Inland Equity Community Land Trust is using the community land trust model to create housing that will be permanently below market rate. They have purchased twenty acres in Adelanto (San Bernardino County, CA) and building four homes. The project design received SCAG’s 2024 Sustainability Award: Carmen Ramirez Award for Equity. The first home was completed in April of 2026, and now occupied by a family under a lease agreement with an option to purchase. The proceeds from this loan will provide IECLT with the capital needed to continue construction of the additional homes and pay off the previous LENDonate loan. This loan will be repaid from the proceeds from the sale of the homes.
*Monthly interest-only payments
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Inland Equity Community Land Trust’s board and members represent a broad range of nonprofit service providers, community organizations, and individuals from the Inland Empire who are eager to find a solution to the chronic housing crisis. Some have non-profit experience, advocate for the homeless, fight for policies to end poverty, championed immigrants’ rights, help in food pantries, worked in colleges mentoring students, civic clubs, and are involved in grassroots organizing. Many of them have also struggled with housing insecurity—half of the board are renters themselves. When they set out to create the CLT, they thought it would be of strategic personal and public importance.
Over the past five years, they have established the CLT in the housing development community and in the housing advocacy community – Plan Adelanto is their first project to develop and steward affordable housing. The community land trust model offers affordable, quality housing for home ownership below market rate. Equity sharing reduces the cost to the homeowner and creates opportunities for moderate income people to invest in their futures, achieve home ownership, and ultimately build generational wealth. IECLT is working to model a path toward economic equity and providing a foundation for long-term community prosperity.
The proceeds from this loan will provide IECLT with the capital needed to continue construction of the additional homes on the Adelanto property and pay off the previous LENDonate loan.
The loan will be repaid from the proceeds from the sale of the homes.
IECLT is building four homes that will be sold to people at or below moderate income and the homes will be sold below market rate. The community land trust uses a shared-equity model that retains the subsidies they received for building in the walls of the home for future buyers in an equity sharing agreement. Community land trusts can address the severe shortage of affordable homeownership opportunities. Median home prices remain out of reach for moderate income households.
Over half of Inland Empire residents are housing cost-burdened by HUD’s definition. IECLT is building the four homes near Adelanto High School on a 20-acre lot on San Bernardino County land. Once completed, residents will have the opportunity to own the homes in the community land trust. The resident will become a homeowner and build equity based on what they contribute to the purchase. They will be able to pass the home on to their children. If they sell the house, they will keep the equity they paid in and the equity from housing subsidies will stay with the home and subsidize the price for the new resident. The goal is to pass this on in perpetuity to new buyers whenever a home is sold in the community land trust.
Inland Equity Community Land Trust was co-founded by Maribel Nunez and continues to be led by women committed to expanding affordable homeownership in the Inland Empire.
Maribel is a co-founder of IECLT and the 1st and only Executive Director. She was the Executive Director of California Partnership, a fiscally sponsored project of Community Partners. She transitioned California Partnership into the Inland Equity Community Land Trust, starting in 2019.
Anabel was part of the formation of IECLT, joining the advisory board as a University of California at Riverside student. She became the trust’s first elected Board President in September 2020 and has led the board ever since.
Co-Founder & Executive Director
Board President
