Post Carbon Fellow Janelle Orsi’s affordable housing activism was featured in the LA Times.

From the article:

“Part of what we will need to turn things around in this world is to have people become really dedicated and affectionate land stewards,” said Janelle Orsi, founder and executive director of the Sustainable Economies Law Center.

Orsi’s public interest firm is crafting the “justice easements” to lock in affordability. Like agricultural easements designed to preserve farmland, the justice easements will designate housing as the only appropriate land use, with an additional requirement — that future rent increases be limited to, for instance, hikes in the consumer price index.

The activists say that such dramatic initiatives are needed because traditional affordable housing developers guarantee sub-market rents for only a limited period, of, say, 40 years.