Renaissance Community Trust

The Renaissance Community Trust was created in 1977 as a land-holding entity by a group of people who purchased Graham Downs to become a community. A charitable trust was chosen as a preferred structure of property ownership to ensure the land remained under collective ownership. That is, no individual could assume ownership of the land or its assets, and it could not be sold or divided for individual profit. A charitable trust was also considered to be the best system for holding land without the trustees governing or dictating how the community should conduct its affairs. The deed states that the trust was established  ​‘…for the purpose of holding land as public land, where the people of New Zealand will be free to visit, live and commune with the land and each other, in order to foster the spiritual, intellectual and in physical advancement of the people in the country, and to develop, through cooperative effort, environmentally sound methods of farming.’​ The deed states that there must be a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 10 trustees. Until 2020, when a new trust board was appointed, the trust remained separate from the affairs of the community, except on the occasions the community asked it to step in and make a firm decision when they could not agree on a course of action. The need for the trust to assume a direct management role became apparent when the Council demanded that the trustees comply with their resource consent and address the illegal housing situation on the farm or face legal action. The new trust board decided to end the open-door unregulated system that had previously operated in order to address the illegal and dysfunctional situation that had become entrenched. The board acknowledged that the trust’s aims and purposes were no longer being met. The new trust board began to re-define the vision and principles with the goal of re-establishing a healthy vibrant community on the land that reflects the trust’s purpose.