. Thurston County’s ratio is nearly double that. Buying a home is simply out of reach for most households in Thurston County.
THLT certainly won’t solve our region’s housing challenges on its own. But it is part of the constellation of organizations working on the problem.
May 15 is ‘World CLT Day,' a perfect time to start learning more about CLTs, the work we do, and how you can support THLT’s efforts to expand housing. CLTs represent a growing network of nonprofits that are trying to chip away at our housing problem. There are CLTs all over the country and throughout the Pacific Northwest, including Seattle, Whatcom County and the San Juan Islands.
There are many ways to get involved in our work, including:
Send us an email at info @thurstonhousinglandtrust.org to learn more about how you might help us build and protect more homes.
Max Lambert is as a board member for Thurston Housing Land Trust.
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longtimeresident
Love the concept! Some talented people on the Board. May they be very successful in their goal of providing more housing, for those most unlikely to be able buy a house under our current economic conditions.....
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36098501
Community land trusts are rooted in generosity and genuine care for neighbors struggling to remain in the communities they love. They can provide stability for families who might otherwise be displaced by rising housing costs. For local service clubs, nonprofits, churches, and philanthropists, they offer a tangible way to take meaningful local action. A land trust can absolutely help real people remain connected to schools, jobs, and community ties while reducing the immediate risk of displacement. Those outcomes matter.
At the same time, the appeal of community land trusts should not distract from the much larger work of creating an environment where enough housing can actually be built. Lasting affordability depends on making it easier, faster, and less expensive to build diverse forms of housing at meaningful scale.
Community land trusts are not a comprehensive solution to the local housing affordability crisis. They are a valuable tool for helping a limited number of households navigate a market that remains fundamentally undersupplied. The core problem is not primarily the ownership structure of housing. The deeper problem is the severe shortage of homes relative to demand, driven by decades of policies that have made housing construction increasingly difficult, slow, and expensive.
That distinction matters because land trusts can create the impression that substantial progress is being made while the structural causes of high housing costs remain largely unchanged. Every subsidized home added to a trust exists within a market where thousands of additional homes are still needed. Without substantial increases in overall housing production through zoning reform, streamlined permitting, reduced delays, and lower development costs, prices will continue rising for most households.
In Olympia, development costs are significant. Permit and impact fees, sales taxes on construction, utility requirements, off-site improvements, and evolving building code standards can add substantial costs to a typical home before a family ever moves in. Those costs ultimately flow into higher housing prices and rents.
Community land trusts also face inherent scaling limitations. They often depend on donated land, public subsidy, philanthropy, discounted financing, and long-term nonprofit stewardship. Each project requires ongoing administrative oversight and subsidy coordination that can be difficult to expand rapidly enough to meet regional demand. A community that is short thousands of homes is unlikely to close that gap one subsidized property at a time.
They also offer a different model of home ownership than traditional market ownership. Families gain stability, predictable housing costs, and the opportunity to build some equity through mortgage repayment and limited appreciation. However, because resale prices are restricted to preserve long-term affordability, homeowners generally accumulate less wealth than they might through unrestricted home ownership during periods of strong appreciation.
None of this diminishes the value of community land trusts as charitable or community-based interventions. They can be compassionate, effective, and worthwhile programs that help families remain rooted in their communities. But they work best as a complement to broader housing reforms, not as a substitute for them.
Ultimately, broad and lasting affordability will require restoring abundant housing supply across the market itself. That means allowing more homes to be built in more places, reducing unnecessary regulatory barriers, improving permitting efficiency, and lowering the cumulative costs that make housing increasingly unattainable for ordinary working households.
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