Preserving community by creating pathways to local homeownership.
A resident-led nonprofit helping Webster Groves teachers, neighbors, and working families afford to live in the community they call home.
We are renovating our first home.
In March 2026, WGCLT closed on its first home, made possible by a $300,000 gift from an anonymous donor. One family gets to stay in Webster Groves for good, and the resale formula keeps that same home affordable for every family after them.
IN THE NEWS
SUBMIT AN APPLICATION
840 Pinetree Lane applications now closed.
WHAT IS A COMMUNITY LAND TRUST?
Keeping Webster Groves within reach.
A community land trust is a pretty simple idea. The trust holds onto the land, and a local family buys the house that sits on it.
When a home comes up for sale, we buy it and get it ready. Then we sell the house to a buyer with real ties to Webster Groves, at a price below market. Keeping the land under a long-term ground lease is what makes that price possible. Our homeowners take out a mortgage and pay property taxes like anyone else on the block. When they sell, they keep a share of what the home gained. The next buyer gets the same fair shot.
So a gift to one house doesn't get spent once. It stays in that home for the family after, and the family after that.
Why here? Webster works because of the people who keep it running. The teacher who knows your kid by name. The municipal employee who plows your street after a snowstorm. More and more, they can’t afford a home in the town they show up for every day.
We're a nonprofit started by Webster Groves neighbors, and we're working on it one house at a time.
Become a Member
Members help steer WGCLT. You'll vote on who leads it and have a say in where it goes next.
Get Involved
Every house we offer starts with neighbors who showed up.
Here's how you can too.
Become a Volunteer
Good with a paint roller? Love planning a party? Whatever you're good at, we can probably use it.
Donate
Every gift is recycled in perpetuity — it keeps working, one family at a time, for generations.
Our Vision
Local leaders and community members laid the groundwork for WGCLT for years. This 2020 video, made by graduate students from Washington University in St. Louis, shares the vision that continues today.
Produced by Students of Dr. Molly Metzger, Center for Social Development, Washington University