When a fledgling nonprofit coalition called the People’s Community Land Trust told tenants living at a small apartment building in the English Avenue community that it had purchased the property and would be lowering rent prices, it seemed too good to be true.

“Everyone was surprised at our first tenant meeting when we said, ‘Yeah, your rents are going to be decreased,’” said Nikishka Iyengar, the founder of real estate advocacy group The Guild, which is a member of the new land trust.

“Everyone was like, ‘What’s the catch?’” she said at a Wednesday press conference.

But there is no catch. That’s how community land trusts are supposed to work: A local nonprofit buys land—with either existing residential buildings or space for new construction—and leases or sells the housing on it at affordable prices. 

However, it’s far more common for land trusts to deploy this model for houses, not apartments, like the People’s Community Land Trust is doing. The group formed last August as a collaboration between The Guild, Housing Justice League, and the American Friends Service Committee’s Atlanta Economic Justice Program.

Last month, the land trust finalized the purchase of 379 Elm Street, a nine-unit apartment building a few blocks northwest of Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The organization paid $1.5 million to buy it from a private landlord which it says had routinely raised rent when leases expired—and evicted tenants who couldn’t afford the price hikes.

“These smaller properties are a really important source of naturally occurring affordable housing in the city of Atlanta,” said Zach Murray, an organizer with The Guild. He sees preserving them as vital to offsetting the city’s swell of luxury development and investor activity.

Until now in Atlanta, the innovative…