John Emmeus Davis

Who is John Emmeus Davis?

John Emmeus Davis is a scholar, writer, teacher and community organizer who has advanced the understanding and development of community land trusts in the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and Belgium.

Much of his scholarship and practice has focused on advancing the cause of community land trusts while establishing connections between community land trusts and other forms of shared equity homeownership, a housing sector he was the first to describe in 2006. In a number of essays and research reports, evaluating the performance of community land trusts and other forms of shared equity homeownership, Davis has highlighted the effectiveness of these alternative models of tenure in preserving affordability in hot real estate markets and in preventing deferred maintenance and mortgage foreclosure in cold markets. “Counter-cyclical stewardship” is the term he coined in 2008 to describe this outcome.