FROM RECONSTRUCTION TO DECONSTRUCTION: UNDERMINING BLACK LANDOWNERSHIP, POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE, AND COMMUNITY THROUGH PARTITION SALES OF TENANCIES IN COMMON

The pattern of landownership in the rural African American community represents the mirror opposite of the trend in black land acquisition 100 years ago at the dawn of the twentieth century. Remarkable levels of acquisition have been replaced by extraordinary levels of land loss in the past half-century or so. Today, African American farm owner-operators on little more than 2 million acres of land in the United States. Land loss in rural African American communities far exceeds farmland lost by white farmers. Even American Indian landowners-a group whose current land base represents but a fraction of its ancestral landholdings-have fared better than rural African American landowners over the past 50 to 60 years. This paper focuses on one of the primary causes of involuntary black land loss in recent times-partition sales of black-owned land held under tenancies in common. Our society has a clear moral obligation to reverse the processes that have stripped black landowners of their land. This paper advocates government intervention to promote enhanced landownership-both quantitatively and qualitatively-for African Americans. This paper maintains that the problem of fractionated heir property within the rural, African American community justifies more fundamental reform of common property law and the creation of government institutions that would have the capacity to help those who own heir property restructure their ownership in a way that the ownership could be stabilized and the property could be used productively.Afro-Americans -- Land tenure, Joint tenancy -- United States, Partition -- United States, Afro-American farmers -- Government policy -- United States, Agrarian structure -- United States, Common property -- United States, Land Economics/Use,

Evaluation of the East Bay Municipal Utility District's Pilot of WaterSmart Home Water Reports

This report presents the results of an independent evaluation of the East Bay Municipal Utility District's (EBMUD) year-long pilot project (Pilot) of WaterSmart Software's Home Water Reports (HWRs) service.The Pilot was intended to address three primary questions:First, would an SNB efficiency program like WaterSmart result in measurable reductionsin household water use?Second, would it increase rates of participation in other EBMUD conservation programs? Third, would it increase household knowledge and awareness of water consumption andways to use water more efficiently

Historic Partition Law Reform: A Game Changer for Heirs’ Property Owners

Over the course of several decades, many disadvantaged families who owned property under the tenancy-in-common form of ownership—property these families often referred to as heirs’ property—have had their property forcibly sold as a result of court-ordered partition sales. For several decades, repeated efforts to reform State partition laws produced little to no reform despite clear evidence that these laws unjustly harmed many families. This paper addresses the remarkable success of a model State statute named the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act (UPHPA), which has been enacted into law in several States since 2011, including in five southern States. The UPHPA makes major changes to partition laws that had undergone little change since the 1800s and provides heirs’ property owners with significantly enhanced property rights. As a result, many more heirs’ property owners should be able to maintain ownership of their property or at least the wealth associated with it

The Land Crisis in Zimbabwe: Getting Beyond the Myopic Focus Upon Black & White

This article deconstructs the role that race played in the land crisis in Zimbabwe that occurred in Zimbabwe in the late 1990s and earls 2000s. The article makes it clear that the government of Zimbabwe did not extend robust property rights to its black majority population for the most part even as it took land from large white landowners. This is revealing given that the government\u27s primary justification for taking land from large white landowners was that the black majority unjustly owned little property in Zimbabwe as a result of colonialist and neocolonialist, discriminatory polices

Growing Inequality and Racial Economic Gaps

Over the past several decades, economic inequality has grown dramatically in the United States while inter-generational economic mobility has declined, which has challenged the very notion of the American Dream. In fact, the United States is more economically unequal than most other industrialized countries. Further, there are dramatic and growing racial economic gaps in this country. Despite the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and the various spinoffs it has catalyzed, there has not been any sustained, widespread social movement to address economic inequality in the United States over the course of the past several decades. Furthermore, it is unlikely that a mass social movement will emerge and endure over a long period of time in the near future to address economic inequality and growing poverty. Greater economic equality in the United States is achievable only if policymakers make fundamental changes in certain key areas of public policy impacting education, the criminal justice system, taxation, and families\u27 ability to invest financial and non-financial resources in their children, among other areas. Although it is unlikely that the legal system can serve as a primary tool to reduce economic inequality in any substantial way, there are a number of legal strategies and initiatives that lawyers and legal organizations, including law schools, could pursue in an effort to increase economic equality and security for many Americans on the margins, including for many persons of color

Restoring Hope for Heirs Property Owners: The Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act

For well over 125 years, many Americans have lost their tenancy-in-common property involuntarily in various legal proceedings. For example, courts throughout this country have often resolved partition actions, a legal proceeding in which a tenant in common seeks to exit a tenancy in common, by ordering a forced, partition sale of the property even when these courts could have ordered a remedy that would have preserved the property rights of the tenants in common. Though partition sales have negatively impacted a broad cross section of people in this country, the sales have particularly impacted poor and disadvantaged African-Americans, Hispanics, white Americans, and in some instances, Native Americans. The Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act (UPHPA), a project that the American Bar Association\u27s Section of Real Property, Trust, and Estate Law helped convince the Uniform Law Commission to undertake in 2007, seeks to address partition action abuses that have led to significant property loss. Thomas W. Mitchell, the Reporter for the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, explains the UPHPA and the history of its enactment by states over the last five years

Destabilizing the Normalization of Rural Black Land Loss: A Critical Role for Legal Empiricism

Mitchell\u27s study exemplifies the New Legal Realist goal of combining qualitative and quantitative empirical research to shed light on important legal and policy issues. He also demonstrates the utility of a ground-level contextual analysis that examines legal problems from the bottom up. The study tracks processes by which black rural landowners have gradually been dispossessed of more than 90% of the land held by their predecessors in 1910. Mitchell points out that despite the continuing practices that contribute to this problem, there has been very little research on the issue, and what little attention legal scholars have paid to it has proceeded in an empirical vacuum. The article proceeds to examine existing data, and to describe the ongoing empirical research being conducted on black rural land loss in the U.S. south by Mitchell and his team. Mitchell concludes that a thoroughly contextual analysis (combining qualitative with quantitative methods) is necessary if we are to achieve an accurate understanding of the process by which law contributes to black rural land loss in this country. This kind of understanding will permit more effective policy decisions, both within and outside of the law

Expansion of New Law in Southeast May Stave Off Black Land Loss

Landownership and homeownership are significant contributors to the creation of wealth and thus, drivers of intergenerational economic mobility. However, many people who have inherited family land are unable to realize these opportunities because of the legal effect of their particular form of landownership, often called heirs\u27 property. These landowners are more likely to lose their land through what is known as a partition sale—a property sale resulting from a dispute between co-owners, often ignited by an outside party with an investment interest in the land. This Partners Update article explores the repercussions of heirs\u27 property ownership and examines legislative solutions recently enacted in three southeastern states: Florida, Mississippi, and Virginia

Forced Sale Risk: Class, Race, and the Double Discount

What impact does a forced sale have upon a property owner\u27s wealth? And do certain characteristics of a property owner such as whether they are rich or poor or whether they are black or white, tend to affect the price yielded at a forced sale? This Article addresses arguments made by some courts and legal scholars who have claimed that certain types of forced sales result in wealth maximizing, economic efficiencies. The Article addresses such economic arguments by returning to first principles and reviewing the distinction between sales conducted under fair market value conditions and sales conducted under forced sale conditions. This analysis makes it clear that forced sales of real or personal property are conducted under conditions that are rarely likely to yield market value prices. In addition, the Article addresses the fact that judges and legal scholars have utilized a flawed economic analysis of forced sales in cases that often involve property that is owned by low- to middle-class property owners in part because those who are wealthier own their property under more stable ownership structures or utilize private ordering to avoid the chance that a court might order a forced sale under the default rules of certain common ownership structures. The Article also raises the possibility for the first time that the race or ethnicity of a property owner may affect the sales price for property sold at a forced sale, resulting in a double discount, i.e. a discount from market value for the forced sale and a further discount attributable to the race of the property owner. If minorities are more susceptible to forced sales of their property than white property owners or if there does exist a phenomenon in which minorities suffer a double discount upon the sale of their property at a forced sale, then forced sales of minority-owned property could be contributing to persistent and yawning racial wealth gaps