in the United States, that is not enough. Mitchell began by underscoring that African Americans were enslaved and considered property themselves up until the time of the Emancipation, so the change from that state to theoretically having the same property rights as white men “is a pretty remarkable turnaround.” He noted that kind of change is not easy, and furthermore, even when African Americans did begin to own property (e.g., 80 percent of the Black upper middle class in the United States in 1910 were farm owners), “that group represented in many ways an existential threat to a society built on white supremacy.” Mitchell added that, as a result of this perceived threat, a disproportionate number of African American property owners had been lynched. He also described how the ability of African Americans to secure and maintain property rights has always been challenged, because of a belief in racial inferiority and because it is simply easier to take property away from minority communities that have historically been politically and economically disadvantaged to serve the goals of other individuals or governments. Mitchell suggested this means that even when African Americans do secure such rights, it is on an inherently insecure foundation that leaves them with “second rate” ownership.

Abello asked Mitchell to expand on the mechanisms by which property rights have been undermined, including eminent domain and heirs’ property. Mitchell said that, in addition to extralegal mechanisms like lynching, other kinds of violence, and intimidation, certain legal processes have also led to substantial property loss within the African American community. He mentioned eminent domain, foreclosure, hack sales, and adverse possession, as well as the focus of his work, which is related to an arcane property law called partition law, which is related to “heirs’ property,” referring to property that families acquire without the benefit of a will or other estate plan. Mitchell noted these tend to be property owners who are “property rich but cash poor,” making it difficult to access legal services. He said in some places, heirs’ property is estimated to constitute 50 to 60 percent of the property owned by African American families. Mitchell described reasons for this, including that the initial group of African Americans who acquired property after the Emancipation did not have access to lawyers, both due to lack of other wealth and also due to the fact that, especially in Southern rural counties, lawyers were almost all white and did not want to be seen as representing African American clients. Another reason he underscored is the massive racial gap in will making or estate-planning, citing one study from the University of St. Louis that showed only 23 percent of African Americans (and only 32 or 33 percent of African Americans with at least a college education) have a will or estate plan, compared to 55 or 57 percent of white

American families.¹ This in turn, Mitchell said, has “severe implications” in terms of being able to maintain property ownership over time, due to the aforementioned partition law, which allows any one of the common owners of heirs’ property to request a court to order a forced sale of the entire property, even if all the other common owners wanted to maintain ownership. Mitchell added that, up until recently, courts were routinely ordering these sales, often times for a fire sale price, meaning families not only lost their property but also were stripped of a substantial amount of their generational wealth, which for African Americans is disproportionately their real estate property.

GENTRIFICATION

Abello noted how the property challenges described by Mitchell, along with an array of other factors, contributed to Black families leaving the South and migrating north and west in the Great Migration. He noted that prior to the Great Migration, 90 percent of African Americans in the United States lived in the South, but afterwards, nearly half lived in other parts of the country. He described how they made homes in neighborhoods in Newark (New Jersey), Harlem (New York), Chicago (Illinois), and Oakland (California), and now displacement is starting to happen again in some of those places through gentrification. Abello asked Venable-Thomas to speak about her work on this historical and present-day displacement. She began by noting that conversations around spatial justice and injustice should focus not only on physical spaces, but also “people’s experiences in navigating those spaces.” She said one of the conventional narratives being combatted today around gentrification and displacement is that housing is a commodity that you get if you can afford it, as opposed to housing—and access to thriving communities—being a human right, and both housing stock and people’s lived experiences, culture, skills, and strengths having value.

Venable-Thomas noted, “the fact that I am standing here as an African American woman descendant of slaves is a demonstration of my community’s resilience” and observed that communities most resilient in the face of disaster (climate change related or otherwise) are not just structurally sound but also socially connected. She asked a series of questions. How does one begin to understand and normalize the trauma of those experiences? What does a healing-centered approach to community development and maintenance, that values not only housing stock but

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¹ See for example https://wlr.law.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1263/2020/02/3-Spivack-Final.pdf or https://www.consumerreports.org/money/estate-planning/why-people-of-color-are-less-likely-to-have-a-will-a6742820557/ (accessed January 10, 2023).

also people, look like? What does it look like to invest in social connection; to value those living in the community as collaborators; and to think about developers, designers, architects, and real estate agents as cultural practitioners who have an understanding about the communities in which they work?

Abello noted that viewing communities via this lens of acknowledging the culture and resilience that is already present changes the way one talks about community development or affordable housing. Instead of focusing only on the units of affordable housing that are built and the price of them, there are questions of where those units get built, who builds them, who owns them, who funds them, and how one gets to live in those units. Venable-Thomas agreed that the focus on only units of housing produced or preserved is insufficient, saying that research demonstrates “brick and mortar alone does not [make] a cultivating, thriving, sustainable community.” She said that not understanding residents’ collective lived experiences, strengths, and skills can have significant negative impacts, including community disruption, cultural erasure, and perpetual trauma. She added that entering first with a lens of “I am not trying to create additional harm” is a demonstration of collectivism and community and a clear shift from holding power over community to holding power with them, a shift from seeing one’s role as an expert as one of director to one of partner. Venable-Thomas said this shift then redistributes power from the individual to the collective, with a “healing-centered lens that says this is not about me, but this about us, because I recognize our interdependence in community.”

MIGRATION TO THE SUBURBS

Abello then described a scenario of a family that was enslaved in Mississippi, became emancipated, purchased land, made it productive, lost the land via eminent domain or heirs’ property issues, was forced to move to the South Side of Chicago where jobs were available in the 1960s or 1970s, and were forced to leave again because the jobs go away due to deindustrialization or racial discrimination in the job markets, or due to development-related displacement (e.g., the local or state government builds a highway through the neighborhood that pushes people out and devalues their property). Abello noted some of the people whose lives were upended in this way may have returned to the South, but others moved out into the suburbs. He added there is a conventional narrative that the suburbs offer more space, better schools, and a better life. However, Abello said, Bader’s research points to a different kind of narrative.

Bader began by describing the often overlooked fact that the majority of current inequality and poverty (especially for Black and Latino communi-

ties) in America is in the suburbs, not in the central cities. He questioned the conventional narrative that suburbs are better, while acknowledging that in some ways, they are. He noted there are many people, including those of color, who chose to move to the suburbs for more opportunities than were available in cities, which were underresourced by past racial discrimination and “dog whistle urban politics and violence” from the 1940s through the 1980s. Bader acknowledged the suburbs were a place of refuge for many Black Americans, citing the work of Karyn Lacy, a sociologist at the University of Michigan. However, he added, because American society has not been investing adequately in Black communities and other communities of color broadly in the United States, when these communities migrate to the suburbs, the resources and investments that have traditionally gone into those suburbs are often no longer there, particularly given reliance on local tax funding. Reliance on property taxes is especially problematic when property values decline in neighborhoods where Black people are living. Bader suggested this is where institutional resources could come in, e.g., to invest in suburbs where property values have been declining and jobs may not be as prevalent, instead of investing in “the hip new neighborhood in Chicago or DC or New York.” He added that he is thinking especially of medical care institutions, given research demonstrating Black individuals travel farther for primary, specialty, and emergency care. He said if medical institutions and nonprofits situated their investments in the suburbs, especially those that have not been receiving those kinds of investments, that would constitute a “real clear and compelling way to overcome spatial injustice with the resources that those organizations have.”

Bader also said that even though there are many problems with capitalism, while society operates within that framework, there is money being left on the table. In interviews with residents in the DC metro area, Bader and his colleagues found half of Black people in the area said they did not believe that the businesses in or near their neighborhood thought about people like them when they were making business decisions. In an area with one of the largest and wealthiest African American populations in the country (Prince George’s County, Maryland), Bader said, “that is a huge lost opportunity both for those people themselves but also for potential small businesses” (Bader, 2020). He referred to Abello’s work on small business loans and other ways to ensure Black people are served in the same way white people in their communities are. He suggested that thinking in terms of investing in places rather than thinking about people and their migration means there are missed opportunities to invest resources in communities who have faced the problems Mitchell described and possess the kind of resilience Venable-Thomas spoke about. Bader said it is also a missed opportunity for the market, and that such investments could increase the domestic product of metropolitan areas.

are, the natural position for African Americans in our society is to be taken advantage of, to have their property taken away by more powerful actors who would then put it to some greater economic use.”

Mitchell went on to describe his work, and how when he and others initially proposed ideas for this model state statute to fundamentally reform arcane partition law, there was a sense at the time that nothing could be done about it. And this sense was empirically backed in that there had been attempts in several southern states from the 1970s through the late 2000s to reform this law, and “every attempt to reform it in any significant way” failed. Mitchell said people asked him, “What makes you think that you could be any more successful?” He noted that some of the ability to do this was because of an award-winning 2001 Associated Press series on Black land loss, which got the attention of the American Bar Association.² Thus, instead of only grassroots or civil rights activists at the local and state level, they had a combination of top-down, grasstops as well as grassroots working together. Mitchell said they currently have 18 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands that have enacted the model state statute, called the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act.³ He noted that surprisingly, the states leading the way are in the South. In terms of how they got this done, Mitchell said part of it is shining a light on disproportionate impacts and that another part of it is using this narrative of property rights and underscoring that property rights should not just be for white people. He noted that highlighting how their law is fundamentally about enhancing property rights for all heirs’ property owners, irrespective of their race, and preserving their generational wealth, has been a powerful narrative.

Mitchell added that over time, some places have been receptive to more deeply considering addressing racially disproportionate impacts. He cited the examples of Hawaii (where he said Native Hawaiians were being taken advantage of, including by Mark Zuckerberg) and New Mexico (where the Latin community historically lost hundreds of thousands of acres of their land through partition of use). Mitchell added that even in some of the Southern states, like Florida, he has felt some momentum, and enough success that he could talk about racial disparities in a more robust way than he did initially, when he feared doing so might sink their efforts.

Abello summarized Mitchell’s comments, noting that the model heirs’ property law was designed not only to help Black property owners, but also to address a “problem that happens to disproportionately affect

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² See for example https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-dec-02-mn-10514-story.html (accessed January 10, 2023).

³ See https://www.uniformlaws.org/committees/community-home?CommunityKey=50724584-e808-4255-bc5d-8ea4e588371d (accessed January 10, 2023).

African American communities and landowners.” Abello then asked Venable-Thomas if a similar framing could be applied to affordable housing or community development. Venable-Thomas responded that some difficulties in talking about these issues are rooted in a fear of talking about race explicitly. She noted that “a lot of this work is race explicit. Redlining was very race explicit. That has specifically disinvested in particular swaths of the community based on who they are and the skin that they are wrapped in.” She then shared as an example the work of designing the WE,⁴ an organization that seeks to undesign inequitable aspects of past community development in order to appropriately design moving forward. Venable-Thomas suggested planners cannot simply layer community development designs on top of existing, deeply rooted, structural problems. She said talking about affordable housing and the ways it is funded within this context is a place to start. She added, in response to Abello’s observation:

Venable-Thomas also mentioned Enterprise Community Partners’ Green Communities Criteria, which were updated in 2020 and are in 32 qualified allocation plans across the country.⁵ Abello later explained that these plans are a key part of the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program, which subsidizes $12 billion a year and is allocated state by state based on population. Each state then awards its portion of this money through a competitive process, and the qualified allocation plan outlines how new applications will be scored. Venable-Thomas explained that these plans have stipulations tied to low-income housing tax credits and new income housing tax credits that developers must meet in order to get the capital they need for development. She noted Enterprise’s Green Communities Criteria being included in these plans is important because it places requirements on not only the number of housing units one builds, but also the quality and the process of creating that housing. Thus, she said, it is not only about retrofitting a building for climate change, but also about how a developer is engaging with residents and how they are

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⁴ More information on designing the WE can be found at http://www.designingthewe.com/ (accessed January 20, 2022).

⁵ The Enterprise Community Partners’ Green Communities Criteria can be found at https://www.enterprisecommunity.org/news-releases/2020-01_enterprise-releases-2020-green-communities-criteria (accessed January 20, 2022).

thinking about cultural representation of the community, healthy building materials, and healing-centered buildings, and how all those dimensions appear in the design of a building. Abello later noted that the Green Communities Criteria change the rules in how those federal dollars are accessed—not necessarily saying this is only for Black communities, but knowing that these changes will disproportionately help Black communities because of how they transform community development of affordable housing.

Venable-Thomas also underscored the shift around housing, what role housing plays, and who deserves it, shifting from a focus on the amount of housing being created to how dignified housing can be created, housing that not only provides a roof over one’s head but also serves as a place to think through the challenges of life and to process the traumas one is experiencing. She then shared a study from her former colleague, Tiffany Manuel, conducted with residents across the country.⁶ Venable-Thomas said the narrative Mitchell mentioned around who can afford to live where, and whether one deserves it, is not only a social and political narrative, but also one that people have internalized. “How do we start to have a narrative shift around not just what people want and need, but what they deserve?” she asked. She suggested that beginning to have these conversations is one way to shift not just what residents feel they want, but also the ways developers think about—and are required to think about—developing and designing.

Venable-Thomas also noted the importance of capacity building of developers, suggesting that existing rules and stipulations around which developers can come to the table already require high-capacity organizations, which are often those that have had a lot of investment over time and already have the capital needed. She said at Enterprise Community Partners, they have been thinking about how they can eliminate some of the cumbersome stipulations and requirements to “allow a larger swath of communities and developers to really be able to start solving problems for their own community.” Abello asked her to expand on this idea of diversifying the affordable housing developer world, noting that he thinks it is only 2 percent of commercial real estate professionals who are not white men. He asked, “By changing who builds housing, how does that qualitatively change affordable housing or low-income housing developments?” Venable-Thomas responded that across fields, from banks to health care, “when you have people who are from the community coming with a lens of making and building for their community,” there is a different vantage point and mindset, and thus a different

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⁶ See https://citylimits.org/2016/11/07/building-justice-how-to-talk-about-racial-equality-in-a-way-that-gets-it-done/ (accessed January 10, 2023).

approach to doing the work. She added that she and others are trying to think about how to make that a process that is required for everyone to consider, because it will ultimately improve housing for Black people, other people of color, and all members of the community.

Bader added that states have devolved their property zoning and other rights to localities, which is one way communities have been able to keep people of color and anyone who needs affordable housing out. He noted the infrastructure bill is a lost opportunity, where instead of small block grants as the Biden administration has proposed, it could instead propose that transportation funding for highways is contingent on taking back property requirements from localities to the state and making sure there is affordable housing across all jurisdictions. Bader said this would have a much bigger effect than topping off the block grants. Those, he suggested, will not be a sufficient amount of money for state legislatures to feel it is worth implementing the transformative plans that would open up spaces that have traditionally been closed to the kind of affordable housing that is needed. Bader added that denser development will be needed, which will be better in terms of both affordable housing and climate change. He acknowledged this will create displacement problems because it often means building on sites that are already built. He said that the communities that are affected are disproportionately those like Venable-Thomas speaks about that do not have sway with developers. In contrast, Bader described how “two residents from a single town in Chevy Chase [Maryland] were able to shut down an entire mass transit development for four years and get the state to have to renegotiate all of its contracts.”⁷ He said that states taking some of these authorities back seemed impossible two years ago, but California, Minneapolis, and other jurisdictions are taking steps in that direction. He noted that these types of changes disproportionately affect Black people and people of color, but they are also going to help everyone by minimizing the peaks and valleys in the housing market and producing more equitable schools, communities, and commercial development, which will improve entire metropolitan areas rather than just a few neighborhoods.

Abello mentioned that the policy changes Bader said were implemented in California have been incorrectly described as banning single-family units, and Bader explained that if a developer believes single-family development would be better for development, they can still build those homes; however, the developer no longer needs to seek an exception to build something other than single-family homes. In contrast, he said, previ-

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⁷ See for example http://www.townofchevychase.org/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=40&ARC=164 (accessed January 10, 2023) and https://bethesdamagazine.com/2013/05/29/chevy-chase-residents-let-anti-bus-rapid-transit-feelings-be-known/ (accessed January 10, 2023).

ously having to go through such regulations increased prices and made it less affordable to build duplexes in California.

Mitchell then circled back to the dominant narrative around communities of color having nothing and treating their culture and history as worthless. He noted that in areas where African Americans or other people of color are displaced, people do not talk about their assets but rather about deviancy, crime, drugs, prostitution, and so on. Mitchell said this was the genesis of his work, having grown up in San Francisco during the 1970s, when African Americans composed 13.5 percent of the San Francisco population. He said that number is now down to 3 percent, which is the greatest drop in the African American population of any major U.S. city.⁸ Mitchell recalled that when he was growing up in the Fillmore area of San Francisco, the narrative was one around crime and prostitution, and that the area had to be redeveloped. In contrast, he noted that now, the city has marketed this area as the historic jazz district. “When they were trying to take the property, all we heard about was pimps and prostitutes, and shootings,” Mitchell said. “But apparently now … all along it was the historic African American jazz district, which is now generating tourists’ dollars for the city, a city that has displaced a substantial part of the African American population.”

Mitchell commented on the importance of recognizing the economic and noneconomic assets and values of the African American community. He said that while there has been tremendous loss of African American land and urban properties, African Americans still own a substantial amount of land, including 7.2 million acres of agricultural land. Mitchell remarked that the narrative that it is inevitable for these assets to go down to zero and reparations can be used on the back end to make up for it is not reasonable, especially when there has not been a single instance of reparations in the United States. He asked, “Why would we just sit back and do nothing when we could actually build an infrastructure of laws and policies to preserve what we have and then think about building from them?”

Mitchell also commented on the role of representation within efforts to change laws. He shared that when he was selected to be the principal drafter for the Heirs Property Act, he was only the second African American to have ever served in that position in the 130-year history of the Uniform Law Commission, an elite organization that has produced

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⁸ The figure in the 2020 Census was 5.7 percent, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/sanfranciscocitycalifornia (accessed January 10, 2023). An analysis of 2010 Census showed that only 3 percent of people ages 18-50 moving to San Francisco were African American, https://qz.com/quartzy/1638972/the-data-behind-the-last-black-man-in-san-francisco (accessed January 10, 2023).

425 model state statutes since 1892. Mitchell noted that his presence and research—informed by his work in the South and meeting these communities in their homes, churches, and community centers—brought an entirely different perspective to the organization, which at the time was predominantly older white men. He also catalyzed an effort to bring grassroots and community-based organizations into the process for the first time, where they could provide the perspective of what actually happens on the ground. More broadly, Mitchell underscored underrepresentation in the field of law (only 5 percent of attorneys in the United States are African American) and, even more so, within areas of law that implicate economic justice or wealth building, such as property and real estate law, tax law, and business law. He said he just found there are only five African American attorneys who practice estate planning in the entire state of Oregon, meaning those who are seeking a lawyer from their own community often have none. Mitchell shared that he has been trying to expand law students’ understanding of what it means to be a civil rights lawyer—that it is not just criminal lawyers, but that lawyers with a different skillset are needed to think about economic justice and preserving and building wealth. He added, “there is an incredible paucity of those lawyers, just like there are with the builders” discussed previously. He suggested it is necessary to consider representation vertically in a variety of sectors.

Abello summarized Mitchell’s comments, noting that spatial injustice manifests and gets perpetuated through lack of representation. However, Abello cautioned that tokenization is also a problem, and that changing who is in the room alone is not sufficient; who is speaking and gets listened to and the associated power dynamics in the room must change too. In addition to lack of representation among lawyers and developers, Abello suggested lack of representation at the state legislative level also perpetuates some of these injustices, such as the various instances of states cutting aid to local governments in recent years. He added that just as Mitchell was the first Black person in certain rooms, and that began to change the work of those organizations, it is important to consider where there are other rooms and seats relevant to this conversation about power and representation. He mentioned the Government Finance Officers Association and city managers as two examples, noting these are groups that quietly pass along best practices and work on issues with significant implications for spatial justice.

AUDIENCE QUESTIONS

Abello then turned to audience questions and shared the first question, asking panelists whether they are aware of education policies or initiatives that have helped increase representation in the fields that hold

this silent power over property and spatial justice. Bader said one thing he has seen recently, including at his own institution, is explicit recruitment policies around reaching out to historically Black colleges and universities and Latin-serving institutions. He noted that while those are places often associated with deprivation, there is incredible innovation and education at these institutions, and much more that could be done to recruit from these institutions to a wider array of professions. Bader also added there is opportunity for intergenerational, interracial transfer of knowledge and skills including within nonprofits like hospitals—there is a role for white people in both ensuring there are people of color in the room and seeking out people of color to transfer knowledge and skills.

Mitchell mentioned that the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel has recently funded small programs to help increase the pipeline of minority students considering a career in estate planning. He also mentioned that he is the product of a pipeline program at the University of Wisconsin Law School called the Hastie Fellowship, which intends to get more people of color to be law professionals.⁹ He said the program was started in 1972 by the first African American professor hired at the school and focuses on equipping minority attorneys, for example, so they can speak the academic language, have a research agenda, and have publications going into the job market. Mitchell said he completed the fellowship in 1999, and, in response to a question from Abello, noted the model Heirs Property Act Mitchell worked on was finalized in 2010 and the first state to adopt it was Nevada in 2011.¹⁰ Mitchell added that since then, states in every region have adopted it, including Hawaii, New Mexico, Florida, New York, and, most recently, California. Abello then considered whether any funders present would consider a grant funding cycle that goes 13 years, because sometimes it takes that long to advance this work.

Mitchell also shared his pride in catalyzing the involvement of grassroots and community-based organizations in the Uniform Law Commission’s process around the Heirs Property Act model state statute.¹¹ He spoke about how many within the Commission expected the effort to fail, given the statute dealt with racial justice, but it has turned out be one of their most successful efforts. Mitchell noted that although it was a cultural change and involving grassroots and community-based groups

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⁹ More information on the Hastie Fellowship can be found at https://law.wisc.edu/grad/hastie#:~:text=The%20University%20of%20Wisconsin%20established,of%20high%2Dquality%20legal%20education (accessed January 20, 2022).

¹⁰ See https://www.uniformlaws.org/committees/community-home?CommunityKey=50724584-e808-4255-bc5d-8ea4e588371d (accessed January 10, 2023).

¹¹ More information on the Uniform Law Commission can be found at https://www.uniformlaws.org/committees/community-home?CommunityKey=50724584-e808-4255-bc5d-8ea4e588371d (accessed January 20, 2022).

was initially viewed “as kind of a nuisance in their process,” that perspective has shifted over time. He said the Commission now welcomes these groups into the process, recognizing that “maybe their products would be better informed if they got the feedback from those communities that are experiencing these problems.” Finally, Mitchell noted that much of his law reform and policy work to date has not been part of his compensated job, and that is not a good model for addressing legal issues impacting these communities at scale. He said he is trying to build an institute that would have a law and policy shop with paid staff that could examine the legal side of property issues in a systemic way and take it to scale.

Venable-Thomas added that especially after the death of George Floyd and subsequent events, large philanthropic organizations have a particular focus on Black- and Brown-led development organizations and corporations. She noted this is a huge and vital shift, and one they are discussing at Enterprise, because they know the value of these locally led and based organizations and the impact they have in the community. She said thinking about how to better invest into community is one of the most impactful changes as far as pipelining money. Venable-Thomas said she is not as familiar with educational policy, but as one of perhaps only 3,000 Black graduates in the history of the United States Military Academy at the time she graduated, she was involved in a pipeline program after graduation that was important to shaping her thinking about representation and making belonging a priority for organizations to attract Black and Brown talent. Abello mentioned an initiative called First 500 to recognize the first 500 licensed Black women architects in the United States,¹² and how there is a similar lack of representation in other professions that play a role in governing, distributing, developing, and financing land development and real estate, including lawyers, developers, planners, and policy makers.

Abello asked Mitchell to share more about the new law he is working on. Mitchell described how heirs’ property is a subset of a form of common real property ownership in the United States called tenancy in common ownership. He noted this phenomenon had a number of manifestations, including forced sale (when a real estate speculator buys out just one family member and then forces a sale of the entire property) and gridlocked ownership (once you own heirs’ property, mostly by not making a will or estate plan, you can become locked into this form of ownership because any substantial change to the management or use of the property requires 100 percent agreement among all fractional owners). Mitchell added that for African Americans, where property may have passed through multiple generations without a will or estate plan, there

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¹² More information on the First 500 can be found at https://first500.org/ (accessed January 20, 2022).

can be upwards of 25 and, in some cases, even 100 or 200 members of the group, rendering unanimous agreement—and thus change—impossible (for multiple reasons, including the difficulty of getting that many people to agree on anything, interfamily conflict, and not being able to locate one of the distant relatives). In contrast, he noted, for wealthier families that want to own property together, there are numerous legal or entity structures such as a limited liability company (LLC), trust, and partnership, as well as the option to develop rules for tenancy in common. Mitchell said the act he is working on is seeking to lower the threshold to enable a certain percentage of owners to decide to change their ownership structure to an LLC, called a tenancy in common agreement, which is more stable and enables better allocation of rights and responsibilities. Doing this also enables people to use the property, such as for forestry, instead of being held up by the need to get 100 percent agreement. In summary, Mitchell said, “These families ended up on the heirs’ property because of Jim Crow. And their inability to get out of it is a present manifestation of Jim Crow.”

To conclude the session, Abello asked each panelist to share examples of solutions that are purported to address spatial injustice but miss the mark, highlighting Opportunity Zones as an example. He also noted the history of Black banks, as described in the Color of Money by Mehrsa Baradaran, as another example, describing how these banks were used as a distraction or consolation prize, taking land back from Black people and giving them a bank in its place, despite the fact that the bank was not allowed to make loans to Black people (Abello, 2018). Bader spoke about the current infrastructure bill and how although he thinks it is a great idea to get rid of highways in cities, “unless we are focusing on the communities of color and where they are now, those programs are going to spend billions of dollars that are probably going to help developers and help investors, but not necessarily help the communities of color where they are now” or value their strengths. Mitchell mentioned that another problem with heirs’ property ownership is that most of the owners lack clear title, rendering them unable to use their property as collateral to get a commercial loan or participate in government programs like disaster relief. He added that the Federal Emergency Management Agency recently drafted rules to change its requirement around needing a clear record title to qualify for disaster relief, which he said was a positive change, but that there are many heirs’ property owners who were not qualified in the past for disaster relief, and he wished the change in rules could encompass those with damage that has already happened. Venable-Thomas said there is potential in Opportunity Zones if there were greater clarity around the uses, stipulations, and regulatory guidelines around that capital, instead of falling back on conventional narratives and business as usual, which will result in the “same winners and losers as we typically see.”