PNC Provides Funding to Expand Lawyers' Committee's Heirs' Property Initiative to Maryland's Eastern Shore
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 04, 2009
CONTACTS:
Stacie B. Royster
202-662-8317
sroyster@lawyerscommittee.org
Karen Burley
410-237-5549
karen.burley@pnc.com
EASTERN SHORE, MD - A combined $30,000 donation from the PNC Foundation and PNC Bank will help expand the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law's (LCCRUL) Heirs' Property Initiative to Maryland's Eastern Shore. The funding is expected to significantly increase efforts to help African-American families return ancestral lands to productive use, thereby preserving and enhancing wealth for generations to come.
"Many African-American families own land on Maryland's Eastern Shore, but cannot use it as an asset in the way most property owners take for granted," said David Tipson, an attorney who coordinates the Heirs' Property Initiative on behalf of LCCRUL, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to involve the private bar in providing legal services to address racial discrimination.
Tipson explains that African-American land loss is a serious and pressing concern nationwide including on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Lacking sufficient access to legal advice for most of the 20th century, many African-American landowners in the region were unable to take the necessary steps to preserve their assets, including drafting wills and otherwise planning for the disposition of estates. As a result, land ownership became increasingly fractionated with the passing of each generation. "Heirs' property," as this situation is called, presents two critical problems:
First, heirs' property owners lack access to essential benefits of land ownership, including the ability to obtain a mortgage, credit, access to government programs and the ability to sell the property. Consequently, heirs' property often becomes a liability, or so-called "dead capital" for families who often already are struggling to achieve economic security.
Second, owners of heirs' property are particularly vulnerable to partition suits, tax foreclosure and other vehicles of displacement, making the fractionated title one of the leading causes of land loss among African-Americans.
Working with the law firm of DLA Piper and other local organizations to stem further land loss on the Eastern Shore, PNC's grant will foster education of heirs' property owners through a series of workshops (two are planned September 25 and 26) and legal representation of families who want assistance with clearing and consolidating titles and organizing into stable ownership structures. This kind of legal support has proven to be an effective and sustainable model for helping landowners and their communities achieve long-term economic security.
"Strong and stable communities and families are the cornerstones of our region and the focus of PNC's efforts to enhance the places we call home," said Thomas Mears, PNC Market Executive for the Eastern Shore of Maryland. "We are dedicated to helping families and individuals to plan for the future by protecting those things they hold near and dear, including loved ones as well as land."
The Lawyers' Committee's Community Development Project launched the Heirs' Property Initiative in 2006 as part of its commitment to minority communities and equal justice. By providing targeted, pro bono legal services to African-American landowners in targeted regions of the South, the Heir's Property Initiative fulfills the project's mission of building assets in underserved communities.
On the Mississippi Coast alone, the Lawyers' Committee's Heirs' Property Initiative worked with DLA Piper to mobilize over 100 attorneys to clear and consolidate title to land on the hurricane-devastated Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Through these efforts, over 100 people were assisted and over $1.5 million in hurricane-related grants were unlocked to assist homeowners who could not previously prove that they owned the property on which they lived. These grants are only the beginning in a series of enhanced opportunities for personal economic development available to landowners with newly cleared titles.
"This work is integral to our commitment to focusing pro bono resources to assist most economically vulnerable Americans," said Lawyers' Committee Executive Director Barbara Arnwine.
###
The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (LCCRUL), a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, was formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to involve the private bar in providing legal services to address racial discrimination. The principal mission of the Lawyers' Committee is to secure, through the rule of law, equal justice under law, particularly in the areas of fair housing and fair lending, community development, employment discrimination, voting, education and environmental justice. For more information about the LCCRUL, visit www.lawyerscommittee.org.
