EQUITY
TRUST TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE Scope and Priorities
Equity Trust, Inc. offers technical assistance to community loan funds, community land trusts, CSA farms, and other community-based groups working to develop sustainable, equitable, local systems relating to housing, food, economic development, and the environment. Equity Trust particularly seeks to assist relatively small and/or new organizations that are taking innovative community-based approaches to problems involving the ownership of land and capital and that do not have access to appropriate technical assistance from other sources.
Particular topics regarding which Equity Trust can deliver expert assistance include the following:
- Basic issues relating to the development of community land trusts.
- Basic issues relating to development of community development loan funds.
- Design of other specialized community-based organizational structures.
- Tax-exemption issues for nonprofits.
- Membership development for community-based nonprofits.
- Strategies for developing and preserving affordable housing.
- Sources of subsidies for affordable housing.
- Financing community supported agriculture.
- Financing affordable homeownership, including leasehold financing and issues re: FHA, USDA loan programs, Fannie Mae, FHLB, and other institutions.
- Approaches to acquisition of real estate utilizing shared ownership between individuals and nonprofits representing community interests.
- Design of specialized long-term ground leases permitting lessee-ownership of improvements subject to resale restrictions (for residential agricultural, and other uses).
- Design of conservation easements including specialized easements for agricultural property with options to purchase at restricted prices.
- Design of resale restrictions for use with ground leases or conservation easements.
Forms of assistance can range from brief consultations and responses to specific questions (by phone or email) to the review, revision and/or drafting of a variety of specialized documents, to more extensive customized programs of assistance involving one or more site visits over an extended period of time.
Fees for Service and Reduction or Waiver of Fees
In general, Equity Trust seeks reimbursement for direct expenses and charges for its time based on a sliding scale. The base rate is $75 per hour or $600 per day, plus expenses. This rate is sometimes substantially reduced, or fees may be waived altogether, depending on:
- The ability of the client to pay;
- The availability of other funding to support the work;
- The extent to which the work benefits those most in need;
- The extent to which the work can result in socially constructive precedents;
- The extent to which the work will expand Equity Trust's experience and ability to assist other groups.