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you have to to the Howard University School of Business this is a very important event that we are honored to host and I want to thank New America for bringing this to our attention to of course we have as you all know a lot of great things going on in the School of Business this is a an important instructional opportunity for our students but also I think it's important for some of our faculty staff and other stakeholders in the university because this issue is something that's that's relevant to all of us I think we have several people who are experiencing issues with arish property and so this is something that we find intriguing very important and we're looking forward to the information is gonna be shared with us today I am Anthony Wilbon associate dean in the School of Business on behalf of dr. Baron Harvey who's the Dean who's with us this evening in the back of the room again I welcome you to the School of Business on behalf of the students the staff and the faculty I have the honor this morning of introducing miss Tara Mariani president and chief operating officer at new America prior to joining new America Tara was appointed chief of staff to the US Department Secretary of Education and deputy chief of staff to the US Secretary of Education under the Obama administration in these roles in these roles of Tyra helped shape policies and programs impacting education from early learning through college and career she also led complex interagency and cross departmental teams that took several administration priorities from vision to strategy and implementation including the president's my brother's keeper initiative and respect prior to joining the Department of Education mr. Mariani launched entrepreneurial efforts to build human capital capital in the education sector as founder of the Greater New Orleans region of leaders we are proud that tower is also an alumnus of the School of Business receiving her bachelor's and Business Administration from Howard valedictorian of her class so we want to note that as well and she has our master's degree from a lesser institution Stanford University but we are so proud that she's here to bring this program with her and I'm gonna bring to the stage Tyra Howard come on up and give her hand please thank you doctor whooping I can't tell you how excited that I am to be back in this room my earliest memories of Howard were spending time in this room learning how to dress for corporate America and we wore business suits every week and I learned I couldn't wear my big earrings because that would not work in corporate America and Howard was so foundational to all that I achieved since then it was such a nurturing environment for me and really gave me some of my earliest learnings about what a good leader looked like and what a good manager looked like so I couldn't be more excited to be here today so welcome and thank you for joining us for today's of it the biggest problem you've never heard of examining Ayers property and black property loss I first want to start by thanking Howard School of Business and Howard School of Law for working with us and bringing this event together today under the leadership of uu Panvel who is our director of the future of property rights at new America you've probably not heard of new America before potentially so if I may familiarize you with our organization we are dedicated to renewing the promise of America helping to realize our nation's highest ideals and we're a different kind of think tank one that is dedicated to public problem solving our team is one of visionary researchers changemakers technology and technologists and storytellers who all understand the opportunities and the challenges presented by today's dramatic social and technological change research for powerful wherever they are and we conduct research and listen to people in communities across America to develop evidence-based solution to some of our common challenges and we share stories about solutions that work often given voice to some of the Civic innovators around the country that are solving real problems there are two billion people two billion with a B who cannot access the most basic property rights around the world even though technology exists to unlock and enable some of that access and by not leveraging technology where it can be utilized policymakers continue to deny access to property rights for people our future of property rights program aims to help solve today's property rights challenges both domestically and globally by helping to shrink the gap between technologists and policy makers and this is just some of the reasons why we're so excited to be here today before our esteemed let's come up I thought I would give you just a little bit to sort of set the stage and they will certainly expand upon these ideas it is a fact that the United States suffers from a racial wealth gap I my guess is I in looking at this room that is no surprise to you and but perhaps you don't know that the white household has ten times more wealth than a typical African American household and if current trends were to continue it would take over 200 years for the average African American family to accumulate the same amount of wealth and of course we know that the goalpost continues to move so even longer wealth with it which is an individual and a family's financial network often functions as a sort of generational stepping stone that older generations pass on to future generations to benefit from but that stepping stone has traditionally not benefited African Americans throughout our country's history from centuries of enslavement to Jim and Drain Crow laws school segregation mass incarceration and the list goes on policies have come assistant Lee prevented african-americans from realizing the American dream and so we're gathered here today to discuss what I would call and I'm sure my panelists would agree a critical understudied component of the way show wealth gap which is property take for example the New Year there was a New York Times article in 2017 that said that the average homeowner boasts a net worth of one hundred and ninety four thousand dollars which is thirty six times the average of that of a renters which is about fifty four hundred dollars African Americans continue to be displaced from their homes and land in the last century has seen a precipitous decline in the amount of black owned agricultural land partly as a result of Ayers property which is a former property ownership through which land is passed down without a will to descendants of the original owner and this informal partnership system has often been exploited and forced partition sales and removed black families from their property then Newkirk who is one of our panelists in a new America fellow had an Atlantic cover story that talked about how black formers throughout the US history throughout our history were regularly denied access to loans and government programs leading to mortgage foreclosure many of those who escaped foreclosure were subjected to inflated property appraisals resulting in unaffordable tax obligations and tax sales but Ayers property is hardly the only example of the pernicious impacts of property rights and security we can walk just around the neighborhood of how our University to see that because DC has become the poster child for Jennifer gentrification gentrification I would argue gone wrong as it scores the record for displacing African American residents at some of the highest rates in the country stark racial disc its disparities in will making as well leave residents across the nation who are heirs to property and and lack title documents unable to access aid we saw this in her Catrina which is my hometown and it prevents them from rebuilding after a disaster and african-americans continue to live with the legacy which we were talking about just at the beginning before we started the legacy of state-sponsored housing segregation throughout the twentieth century just one of which was the refusal of the Federal Housing Administration to provide loans for the constructions of homes to be sold to African Americans so we will use Ayers property and black land loss as a jumping-off point to talk about property as a key component of generational wealth and equally important to talk about innovative solutions like the grounded Solutions Network and others that are pursuing goals to secure the property rights of African Americans so with that I want to get out of the way so that our experts can can engage us again so pleased to be a partnership with Howard University on this and I hope and expect like me you're looking forward to a robust conversation with that I will turn it over to you Leo to introduce our panelists thank you Thank You Tyra thank you to the Howard University School of Business and at the Howard University School of Law for embarking with us on this critical discussion my name is Yulia panful I am the director of the future of property rights program at new America and I am pleased to introduce our distinguished panel first let me introduce van Newkirk who is a staff writer at the Atlantic where he covers politics and policy in the summer of 2019 the Atlantic cover story the great land robbery helped ignite a national conversation around Ayers property and black land loss prior to his work at the Atlantic van was at dailykos where he focused on justice and health issues and he focused on the intersection of policy ray class and culture van is also currently a fellow at new America welcome van I [Applause] next I am proud to introduce Thomas Mitchell who is a professor at Texas A&M School of Law where he co-directs a program in real estate and Community Development law Thomas is also the principal drafter of the uniform partition of Ayers property Act which is the primary legal instrument that is helping to solve challenges related to Ayers property Thomas welcome next it is my pleasure to introduce Tony Pickett who is the chief executive officer of the grounded solutions network a national organization that promotes innovative housing solutions prior to joining grounded solutions network Tony was a senior vice president of master site development for the Urban Land Conservancy and the founding executive director of the Atlanta Land Trust collaborative welcome Tony and finally it is my pleasure to welcome our moderator Marsha chat laine Marsha is an associate professor of history and african-american studies at Georgetown University Marsha is a scholar of african-american life and culture and the author of two books her first book southside girls growing up in the great migration was published in 2015 and Marsha just published her second book called franchise the golden arches in black America Marsha was also a Schmitt fellow at new America from 2016 to 2018 welcome Marsha [Applause] hello everyone I think it is incredibly fitting for us to be at Howard University a place that has long been part of the tradition of cultivating leadership for the world with a particular focus on the struggles of african-american peoples and this conversation really rests at the intersection of law and business and public policy and so I'd like to start our conversation with a question for the panel about what is at stake for a number of us who don't own property don't believe that we could ever afford to generational problems why must we all be invested in this issue of how property is moves generationally as well as access to property I would like to start with you then I think you can every your good okay I think the general thing here is that the history of wealth in America has largely been the history for the average American in the history of land in America and for the average American it will be the future the future of wealth will be the future of Latin America the future of property and when we're talking about these questions in the current moment of both the racial wealth gap and the larger wealth inequality between the 1% and 99% those are all issues revolving around land around property the Great Recession was at its root a crisis of land and ownership and so I think really when we're trying to disentangle all these questions about who about wealth about promise about the possibility of America there is no way around it the question at the center of all that is who owns what so first of all I want to say it's also great to be back at Howard I'm a alumna of Howard University School of Law in 1993 if I was at Texas saying if I was at Texas A&M I required to start every meeting by saying howdy at risk of being unprofessional this is the only time I'll do this I'm at Howard so you know bye son you know all right so with that said I just I want to build upon what's been said before and in terms of the ability to function in our society to advance ourselves professionally in other ways it's important to have wealth not just for ourselves but in terms of over the course of multiple generations one one owns property you have collateral that can be used to get a loan to finance your children's education and so the often times with the lack of wealth that we have in the african-american community it doesn't just impact our current generation it impacts generations that cascade over the in the future right so there's there's obviously in terms of when we talk about building wealth for all the reasons we have we heard before that's powerful in and of itself I would also argue that we shouldn't limit it to the economic value of owning property property also has non-economic values in terms of cultural heritage historic value so if you take for example in Hilton Head for those who have been to Hilton Head in the last you know several decades it's seen as kind of a resort area of golf courses up until about 1950 a substantial number of property owners in Hilton Head were african-american maybe the majority and when you think about all of the cultural heritage and the importance with Goa people that essentially now has been erased there's damage that's done to a people when their cultural and historic heritage essentially has been erased and that's often happened with the loss we've had involuntary loss of property in both rural areas and in urban areas right so we've talked about DC and DC having gentrification on steroids when I was at law school DC was still a majority african-american City it is unrecognizable in substantial part when you come to DC in 2020 and so not only have we had people forced out but you start thinking about the the cultural heritage of that that is at risk of also being a race let me just kind of stop there I'll just add that from our perspective at grounded solutions one of the primary models that we promote around the country to promote affordable homeownership is the Community Land Trust model at the core of that is community control of land making sure that a local community actually has some say in how land is owned and used from generation to generation and so the points that you raised about land being the source of wealth a lot of people in this country don't know at the start of this nation there were grants and special privileges allotted to white Europeans who came to this country and they said oh how many people are in your household well you got a corresponding number of acres based on wanting that population to gain traction gain a foothold in settling the new world and so as you mentioned for African Americans in particular that was never part of the game it was always an exclusionary proposition for us to have control of land and so I'll just say the very first Community Land Trust got established during the 1960's as part of the civil rights movement in Albany Georgia and it was really over and a response to sharecropping understanding that for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to go down and organize people to vote the reaction to that from landowners that sharecroppers were working for was to evict them from the property so they and their families had no way to earn a living and became nomadic and often had to migrate north in order to gain some viable means to support themselves so the response was how can we come up with a way for black tenant farmers in the south to own land a group of folks including two cousins of dr. Martin Luther King jr. ended up going to Israel and studying their communal farm operations in Israel they came back and created what we used today as the Community Land Trust model saying not one single owner of land but a collective ownership of land in an agreement about what the use of that land is we've translated that into modern Community Land Trust home ownership by separating ownership of the land giving that to a nonprofit entity that is predominantly community controlled by a board of directors and then selling the actual home and mortgaging that home and having a long-term land lease govern the relationship between the homeowner and the Land Trust contrary to what most people have perceived about that model one of the things that's incorporated into it is limiting the share of equity that a homeowner can take out of the home once they sell it that particular point we were discussing it earlier is often interpreted as unfair limiting the ability of the family that owns the home to generate wealth well I'm here to tell you we released a study last year 33 year study of what we call shared equity homeownership community land Trust's and other programs of that nature the performance of them over time and found that for an average investment of eighteen hundred dollars from a family and buying a Community Land Trust and shared equity home they were able to glean a return of fourteen thousand dollars and the average tenure of those families before they decided to sell was anywhere from five to seven years you can't get that kind of return in any other investment vehicle so contrary I want you to help me put it out there into the world contrary to what people think shared equity home ownership including Community Land Trust is wealth generating so that community owned land is helping families to generate wealth and I'll add on a majority of them are transitioning once they sell their land trust home to regular market rate home ownership so it's a stepping stone to get them into the economic mainstream game of market rate home ownership each of you have has taken this kind of issue of property land from a different perspective but one of the through lines in all of the challenges of black property ownership is both the legal and extralegal means that are used to dis possess and displace black folks and so for each of you in the context of the work that you do what are some of the mechanisms the legal mechanisms that have undermined the capacity for black property ownership and generational wealth in order for us to understand how we maneuver a system that in many ways I think we can say is if not only rigged but particularly nefarious I view the legal and extralegal avenues of land loss as kind of a continuum especially because when you consider in a question of if the government is doing it is it legal or actually that what I focused on in the cover story was systemic denial by pieces of the USDA loans to black farmers in the Mississippi Delta which is representative of a large-scale discrimination against in lots of different ways the ways that USDA funds farmers they discriminate against black farmers in that effort and pretty easy straightforward line between black land ownership in lots of cases and USDA discrimination in black land laws but those things weren't necessarily the denial of a loan I think actually as Tyra put it in in the introduction the denial of a loan itself isn't necessarily the theft right it's a novel loan in compounding with an unfair tax assessment of land it's the denial of that loan and compounding with Jim Crow equipment salesman selling you a tractor at 150 or 200 percent markup it's the compounding of all that stuff with the basic stresses of Jim Crow life of not being able to afford lawyers of not being able to go to fancy clinics on little and retention and so all those things function together essentially at the end of the day and then contribute to the thing that we're talking that the tile of this program when you have land that has an unclear title or heirs property or you have succession issues those all those factors compound and become this sort of pressure as 360 degrees of pressure that force may be one person in the family to sell and then we have the heirs property problem so I very much agree with a van that there's an interaction between the extra legal and the legal or even extra legal but since I am the lawyer on the panel and a law professor let me just focus on some of the legal processes that have resulted in the involuntary loss of property by african-americans so typically we think of that there are five and so how many people from the law school are here oh look at the law school representing so we have that the five legal processes are eminent domain adverse possession or closure tax sales and partition sales and I totally agree with van that when I think of it in some ways that in the work that I do with Ayers property owners in partition is in many respects they've been kind of softened up they're already in a vulnerable economic position that will not enable them to do well in a partition action because they don't have the wealth for example to bid at these forced sales but I also want to make the point that oftentimes and this is to the law students here and maybe the law professors including those who taught me professor Rogers for example is that there are things that that lawyers can be doing in terms of building the competency to be experts in these areas that we in law we often make the distinction between litigators and transactional folks so transactions we're talking about folks who do estate planning probate real estate develop real estate transactions tax and oftentimes this is just like I'd say in law schools throughout America we have a subset of students interested in social justice in public interest but they gravitate towards doing litigation stuff this transactional stuff is seen as being corporate and as a skill set that's you're relevant to promoting social justice and if there's one message I want to get out today is that that is the wrong way of thinking about things and consistent with traditions of of Howard's law school and it's being at the forefront of civil rights we have to understand that vindicating people's economic rights is just as important at these other areas and so in the work that I do oftentimes there is a small subset of attorneys who have the legal training to help these families and I have messages that come pouring in from these families across the country and the sad thing is there are very few attorneys I know who I can refer these families to so let me just that's you know a bullet point that I want to share with you if you were thinking any of you that transactional courses are kind of being and I'm not trying to disparage corporate but that it's somehow inconsistent with vindicating and promoting social justice I'll just sum it up as a term that probably all of you are familiar with redlining restricting access to financial products in majority non-white neighborhoods clearly that has had a generational impact and and when we talk about the racial wealth gap that is one of the primary factors that has resulted in that vast gulf between families of color their assets and net worth and white families in this country and so it was a very intentional thing that was done to black communities and communities of color all over this country if you read the author Richard Rothstein's book color of law he talks extensively about that and the impact of that in multiple places across the United States throughout this conversation we point in two different directions on how we can work this issue whether it's through estate planning whether it's through advocacy but there's definitely a policy component that I think allows a broader group of people to the table and we're at Howard University which is at the center of so much important work not only in this city but in educating leadership and so I want us to think a little bit about that historic relationship of the historically black college and the policy network that can build around these issues where do you see some our most talented and most compassionate leaders working in the policy space to address some of these issues or is anyone doing what needs to be done I mean doesn't have to be a positive question I'll go first this time I have both a state and local and a national policy team and I hope you all are aware of the fact that right now the Community Reinvestment Act is really under attack the current administration has proposed a revision to the Community Reinvestment Act that actually has the reverse effect it does not allow banks and other financial institutions to really focus on serving underserved communities and it's couched in a lot of very intricate policy language but the ultimate upshot of it is we are part of several coalition's that have been weighing in pretty consistently in opposition to that change so I would say the more folks that we can have as part of those coalition's and unhappy to share more information about which ones those are and they're mainly based here in DC that would be of great help the other thing is even at the local level the District of Columbia right now is considering and I'll be selfish about this some Community Land Trust authorizing legislation community land Trust's don't actually require it but they want to try to standardize their support over the long term for community land Trust's the best example that I can give you is the Douglas Community Land Trust operating east of the river trying to get ahead of what we all know will be a wave of new investment that would ultimately if not managed correctly displace large numbers of african-american families that is one of the last bastions real african-american community social culturally left in the district so really trying to focus along with the district council members on what would be the best and most useful policy in terms of supporting this Community Land Trust approach and I'll say I helped to develop a business plan for the Douglas Community Land Trust before I moved to DC I assumed my current position and over the next ten year period it's assumed that while that Land Trust will start east of the river it will eventually expand district-wide so keeping some portion of the housing stock within the district affordable permanently is the goal of that land trust so if people are interested in maybe some type of volunteer or even internship or fellowship opportunity I would love to have more conversation about that yeah I think I went to a different HBCU I went to Morehouse I'm sorry about that guys but I'm excited to be at Howard talking about this my dad went to Howard and I think one thing that I wish I had learned more while I was in school was that the history of HBCUs is almost synonymous with the history of black land ownership land retention with where we live and how we live you think about the reason why DC became known as chocolate City Howard was no small part of that reason and you look at the way that I focused on rural black land ownership the only reason people were able to hold onto our land at all who were farmers was because black Extension agents from the USDA at land-grant colleges black HBCUs ever land grants were essentially bucked the USDA party-line and taught black people how to keep their land how to grow the crops I need it to be profitable in ways that actually the USA it wasn't all that into and so I think yeah there are definite ways that people can support existing legislation existing efforts on the ground you can think about becoming more involved the real wave of Community Land Trust movement that's going across country you can think about stuff like Doug Jones isn't Tim Scott's bill to help with air property but also I think the general gist of how we live and operate as children of HBCUs as students who go here if people care that like us along with us we all have a small part to play whether it's deciding to invest in land in the land and a land trust whether it's deciding where we want to move or not whether we want to rent or now we all have a part to play in that ongoing history black land ownership and retention and I think if you went back to HBCUs in the early 20th century this is one of the dominant conversations they were having and I think we should get back to that yeah so I think that as I indicated there there tends to be a dearth of attorneys who can represent individual families in individual family matters and I think that's very important to address but also then if we think about this systemically as a policy why is a couple of organizations that I work with so one has been called the Ayers property retention coalition which is a coalition of public interest law firms community-based organizations that have deep history in working on Ayers property issues in the trenches and so that's been kind of an effective coalition and the individual members of the coalition to one degree or another have been relatively effective but but also at a kind of systemic level in terms of law reform so there's an organization that I bet hardly any of the law students maybe even the professor's if my talks at other law faculties across the country is representative of this room that is called the you speak National Conference of Commissioners on uniform state laws and usually when I mention that people's eyes glaze over including law professors who are tenured with chairs and so when when that happens then I say have you ever heard of something called the Uniform Commercial Code the UCC and then among the lawyers at least like their eyes light up right and I said you know that wasn't like mana that came down from heaven there was an organization in that case actually two organizations the uniform law Commission and the American Law Institute they drafted that these are levers or tools organizations that have been severely underutilized by people who are trying to promote social justice so that's been another thing I've been trying to proselytize so I'll tied to to you know what I'm probably most known for in terms of the leap my legal reform this being the principal drafter of the uniform partition of ayres Property Act it's been the most significant reform a partition law in this country's history we have we've had states we now have 50 15 states that have enacted into law as well as the US Virgin Islands and some of the states where we've had it enacted the last chainsaw partition law was 125 years ago but but most folks don't know about the uniform law commission so this is they go and I've been kind of trying to let other kind of organizations committed to social justice legally know about the work that the Uniform Law Commission does because you have to actually write a proposal to them they vet it they can accept it and set up a drafting committee without working through the Uniform Law Commission the success we've had in all these states would never have happened they are an organization that has deep ties their membership their uniform law commissioners have to be an attorney and they're consist of they're all appointed by governor's or I guess in DC would be the mayor you know these people are judges they're members of legislators and their leading attorneys in private practice they have deep social networks and capital and the success we've had across the country as we draw on these folks some of them are in legislatures where we're working some of them are what he's with people in the legislature so we never would have had this success that we've had so I think it's just important for folks to know that as important as working on individual matters if you're working more broadly it you need to no what are these lovers of power and you need to be able to access them and utilize them and draw upon them and so then I'll kind of turn it back to the role when I think of Howard right so obviously the the law school has was at the forefront of the challenge to Jim Crow segregation in schools all those important cases that built up - Brown versus Board sweat versus painter etc were all mooted at Howard law school and I just wouldn't what I'd heard I know that the law school has the Thurgood Marshall right you know and I think that - what we need to do is you think about as Martin Luther King talked about was that unaddressed part was was the economic rights and so I think that having institutions like Howard whether it's the business school or the law school kind of draw upon that history but then not be static not be backwards looking but before it's looking and thinking about how can they extend their social justice commitment in a way that would redound to the benefit of African Americans generally and for all the reasons that we've talked about in terms of first of all you know with African Americans it was the African Americans as we know in Dred Scott we were once considered property ourselves and that we had no rights that white Americans needed to respect to the challenges of accumulating property and then what we see is the attack on that property ownership and we've been going backwards so I think that's important in terms of an institution like an HBCU specifically let's talk about Howard playing a substantial role right and we both need folks who are trained in terms of business and in terms of law I'll just mention one other person who happens to be here so this may be was Greg is here she's with a incredibly important I'll call it a pilot project that I don't want to diminish it that way that is called the sustainable forestry and land retention program that's working with African Americans own land in the south they are piloting in three states this is where these are african-americans who own land that has forestry potential that could be used to build wealth I got to know this project because when they started working with African American families they encountered the problem that these families had heirs property problems and the legal problems were inhibiting their ability to build them so so a lot of what the SFL art does I mean there's some legal but there's also the business development of how we can leverage this property ownership to actually build wealth so there's a role for all kinds of folks but specifically including folks who have training in business and training and law a lot of the issues you touch upon are at that nexus of understanding history and historical trends staying vigilant about current policy but also preparing for the future and so when you talk to people who are in the position of having property having access to to land or a house or about to buy a house what are some of the ways that you feel like there needs to or what are the types of things that people need to understand about ownership in its current state so that they can imagine the future differently because I know that in Washington DC this is a source of tension about gentrification about who are you going to sell your house to for how much and why where are you moving into and what are your intentions and so I'm really curious in your conversations with people about their own perspectives on on land and how its supposed to create wealth what are some of the pieces of advice or insights that you share I'm 31 and for I really didn't want to like own a house at all I don't want to cut the grass it's such a pain oh you just wait I got to get out of here for a furnace situation you don't want that trouble and then I got the house in my basement flooded absolutely and all the hassles I feel like it's a conversate and it's common among Millennials among Gen Z is you know who wants a house who wants to go you know live the little suburban white picket fence life I can rent a place and fine and actually in reporting for that story I realized just how different my perspective was on it from I guess like folks who grew up in in Jim Crow who were a generation not even that removed from sharecropping right I think yeah there are some conversations that we had and actually maybe Tony's a person you'll be talking to because there there are models now there are ways to think about real estate about land ownership that maybe don't revolve around the idea that maybe you pass a now which is like going and getting a dog and living out in the suburbs living that type of life there are ways now I think to think about ownership that may fit our sensibilities that aren't the sort of 1950s suburbia way of thinking about it so I think in terms of just ownership right whether or not that's your preference or not you can't force people to have a preference that they don't there's good reasons why sometimes people don't want to own and rent and one one of the important things I think you know especially where Howard realizes that when you look at African Americans generally and you look at their asset portfolios they're skewed to property ownership and what we've had in the last 15 years is we had the high-water mark for home ownership in the african-american community was about 2004 it was almost 50% we're now down to forty point six percent and to tell you how bad that is at the time that the Federal Fair Housing Act was enacted into law the homeownership rate was 42 percent in the african-american so we're in a worse position today then we were prior to the Federal Fair Housing Act which is pretty depressing when you actually think about it and so there's a there's a couple things I think that we've also had in the in the Great Recession disproportionately African Americans were hit and but in that context it was kind of what some people recall was reverse redlining we have we still live in an incredibly segregated America and as opposed to just the denial of loans what we had was predatory loans in those communities and was cursed I looked at uh I think the Washington Post did a you know great article about in the Atlanta area it was pretty shocking was that professional African Americans relatively high income African Americans had agreed to loans that had who would have otherwise qualified for your standard loans entered into agreements that were predatory so that says something about financial literacy so that's one thing is we need to make sure that we are financially literate when we enter into these transactions and even among the professional class of African Americans there sometimes is a gap so me let me just this is another thing on process not the next thing about we talked about the lack of the state planning so let me just give you a quick statistic although there's been no national study variety of studies that show the rate of well making in this country or state planning is between 40 and 60 percent I'm gonna look at what I study I'm familiar with most recently show that the overall roll weighed whoa making rate in America was fifty seven percent for it broke it out by race and ethnicity and for every racial or ethnic group and this is not surprising the rate of will making or estate planning is correlated with the education levels those with the lowest education have the lowest rate of the state planning rulemaking those were the highest but here's one I something I leave with you among white Americans this studies showed that the rate of will making amongst those who had the least education those without a high school degree was 57 percent the highest rate was white Americans with a college degree or more and it was 72 percent the highest rate of will making and the African American community was not surprisingly african-american with a college degree or a graduate degree do you know what the rate of wool making was for that group which is all 32% not making a will not having estate planning if you own property will ensure that when your property passes to the next generation it will pass under an ownership form you call it Ayers property it's for the one out for the law students or lawful lawyers is this tendency in common ownership tenancy in common ownership under the default rules that the state gives you is well recognized to be the most unstable form of common real property ownership in America if you went to an estate planner or a business planner they would give you options of thing of the ways you could own your property in LLC a partnership you can contract around a tendency income and they call them tick agreements but the one thing they would tell you is never owned it under a tendency in common under the default rules in the majority of African American so own common property you know how they own it tenancy in common under the default rules and so there's both the financial literacy but also the legal literacy and so I think that you know that's alameen I mean this kind of a depressing point I was asked to give a talk at the ABA annual meeting in Toronto a few years ago and so we're talking about Harris property and these are all lawyers right disproportionately African American attorneys and so you know I was telling them of course when you advise your clients or your family you know tell them about the various ownership structures and the options and afterwards I had a huge group of these lawyers come up to me they said no my family's got Ayers property like there's options like they had no idea then I asked them what area do you practice in criminal law family law they just they had no idea and these are the attorneys and that was pretty depressing to me that if it's the attorneys don't know so anyway so financial literacy literally GLE literacy you guys covered a lot of the points there the only thing I would add is again there's some consideration to be made for type of housing we've all been conditioned over many generations to believe in the American Dream this standalone single-family home with a nice yard with a fence around it and what most people don't realize is single-family zoning is another means to exclude if you make the lot size a certain size and you make that a certain price you can effectively exclude lower-income people from living in that community so that's another thing back on the policy side that we need to start to talk more about but also in our world there are limited equity coops there are condominiums that are done under the land trust model I would urge folks based on their lifestyle to start thinking about the type of house that they actually want to live in and invest and in treat it like an investment and once you make that initial purchase there will come more investment that needs to be planned for so back to the financial literacy part and one of the advantages of our programs is that we incorporate what we call stewardship there's a long term relationship between our nonprofit land trust or even limited equity co-op and the homeowner and you can come to us for advice in some cases we require under Community Land Trust the owner to pay a very small nominal annual ground lease to cover some of the land Trust's operating costs but we also include in that sometimes a reserve for maintenance and improvements over time so collectively if enough people are contributing to that when some need arises that is an emergency that someone can't cover necessarily in a short term expense the Land Trust can step in to cover some of that so think about sort of back to that question of what type of ownership and what type of home you want to occupy I'd also say most people are not well aware or thinking about when they purchase that home what are the implications in terms of the school district that is the other link that is often tied to the value of a particular home in a particular neighborhood so thinking ahead - okay well do I want to live in a good school district or do I want to live in a district where I know I need to help to make the school the good school district those are some of the choices that people have to really think about and I wish I had talked to you before and with that we're gonna have an opportunity to open it up for questions and comments we'll have folks with microphones we'll come to the audience but before we do that please just join me in thinking this incredible panel for their insights [Applause] [Music] so first fan I can't resist saying Kondo no dog or picket fence required or children but I want to go back to the estate planning it feels like a super it feels it like an easy way to retain whatever wealth we do have and I'm curious and I think in part it comes to folks not thinking about what assets they do have and wanting to pass that down that you sort of think I don't have anything to give on I'm just curious if you all have thoughts on how we get more folks thinking about estate planning because again I think it's one of the simplest ways we can retain wealth whatever but whatever wealth we do have I mean I would say that there are various organization on profit organizations doing some but just in in my world I call it law school world I think highlighting what I talk about is the racial estate planning or a will making gap and making it it is a thing bringing that to people's attention and having some school be a leader in seeking to address this issue given all of the negative ramifications that flow right I would hope that maybe Howard its law school might be interested in taking this up but doesn't have to be Howard I mean Howard you know doesn't have to be answering all the problems but I think that if you had a beachhead you had a leader that could do this and show some success that you know I think we you could then develop or make it sustainable so that's that's something I've I think one thing especially with a roomful of young folks is we think of estate planning as a thing that you should do when you're old only when you're old and I've seen it in my own family and reporting is we don't live as long as other folks on average and you see lots of people who are getting who were sort of middle aged then disaster happens and you know somebody has a heart attack and that's it and I think we should as young folks start thinking more and more long-term about estate planning you know we like to think that we only need accountants when we have money like then we only need lawyers and no lawyers when we're in trouble and I think getting to generally this is a skewed room full of people who are going into law and business but generally thinking about ways we interface with the systems of wealth preservation and maintenance earlier good morning and thank you very much I am from the law school professor Thomas but I want to talk about something I didn't hear you mention I spent like the last three years working on reverse mortgage case in realizing what was actually happening because it kind of went right past my my vision I didn't realize it predatory lending here in the area reverse mortgage over here in Northeast Washington it looked that when I talked to this family it sound like Walker Thomas exactly how this loan was created etc and I've been having a hard time finding someone working in this area looking on it from the backside meaning that how do we go to the other side and fight from the other side and say these are predatory lenders who did this and we need to take them down because they were like sixty three families in Northeast Washington under one company and that's like easy bait the people will die and the heirs probably don't have the financial resources to buy that property back from these lenders and it goes right out the door so I'm here I'm not stop fighting I'm gonna keep fighting I'm gonna keep knocking on doors and trying to get people's attention I went to the Attorney General in DC to say hello this is a problem here in DC and we need to be dealing with it so do you guys have any experience or knowledge of any organizations that are fighting in the reverse mortgage area I would refer you to our partners at the National Fair Housing Alliance if you haven't spoken with them they're here but I think they probably have some experience in that realm your question has there been any media attention because in my work what I've realized is that the legal expertise is necessary but often insufficient without the media attention right so one of the the state that we just got our uniform partition of Eros Property Act the most recent state was New York New York we basically were told talking to leaders in the bar and the legislature you know the last ten years they were like stop calling us we're not interested and then there was a investigative journalist for ny1 in New York City who discovered that there were real estate investors that were preying upon african-american families that had gotten brownstones in Harlem and in every borough of New York City these were high equity properties because initially oftentimes these were red lines of the families oftentimes bought them with cash and it really was her report and at in NY one that led the legislature I think you know we had gone from having them say don't ever call us again to within after her report there was a competition among members of the New York legislature to see who could introduce our act first so that's one thing I've learned in mine I don't know if there's been any media attention in DC about this hi I'm Tina Nelson I'm with legal counsel for the elderly here in DC actually have an estate and Probate practice at LCE and I did testify on behalf of the uniformed heirs petition act that was introduced here at DC legislation but there was a lot of opposition from the states bar section and I know you said there are 15 jurisdictions in which it has been passed so just wondering like how did you deal with the opposition from the private attorneys who were opposed to it yes I think one of the things that I benefited from is right after undergrad my first job before I went to law school I worked on Capitol Hill I learned something about the legislative process I call it the good the bad and the ugly and you know so we have I think the biggest resistance we have was not from real estate developers or investors which was what we anticipated but was from the bar right especially the real estate bar you know in some places we've been able to meet with them and you know we got it passed in Texas in 2017 there was initially opposition among the leadership of the the real property probate and Trust law section of the Texas bar and I just ended up meeting with the the chair of the section and we had a long sit-down and it turns out that you know there there were people within the bar who strongly opposed it and I just said listen I'll sit down with you and you tell me what the concerns are and I'll be I'll try to be as fair as possible and all you know and it turns out that 80% 90% of the claims that were made were just factually incorrect so by the time I walked out of his office I had gotten them from opposing it to taking a neutral position and all we needed them was to stay on the sidelines so we've had that I've had that in a couple of states just and so that's just kind of you know individual meetings and in the trenches it's probably not gonna be relevant to DC though what helped us in New York was the media attention that just made it politically unpalatable to oppose it one of the things we benefited from is some I think you reference senator Scott and Doug Jones that's on the Senate side on the house side we had sponsors of these airs property provisions of the farm bill so what I what I was in you know hand-to-hand combat the last few months with the Florida Bar and the Virginia bar because we've had there's like I said six dates in DC two of the states are Florida and Virginia right these are high priority states for us and initially a year ago the Virginia bar and the Florida Bar came out opposing it and what how we were able to get them turned around was we basically told them fine oppose it and what we're gonna do is we're gonna reference the federal farm bill and we're gonna make it known that your state bar is the organization that is preventing farmers and ranchers in your States from being able to access the benefits that farmers and ranchers in other states are going to be able to access through greater participation in a whole variety of USDA programs and ultimately their lobbyists said that would be a bad look for them you know so we had some pretty intense negotiations but clearly the farm bill helped us in a way that that's not real Levent in DC right but I would say that the media might be a source of pressure but also in my experience as I indicated that a lot of these real estate and probate attorneys really just had a misunderstanding of what the bill does right so in terms of the probate attorneys we've had great support from these called the American College of trusts and estate council act Tech which is incredibly important organization for estate planning and probate attorneys actually it was act Tex supporters in Florida helped within the Florida Bar helped turn the tide in our favor so it's nice I say I'm probably talking too long so we can talk later if you want to um so one thing we've talked about is estate planning but we really haven't discussed probate and for me when I was about to graduate from law school I knew that elder law estate planning probate and heir property issues were my jam that's what I wanted to do and I wanted to do it in a legal aid setting and there are lots of legal service providers that will provide estate planning either during clinics or like one day things are in their practice but I'm aside from LCE there are really no legal service providers in DC and very few in other places that provide legal representation or advice for probate issues and there's the assumption that I heard in that week on in terms of pushback that people assume if you do probates because you have money or because people are wealthy but that's not the case particularly for people who are I guess land rich but cash poor so my question is for people like me who want to do this work but can't really find places or funding or convince people to fund this work what where should we go what should we do because this is what I want to do but finding people who are wanting to do probate assistance either pro bono or in a legal aid setting it's not really popular and it's hard to get people to do it and probe it's expensive and people forget how much it costs even in DC to go through the probate process okay just because I'm the lawyer up here I don't want to dominate I feel like I've I mean I will have an answer for you but I'm gonna first defer to my co-panelists I think this comes back to what I was saying that I think that the lack of appreciation of the racial will making estate planning gap then has these kind of cascading effects where you don't have the legal infrastructure in place you know so you know I've throughout my like 20-year career as a law professor I've gotten calls from individual families but it's been it became on steroids this year because the convergence of the success of the Act the media attention you know I don't say this to brag but I think I've had 32 media interviews in the last year and these families didn't read about me and they call me and the problem is hey I don't have the the ability to return all these calls but the point is that they want referrals and there's just not a sufficient infrastructure so one of the things I've been doing is there are a lot of errors property issues so heirs property issues is not just a black issue it's a impacts property owners of every race and ethnicity and even has salience across socio-economic statuses and my evidence of that is in the 15 states that have passed it yes we have Alabama and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas and Arkansas but we also have Montana we have Iowa we have Hawaii New Mexico is that the by letting folks know that that there's this there's kind of this broader issue one of the things I've been trying to like when I highlight the work that Mavis does is that we need to build out that infrastructure right so we have had a couple developments in last year in Georgia there's an organization called the Georgia heirs property Law Center but they're doing tremendous work but they're new so what I'm hoping is we have more organizations so I'm sorry to go back to Texas so there's a lot of heirs property it turns out in South Texas and these highly mexican-american communities and so I remember the Texas Legislature called me and we were talking about this and I said well one of the things at the state level is if you had increased funding for legal services including transactional services that would be helpful to your communities trying to let various foundations know the importance of this estate planning and probate and how that is linked to being able to build wealth is another kind of issue so I don't have a magic solution for you if we if the what you're saying is typical that there's not the infrastructure in place I just think that we need to do whatever we can to make this issue better known the implications of these families not having access and the last thing I'll say is that I don't know what what DC has but you do have states like Louisiana and other states where you have like these small estate probations I don't know if DC has you have that here okay all right so let me let me just stop there two-part question my first question is is it better to have a will or a trust and then my second question is or a statement question type is I've noticed that a lot of African Americans don't realize that most homes in DC are over 50,000 so you're gonna have to go to probate but if you have a sibling or auntie or something like that and they want to fight it that's extra money and that's two extra years so is it easier to just have a will and put all your assets in the wheel or is it easier to just have it in a trust and just go with the flow even though it will go to probate I really don't want to dominate this and so what I'm gonna do here unless my co-panelist here want to answer this is I'm gonna delegate this to a non panelist who has a lot of expertise who used to have a probate and estate planning practice Mavis or maybe I'll just tell you maybe can you raise your hand talk to me this Gregg afterwards one thing I would say and I want to be this keep this short is that there's not a one-size-fits-all so that's both in terms of the type of estate planning you have but also in time and what I refer to that there are these options for ownership forms right including what you're talking about but you know I would you have to take into account the capacity of these families so for example a lot of people default to oh they should transfer their ownership into an LLC maybe but I think of the LLC is kind of high maintenance and you got to do all the things that are legally required for an LLC you gotta have regular meetings it's got to be minutes and you got to ask yourself is your family capable of that and for some subset yes an LLC is a great thing for other families it's not and so a solution like what we call a tendency and common agreement a tick agreement where you contract around the worst features of tenancy and common ownership is what I think of as low maintenance and so for those families that would be a better option so my point is there's not a one-size-fits-all I have one more it was about the nonprofit Niguel so it wasn't about that I was just wondering what other nonprofits are out there that will be willing to help someone get started even though they may not have access to them for instance but if someone just at the moment doesn't have internet but they want to walk into the office like what other nonprofits are available to say hey we help with this so why don't you talk to afterwards alright last question I don't see what the the microphones are going yes thank you great panel I'm perfect from piss can you hear me I'm Professor karma from the art department he's like why am I here in this meeting I teach interior design and I'm currently working with the Berry Farm initiative that's currently going on in Ward 8 and we're trying to address building equity in that community so currently they're going through our historic preservation is one tool to preserve the land and preserve some of the buildings there but are there other ways that we can think about that these communities can think about building equity I'm currently looking at how do we look at our building typology when we're talking about a planned urban development that looks at creating spaces that we can interchange them that they're kind of going through a flexible housing so you can stay in those properties over a span and they can change to possibly being a mixed-use we would have business types maybe on the basement level and then the home owners would own that property and so you get that residual rental and so currently with the historical preservation for those students that may have time on tomorrow 9 o'clock Berry Farm is looking for you to be there to support them is there other means that we can think about preserving these black spaces thank you I think you stumped the panel on that one thing I think is interesting I'm not I'm gonna take a little piece of your question and just say one of the things I found to be a very interesting development in the last couple years is that there's been a movement across this country of recognizing and preserving black cemeteries all across this country in Virginia the Florida Legislature just passed a bill I guess in the last year where they're allocating you know I don't know half a million dollars there was a federal bill there is this incredibly is dynamic and important black architect in San Antonio who had won some presidential medal of honor when President Obama was president that I that I work with who has uncovered these incredible black cemeteries in San Antonio in San Antonio usually the history has been very much framed as kind of European or white history and Mexican American but not black and it turns out there's through unlocking these African American cemeteries including one where they found where there was you know folks we've been Buffalo Soldiers had been buried so they had a big event on leading up to market and Martin Luther King Day in San Antonio a couple weeks ago where they featured three of these cemeteries and they got tremendous tremendous media coverage so that's like I said tangential to your question but the historic preservation angle I just think that this African American Cemetery present has become a thing which I think is just interesting I think it's not just cemeteries I think there's a larger movement for African American historical preservation of places that really mirrors the one that will not mirrors but hopefully it's going to be as impactful as kind of like the the movement taken by like the United Daughters or Confederacy which has walled off quite a bit of places for from investment from development in the south and it was a really big wave of preservation you see in North Carolina and Virginia you'll see places preserved for having the first cotton gin in the county stuff like that you know like and movement towards recognizing historical african-american property is actually it's not just cemeteries it's thinking about historical houses homes places things were built historical community schools yeah and that's a really big part of this conversation moving forward well on that note we're at time but I just wanted to again think all of the partners who are part of this Howard University Business School law school new America and I think this rich conversation really reveals what's possible when people of goodwill and great intellect come together to solve critical problems so thank you [Music] [Applause]