In March, 1994, the MHA filed a certificate of incorporation for the Cooper Square HDFC Community Land Trust (CLT), Inc. The CLT was formed for the purpose of acquiring the land upon which the buildings managed by the Cooper Square MHA sit. At the time, 13 East 3rd Street, a city-owned building, was going to be renovated and transferred to the Cooper Square MHA, and so the Cooper Square MHA wanted to have the land trust in place in order to be the holding company owning the parcel of land, which it would lease to the Cooper Square MHA. The CLT was designed to serve a couple of important functions:
- It would monitor the MHA’s operation of the project to ensure that it complied with the conveyancing documents and the financing documents.
- Most importantly, it would ensure that the Board of the Cooper Square MHA protected the permanent affordability of the low income housing so that the buildings were never resold at a profit when HPD stopped monitoring and overseeing the buildings, as is the case with other buildings transferred by HPD to residents in the Division of Alternative Management Programs (DAMP).
The By Laws of the CLT required it to have a Board of Directors consisting of nine (9) people, three of whom would be Class A members of the Cooper Square MHA II HDFC, and the remaining six (6) members who would include representatives of local community based housing or social service organizations and/or representatives of city-wide housing or technical assistant organizations or professionals in the housing field or educational institutions, such as urban planners and housing policy experts.