In partnership with
and community partners across Hampton Roads
and community partners across Hampton Roads
We're building the city's first permanently affordable homes, so the families who keep Newport News running can own here, stay here, and build wealth here. Not for a season. For generations.
and community partners across Hampton Roads
Charity Means Love Foundation (CMLF) is a 501(c)(3) public charity founded in 2023 and the first independent Community Land Trust in Newport News, Virginia. We exist to combat displacement and gentrification, and to build neighborhoods where families can put down roots and stay for generations.
Across Hampton Roads, rising land costs and speculation push longtime residents out of the very neighborhoods they helped build. We take a different path. We keep decisions close to the people our work serves, with residents, neighbors, and local leaders helping shape what gets built and for whom. And we make homes affordable not just once, but permanently.
We're young, focused, and moving. Our first homes are under active development, our partnerships are growing, and our 2025 to 2035 strategic plan charts the road to 50 permanently affordable homes across the city.
To build permanent, community-rooted affordable homeownership in Newport News, Virginia, removing land from the speculative market so homes remain affordable today, tomorrow, and across generations.
Community leaders with deep roots in housing, finance, and Hampton Roads.
A Community Land Trust separates the cost of the land from the cost of the home. That one idea changes everything.
The trust owns the land beneath each home and holds it for the community, removing it from the speculative market for good.
Homeowners build equity, gain stability, and pass on opportunity, at a price working families can actually reach.
A 99-year ground lease and a built-in resale formula keep every home affordable for the next family, and the next.
We serve households earning 80 to 120 percent of Area Median Income: neighbors who are priced out of the market yet earn too much to qualify for traditional assistance.
We're building toward a Land Bank to acquire vacant, abandoned, and tax-delinquent properties and return them to productive use as permanently affordable homes.
Where we can, we invest in the shared spaces that make a neighborhood whole: community gardens, gathering spaces, and programs that support health, wellness, and connection.
Two permanently affordable homes are in active development on 32nd Street, the first Community Land Trust homeownership opportunity Newport News has ever had. When these homes welcome their first families, the city's history changes.
Our 2025 to 2035 strategic plan guides our growth, governance, and community impact, with a goal of 50 permanently affordable homes across Newport News.
We partner with regional and national organizations, including LISC Virginia, to strengthen our capacity and finance our first projects.
Neighbors, advocates, and partners come together around housing justice at the Downing-Gross Cultural Arts Center. Join us.
Newport News is a majority-renter city. We exist to change what ownership looks like here, block by block, family by family.
Lend your skills to a movement. We have active needs in digital communications, grant research, event support, community outreach, and operations.
Reach out →Share your knowledge on a flexible basis, without the formal commitments of board service. Guidance, connections, and insight all move us forward.
Reach out →Follow us and share our work with someone who deserves to know this opportunity exists. Every conversation opens a door.
Find us online →Your gift funds the homebuyer education and community outreach that connects working families to permanently affordable homeownership, and helps our first homes welcome their first families.
Funds outreach materials that connect families to affordable homeownership opportunities.
Funds homebuyer education that prepares future CLT homeowners for long-term success.
Supports the community partnerships that make this work sustainable.
Charity Means Love Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Gifts are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
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