For the past fifteen years, we have been working on getting national approval for FHA mortgages for CLT homes -- and we are finally seeing the fruits of our labors.  Based on advocacy efforts by the CLT Network, in collaboration with our Cornerstone partners, we are pleased to announce a breakthrough!  We have been informed by HUD staff that they expect to approve a national waiver by the end of the first quarter of 2011 that will allow FHA financing of CLT homes, with FHA mortgage availability to follow by the end of the second quarter of 2011.   We'll keep you posted as things develop.

We have loaded all the course materials, David Abromowitz's keynote address, documents from the Annual Meeting, and a gallery of photos from the 2010 National CLT Conference onto the CLT Network website.  You can find it all right here.

Once again, community land trusts have dominated in the latest round of Home Depot Foundation awards for innovative development practices.  Lopez Community Land Trust has received the 2010 Award of Excellence for Affordable Housing Built Responsibly for their Common Ground project.  And the Champlain Housing Trust has received the 2010 Award of Excellence for Sustainable Community Development for their collaboration with the City of Burlington.  You can find out more information about both of these awards on our new Innovations page on the CLT Network website.

We have received over 20 requests for technical assistance from members of the CLT Network, and we will be announcing the recipients in early January 2011.  We will also be announcing our new Technical Assistance Director in early January.  So stay tuned!

One of the lessons we have learned is that people can use some help in implementing all the helpful things that we teach in our place-based courses.  So starting in January 2011, we will be piloting a new approach -- an online learning community -- which will be available for all people who took our Stewardship courses in 2010.  The Stewardship Learning Community will offer a series of webinars, discussion groups where people can "work the problem", and other online resources.  Course instructors will be Julie Brunner and John Davis.  And guess what -- we will be offering it at no charge!  For more information, contact Greg Rosenberg at greg@cltnetwork.org.

The CLT Academy will be teaching five days of classes at the Neighborworks National Training Institute in Los Angeles, the week of February 28, 2011.  The courses to be offered are CLT 101, CLT Finance, and CLT Stewardship. For more information on the Training Institute, you can check out the Neighborworks website.  Members of the CLT Network are eligible for a tuition discount -- please check in with Jessica Grant at jessica@cltnetwork.org for Network member registration information.  We hope to see you there!

Staff will be working a reduced schedule the week of December 20th -- we will be able to respond to your calls and emails -- it may just take us a little longer than usual:)  The CLT Network offices will be closed from December 24th through December 31st.