About Headwaters Community Trust
OUR MISSION
To care for our neighbors and strengthen our communities by creating permanently affordable homes and access to community-owned land.
Our Story So Far
Headwaters Community Trust formed in direct response to the housing needs identified by economically burdened residents of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.
IN MARCH OF 2023, the East Craftsbury (VT) Presbyterian Church launched a monthly Community Housing Forum to explore, through open and constructive public discussions, ways to address the lack of affordable housing in the area. In May, a local cost-burdened renter presented housing models based on shared equity and perpetual affordability.
Inspired by this presentation, a group formed to study shared-equity housing models. They determined that a Community Land Trust (CLT) was the best available template for community-led development of permanently affordable housing. CLT land is held in trust, while the housing on that land is owned by those who live in it. The purchaser of a CLT home signs a long-term, low-cost lease on the underlying land; the lease includes a resale formula that limits the profit on any future sale. This guarantees that CLT homes remain affordable in perpetuity.
FIRST STEPS — Determined to apply the CLT model to their four-town area in northeastern Vermont, members of the study group founded Headwaters Community Trust (HCT). Headwaters was incorporated in the state of Vermont in June 2024, and granted 501(c)(3) nonprofit status by the IRS that December.
TAKING SHAPE — HCT’s current organizing phase is led by an all-volunteer board whose members have experience in business management, forestry, farming, construction, accounting, community organizing, public health, law, education, program building, public relations, and nonprofit communications and development. The board includes members from each town in its service area, members who are cost-burdened renters, members who also serve on the board of a local Conservation Land Trust, and a member who lives in cooperative housing on shared land.
Our Work
Using the Community Land Trust model, Headwaters Community Trust will acquire and hold in trust land for homes, commercial and agricultural uses, and other functions that provide community benefit.
Protected from the speculative real estate market, these properties will form a stock of affordable housing and other community assets that will serve as a durable foundation for civic and economic vitality in our northern Vermont service area.
Because their resale price is regulated by the trust, Headwaters homes will always be within reach of people of ordinary means. Our vision is a future where everyone who takes part in the life of our communities can find a place that meets their needs for a home.
Our service area is the headwaters region of the Black, Barton, and Lamoille Rivers, comprising the northeastern Vermont towns of Albany, Craftsbury, Glover, and Greensboro, and adjoining communities.
Board of Directors
Linda Ramsdell, President
Linda founded The Galaxy Bookshop in Hardwick, VT in 1988. During her bookselling career, Linda served as President of the New England Independent Booksellers Association, Board President of Preservation Trust of Vermont, and on the boards of the American Booksellers Association and the Center for an Agricultural Economy. Since selling the bookstore in 2014, Linda has worked as a bookkeeper for many area businesses and nonprofits. Linda lives in Craftsbury and first became interested in local housing solutions in 2019 while serving on the Craftsbury Planning Commission. Linda is a member of the Community Housing Forum and Northeast Kingdom Organizing.
Naomi Ranz-Schleifer, Vice President
Naomi is a public health consultant, community organizer, and freelance media producer whose clients include the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, HBO, Netflix, PBS, the Discovery Channel, and others. Her work highlights efforts in communities across the country to improve health equity, food and housing security, climate resiliency, education, social justice, and human rights. Born and raised in Greensboro, VT, Naomi holds a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Michigan. She is president of the Greensboro Association, and chair of Greensboro’s Walk/Bike Task Force. She also advises the Greensboro Land Trust and is a member of Northeast Kingdom Organizing (NEKO) and Vermont’s mutual aid network.
Rick Morrill, Treasurer
Rick works as a consulting forester in northern Vermont, together with his wife (an ecologist) and father-in-law (a practicing forester with over fifty years in the woods). Rick holds a Master of Forestry degree from the University of Maine and previously served as the Baxter State Park Resource Manager. He is a licensed forester in Maine and Vermont and has served on the Board of the Forest Stewards Guild, a national organization devoted to advancing a culture of forest stewardship. Rick feels strongly that we can and must pursue the interconnected goals of housing and conservation for the long term well-being of our communities and landscape.
Leslie Taylor, Secretary
Leslie fell in love with the people of rural Vermont as a young adult in West Fairlee, working in the schools, on a dairy farm, and as town clerk. A chance to co-own a farm took her to Wisconsin, where she went on to become the first staff person of Northeast Wisconsin Land Trust. Since then, Leslie has worked to support people organizing to improve their community – in conservation, in sustainability, and in mental health. She found her forever home in Craftsbury six years ago, and a purpose worth devoting herself to in the creation of Headwaters Community Trust.
Bill Berman, Director
Bill is a clinical law professor emeritus who for over twenty years, along with his students, represented people who could not afford a lawyer in housing cases. He founded a fair housing program that has raised over six million dollars in grant funding for fair housing testing, education and outreach, enforcement, and empirical research. Bill is also an advisor to the Greensboro Land Trust. He lives in Greensboro and is an avid lake swimmer and gravel biker. He also enjoys photography, raising vegetables, and chasing ground hogs.
Bill Day, Director
Bill worked variously as a copyeditor, production assistant, designer, acquisitions editor, marketer, and middle manager in scholarly and professional book publishing in Philadelphia and New York, followed by fifteen years as communications and development lead for an educational nonprofit in the New York city suburbs. Bill was raised in southern Vermont and has lived in Craftsbury since 2023.
Michael Reddy, Director
Mike Reddy is a resident board member of Wheelock Mountain Farm, a nonprofit popular education center, land trust, and intentional community. In his day job with KURRVE, the Northeast Kingdom’s Long-term Disaster Recovery Group, Mike works to repair and rebuild better the region’s existing housing stock devastated by flooding. Mike is passionate about cooperative economics, collective empowerment, and cultivating communal abundance, and he actively organizes with Rural Vermont and Northeast Kingdom Organizing (NEKO).
Tom Warnock, Director
Tom came to Vermont in the late 1960s, attracted by opportunities for a more self-sufficient and affordable rural lifestyle, and worked on farms and in construction while attending Middlebury College and later earning a graduate degree in physics from the University of Vermont. Tom and his wife Natalie cleared land for pastures and gardens and took down old barns, salvaging beams and lumber to build their modest house. Tom taught for fifteen years in Northeast Kingdom schools, and then for twenty years in the UVM Physics Department. Now retired, he hopes to help others achieve their goal of owning an affordable place.
Organizing Committee
Bill Berman
Bill Day
Rick Morrill
Linda Ramsdell
Naomi Ranz-Schleifer
Michael Reddy
Dave Stoner
Leslie Taylor
Neil Urie
Tom Warnock
