A new land trust organization and the city of Aurora have an affordable housing agreement.

According to a memorandum of understanding that the Aurora City Council approved last week, Elevation Community Land Trust will acquire and remodel homes that can be purchased by  Aurora residents who earn no more than 80 percent of the area median income. Contributions from Aurora will leverage at least an equal amount of funding from Elevation, which uses funding from government, private and philanthropic sources.

It’s the first partnership with a municipality for Elevation, which was incubated by the real estate nonprofit Urban Land Conservancy and established in 2017.

A joint statement issued Tuesday by the city and Elevation said the land trust nonprofit is planning new and remodeled single-family homes, condominiums and townhomes at sites scattered in northwest Aurora.

Elevation has set out to help more than 700 families in several Colorado cities, including Denver, become homeowners over the next four years. Under the model it uses and that has been deployed by other organizations such as the Colorado Community Land Trust, the land under homes is owned communally and never sold, sparing homeowners a major cost.