Sponsored podcast: The program sends legal aid to help families secure the homes they’ve inherited before speculators can swoop in.<\/p>\n
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\tBecome A Member<\/a><\/p>\n A national study estimated that 440,000 homes across the United States are in legal limbo, leaving families unable to obtain insurance, make repairs, or even be sure they own the homes passed down to them. But a coalition led by LISC Jacksonville is sending help to fix these \u201ctangled titles\u201d before it\u2019s too late.\u00a0<\/p>\n Heirs’ properties are homes passed down without a proper estate plan, and the unclear titles become a threat to the generational wealth of families in predominantly Black neighborhoods. In this sponsored episode, produced in partnership with Results for America, we learn about the Jacksonville program that \u2013 as of December 2025 \u2013\u00a0has already helped residents clear clouded titles on more than 180 properties \u200aand create 2,200 estate plans, stabilizing $53.8 million in home value.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have folks that have lived in a family home for generations that are then finding themselves being evicted with very short notice,\u201d says Ross Tilchin, Director of the Economic Mobility Catalog at Results for America. \u201cSo there’s a serious human tragedy component to this.\u201d<\/p>\n Because people\u00a0are in such sensitive situations, trust-based outreach is crucial to how LISC Jacksonville\u2019s heirs\u2019 property program connects families with legal aid.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen there’s chaos, it creates conflict within families,\u201d says Kelvin Lane, a LISC Jacksonville community navigator who brings the message into churches and neighborhood associations. \u201cThis stuff can actually cause people to lose their relationships with people that share the same genes and blood, because of lack of information, lack of knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n Natavia Wicker, Program Navigator at the Historic Eastside Community Development Corporation, shares how her own experience as an heir informed her work helping others navigate the process. \u201cI always ensure they know the whole process is free,\u201d she says. \u201cA lot of people always say, oh, it can’t be free. And no, it’s a 100% free.\u201d<\/p>\n Going further into the program’s details, Kristopher Smith, Senior Community Development Program Officer at LISC Jacksonville, explains how the program relies on parcel-level data and an early-warning algorithm to identify at-risk households before they lose their homes. And John Sapora, LISC Jacksonville’s Housing Resiliency Program Officer, details tactics such as paying clients’ tax bills and offering loan products that directly help families reach the finish line in the legal process.\u00a0<\/p>\n Results for America has assembled a free toolkit on replicating this solution<\/a>. The step-by-step guide includes detailed descriptions of how LISC Jacksonville handled each intervention, checklists of activities, messaging tips for communicating with residents and stakeholders, and links to original documents and materials that communities are free to use.\u00a0<\/p>\n This episode is based on a SolutionsFest event<\/a>, available in Next City’s webinar library. Listen to the episode below or subscribe to the Next City podcast on Apple<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or Goodpods<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sponsored podcast: The program sends legal aid to help families secure the homes they’ve inherited before speculators can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-178949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}