Addressing Land Loss for Underserved Americans

Dana Goldman (Interim Dean, Price School of Public Policy and Director, USC Schaeffer Center) hosts Richard Green (Director, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate) and Thomas Mitchell (Macarthur Fellow and Co-Director, Program in Real Estate and Community Development Law, Texas A&M) in a conversation about Mitchell’s work on attempting to rectify the many ways that Black and other disadvantaged American families are deprived of their real estate wealth.

Upon the passing of a land-owning family member without a designated will, a great many properties of Black Americans passed property to multiple interest-owning heirs. Often called an “heirs property” or “tenancy in common”, this arrangement makes the estate easy to enter into a forced sale where the property sells for a fraction of its value. Affecting both rural and urban disadvantaged populations, Mitchell’s work has spearheaded both legal and legislative reforms in several states to help alleviate forced sales of a family’s vital source of generational wealth.