Documents

Name: Silvanus Community Land Trust Society.

Purposes — the Society is exclusively charitable:

1. Protect & restore the environment — hold and steward the forest, conserve the reserve (a registered conservation covenant), and reforest the logged ground, in perpetuity for the public.
2. Advance health — the physical and mental health of forestry and tree-planting workers (occupational injury, chronic pain, mental-health strain, and the effects of aging): recovery, rehabilitation, and a supportive natural setting.
3. Relieve poverty and housing need — provide enduringly affordable housing for forestry and planting workers in need, those who are low-income or in core housing need.
4. Advance education through research — carry out and publicly share ecological and scientific research (mycology, apiculture and pollinator ecology, forest ecology, reforestation science) for the public benefit.

The land is held in perpetuity and can never be sold or mortgaged; on dissolution it passes to another like-purpose charity. (The governance detail lives in the Bylaws.)

• The land is held forever. The Society shall not sell, gift, mortgage, or charge any of its land — ever (except to a like-purpose charity on dissolution).
• No private benefit. Income and property serve the purposes only; nothing is distributed to members or directors. Directors are unpaid for serving as directors.
• Registered covenants. A conservation covenant over the forest reserve, and a housing/affordability covenant over the settled land — locked onto title, so they bind every future board.
• Stewardship directors — the founder's guardian veto. A fixed minority of seats hold one power only: no sale, mortgage, dissolution, or weakening of the asset-lock without their consent. They protect the mission — they do not run the community (that's the elected co-op). Guardian of the land, not boss of the people.
• Affordability safeguard. Housing is needs-tested and kept enduringly affordable (capped resale) so it keeps relieving need.
• Arm's-length board. A majority of directors are independent of the founder and of any major donor — so the Society is a charitable organization serving the public, not a private foundation. (The guardian veto above is a mission safeguard, not control of the board.)
• Separate from the co-op. The Society holds the land; the co-op holds the members and the equity. That firewall is the whole design.
• Dissolution. Everything left goes to a charity with the same or similar purposes — never to members.

Name: Silvanus Planters' Housing Co-operative.

Type: a non-profit housing + community-service co-operative — capped, non-appreciating membership shares; not run for members' profit.

Purposes: provide members with secure, affordable housing and a working commons on land held by the Land Trust; run the shared infrastructure and guilds; steward the land with the Trust. The co-op never holds the land.

The buy-in: a $10,000 membership share — one per member, one member one vote regardless of shareholding. It is capped and returned at value on exit (no market windfall), inflation-indexed through your home/interest. Members' liability is limited.

• Membership: admitted by the board; one member, one vote. Your occupancy depends on staying a member.
• The $10k share: capped, inflation-indexed, returned at value when you leave — never a market windfall. Assignable/redeemable only at that capped value.
• How you're paid out — no loan: the next member's buy-in funds the leaving member's payout. The money revolves between members; there is never a bank or a debt.
• Your cell: a governance-allocated occupancy of ~3 acres (recorded in the commons' own map) — not a deed, not sellable on the market, inheritable by an approved member. You own your home outright.
• Governance: an elected co-op board runs daily life; decisions that alter the permanent commons need consent, not a bare majority. Work runs through the guilds.
• The firewall: the co-op does not hold the land — the Trust does. Your equity lives in the co-op; the land stays in the charity, asset-locked.
• Your part: build to the community Building Code, carry insurance, and pay the modest annual operating fee.
• Family & disputes: a family agreement is a condition of membership; disputes go to mediation then arbitration (with the honest limits family law sets).