Next City

On a daily basis, thousands of Americans are faced with the choice of whether to seek needed medical care, or stay home untreated to avoid sliding further into debt. But one city in Kentucky has found a way to alleviate the dangerous pressures of medical debt for its residents.

If we want to imagine a better world, artists might be better than anyone for the job.  Today, we are looking at artists-in-residence programs in government.

One new reality many community leaders are dealing with: Federal funding is rocky, to say the least. So today, we're looking at affordable housing solutions that have located sources of funding outside of the federal goverment. We'll visit Pittsburgh, Atlanta, South Texas, and Seattle to learn about four locally-driven funding models for affordable housing.

Across the country, low-income communities face threats of displacement, predatory investment activity and limited wealth-building opportunities. One often-overlooked contributor to these dynamics: a lack of formal estate planning. When a homeowner passes away without an estate plan, their home often becomes an “heirs’ property,” a property with no clear title. Without a clear title, homeowners face immense barriers–they cannot access the equity in the home, sell the home for a fair market price, obtain loans for repairs or purchase insurance, among other challenges. For low-income families, this situation can lead to significant home value depreciation, forced sales and even homelessness.

Unfortunately, heirs’ properties are widespread, particularly among low-income communities. A conservative analysis estimates that heirs’ properties nationwide have an assessed value of over $32 billion.

If communities nationwide could identify households at risk, help address’ estate planning issues and ensure clear transfers of property title, they could stabilize neighborhoods, reduce home loss and protect immense amounts of wealth for low-income residents.

Fortunately, a program in Jacksonville, Florida, is showing the way.

Heirs’ properties are widespread in Jacksonville and the surrounding area in Duval County, with an estimated 10,000 heirs’ properties in the region. Emerging from a process of deep community engagement, LISC Jacksonville launched its Heirs’ Property Program in 2020 and has since engaged hundreds of households with estate planning services.

In this sponsored episode produced in partnership with Results for America, learn more about the immense impact of addressing heirs’ properties and how the model developed in Jacksonville might inspire your community.

Download the complete Results for America toolkit on replicating this model by visiting https://results4america.co/heirs-property

Highlighting our recent coverage on nonprofit and alternative grocery models in Kentucky, this event would look at how communities—from urban Lexington to rural areas—are addressing food insecurity through creative, equitable approaches to food access.