Over the past nine years, The Community Foundation has made over $1.6 million in grants to foster inclusive prosperity across Jacksonville as part of our key leadership initiative, Supporting Neighborhoods.
One of the stand-out areas of investment has been a body of work we call “heirs property,” led by local nonprofit partners including the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC). It’s a critical component for building wealth in underserved neighborhoods, and The Community Foundation has made multiple grants to support it in Duval County and now in Nassau County.
The data is impressive: In the past four years, LISC has invested more than $1 million in resolving heirs property issues, and the work has successfully preserved or stabilized more than $29 million in real estate.
To tell us more about this work, we invited two guests from LISC – Kristopher Smith, Community Development Program Officer, and John Sapora, Housing Resiliency Program Officer – on to our podcast, Forever Forward.
The following is an edited synopsis of the conversation.
James: Thanks for joining us today. LISC has been an important partner of The Community Foundation since 1999, when we helped invest to establish a local office here with the Jessie Ball duPont Fund and the Jacksonville Jaguars Foundation. Tell us more about the work of LISC.
Kristopher: LISC is a national community development financial institution. It started in 1979 as an anti-poverty program to bring resources into underserved and under-resourced communities across the country. I think one of the most important things to know about LISC is that we bring a lens that looks at these neighborhoods differently, and to understand what their needs are, and to listen to the folks in community, to understand where they see the neighborhood, and the greatest opportunities for partnership to help take the neighborhood to the place they see it going.
John: LISC is a nonprofit charity, but what we really do is look at the systems that that are generating some of the outcomes in these communities that we hope to improve. As we’re alongside residents, learning about the repetitive situations that people come into contact with, with the government systems, other kinds of basic human needs that we really want to help with, and we focus on solutions and interventions that really try to improve the systems that people are living within in our community.
James: One of those flaws in the system that you have discovered recently is heirs property. What should we know about heirs property?
John: Heirs property is a common situation we’ve found with homeowners. People are living in their home, but they don’t own clear title, because the individuals that are on the recorded deed are deceased. So, for example, the parents are deceased, but the but a child might still be living in the home, and they haven’t gone through probate, or there hasn’t been estate planning to really vest title in somebody who’s still living. So that creates a cloud on the title. It’s uncertain. What we learned from residents is that this is a quiet issue in the community where people are losing title to their homes. When the title is unclear, they’re not able to get storm relief, and they’re not able to sell a home. This situation is called heirs property, and it needs to be resolved and prevented.
James: So how did this come onto your radar?
Kristopher: In summer of 2020, the Brookings Institute came out with a report on appraisal bias and devaluation of homes in Black neighborhoods across the country. Jacksonville was ranked No. 3 in the country in the devaluation of Black homes. We wondered: Why? What’s driving this devaluation of homes? And it turned out that there was a confluence of two issues, appraisal bias and heirs property, which were driving down home prices over time. It was compounded by the fact that these were neighborhoods that were already beset with high vacancy rates, high poverty rates, and disinvestment. We decided to take inspiration from the Fox and Hedgehog analogy, and to be like the hedgehog, getting good at one thing and attacking it with everything we’ve got. That one thing became this issue around this silent barrier to home ownership, of heirs property and clouded title. At the end of the day, we saw an opportunity to generate home ownership opportunities, by helping them resolve untitled property.
James: What’s the scope of the problem? How many families are facing this challenge?
Kristopher: The current available data suggests that Duval County has the highest concentration of heirs property in the southeast United States. We’re in the top five markets in the country with this issue. And so clearly this is disproportionately impacting Duval County, and it’s impacting legacy residents, folks that have been here for a long period of time, and particularly in our urban core neighborhoods. People are living in homes without full ownership rights, which can impede access to housing assistance programs and the equity that’s been generated and built up in that home over time. Our work is to unlock that, unleash that equity, and unleash the potential for home ownership to be passed on for generations to come.
James: So, you’re not only preserving that equity for the family itself, but you’re also preserving the value of that real estate in the neighborhood and promoting stability in the community because people aren’t losing their homes. How do you see it impacting neighborhoods in our city and our region?
John: As Kristopher said, these neighborhoods are devalued. They’re really under-assessed by the Property Appraiser. The data that shows that these heirs properties are definitely contributing to that. When we clear title for people, they then have a safe, secure home that that that investors can’t come in and take from them, and that really stabilizes the neighborhood and increases the assessed values of homes in the neighborhood. It’s a way for us to help stabilize the legacy, culture, and history of these neighborhoods. And that’s very powerful for the residents. If people want to sell their home, for example to move to a bigger home, they then can access the equity in their home. The data shows that many of the residents don’t want to move out of the neighborhood, and their children want to stay, as well. Most affordable housing conversations are about building new units. Resolving heirs property issues is an affordable housing preservation strategy. It’s an underappreciated way to address the chronic affordable housing crisis in Jacksonville and the racial wealth gap. It really unlocks the opportunity for people to enjoy home ownership and the fruits of homeownership in these neighborhoods.
James: Let’s transition to talking about tactics. How do you resolve these issues with the title to the home?
John: The first piece is helping families go through the probate litigation process. We work with community-based organizations that are trusted in the neighborhoods and refer people to us for legal aid. Then, we work with Three Rivers Legal Services to provide families with an attorney to go through probate. It’s complicated – it’s not something families can do on their own. The families help a lot by looking at their family tree and identifying the potential heirs. They work with the attorney, and we help fund the free legal services for these residents. The process to clear title may take six to nine months or longer.
Kristopher: Another piece is addressing the property tax debt on the homes. We learned that there was significant overlap between the families facing heirs property issues and people who are vulnerable to tax auction sales due to back taxes. We work with the property tax collector, the property appraiser’s office, and the clerk of the court, to make contact with these households, listen and understand their situation, and find out what they would like to do. If they would like to remain in their homes, we work with them to help resolve the tax debt. When people now realize that they can get assistance and there are no strings, then people feel like they want to share this program with others, and it helps spread the word itself, without us having to do much. Our role at LISC is to be supportive of the system of partners that together can attack the problem.
John: The last piece is home repair. I learned about the magnitude of the heirs property issue here in Jacksonville because I was involved with the Hurricane Irma recovery and programs that we were operating to repair people’s homes after the storms. Some people were not eligible for those programs because they lacked clear title. Since then, LISC has helped design and launch home repair programs with partners in Historic Eastside and North Riverside, with a focus on energy efficiency and weatherization. The City of Jacksonville also wants to expand its home repair programs and has applied for energy efficiency funding.
James: You mentioned that word starts to spread on its own once homeowners have been served. What role does trust play in this work?
Kristopher: It’s essential that folks who are in this situation don’t feel like this is a burden to them, or be made to feel they’ve done something wrong. The work moves at the speed of trust. It’s important to have community leaders who can speak in a simple manner, who folks can relate to, and who can be alongside them through what can be a complicated and lengthy process. That trust is bankable because of the messenger. These leaders have integrity, and they treat people with dignity, and so that’s been the secret sauce.