不列颠哥伦比亚省土地和住房法律倡议 & Property Rights (ILHPR) has been named a recipient of an inaugural impact award from Harvard University through its Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery Initiative’s (H&LS)修复伙伴关系资助计划. H&LS program is meant to address systemic inequities affecting descendant communities of formerly enslaved people, and stems from Harvard’s efforts to address its legacies of slavery through “meaningful, 可见, 有效的行动.” ILHPR will be partnering with the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance (MAHA), a leading nonprofit housing organization in the Commonwealth, and with 哈佛法学院法律服务中心.
H&LS 宣布了七个首届影响力奖项, each totaling $350,000 for two years, and seven inaugural seed grants, each totaling $25,000. “We are very grateful to have received one of the inaugural Reparative Partnership Grant Program impact awards, particularly given the robust number of excellent grant proposals,ILHPR创始人兼董事托马斯. 米切尔，不列颠哥伦比亚省法学院的德里南法学教授. “I would like to thank Harvard University and its H&LS Initiative for recognizing the potential impact of our proposal and for this generous funding, which we will use to help descendant communities in Boston and Cambridge preserve their homes.”
在它的项目下, titled ‘A 首页ownership Estate Planning Project to Close the Racial Wealth Gap,’ ILHPR and MAHA will sponsor community legal education estate planning workshops in Boston and Cambridge for mostly Black and brown families, and help build an estate planning module to a curriculum nonprofit housing organizations use in their work with first-time, 低收入购房者.
“与白人成年人的比例相比, 40 percent fewer Black and brown adults have a will or some other type of estate plan—with the will-making rate for Black and brown families barely hovering over 20 percent,米切尔说. “The lack of a will or other type of estate plan can pose substantial problems for disadvantaged people who want to pass down their wealth to the next generation, 包括他们的家园和土地. The loss of homes that may be attributable to a lack of estate planning is significant, and it contributes to the fact that Black families in the greater Boston area have an average of $8 dollars of net worth as compared to the $247,相当于白人平均资产净值的1万美元.”
希望, 米切尔说, “is to put nonprofits in a better position to educate their clients about the importance of estate planning for future generations so that they can better preserve their homes and other assets. 除了, thirty to forty families that attend the community legal education workshops we’ll sponsor will be able to have wills, 简单的信任, or other types of estate plans drafted for them by our Harvard partner, 哈佛法学院法律服务中心.”
“The lack of a will or other type of estate plan can pose substantial problems for disadvantaged people who want to pass down their wealth to the next generation, 包括他们的家园和土地.”
托马斯·米切尔教授
该奖项在H&LS 2024 symposium ‘Reckoning with History, Shaping Our Future,’ which took place April 23-24.
于2022年在BC 法律成立, the ILHPR seeks to preserve and expand property rights for disadvantaged communities by producing research, 制定法律改革和政策解决方案, 参与社区外展活动, 培养法律系学生, 并借鉴其他互补策略.
The initiative encompasses a wide range of matters, including rural land loss among socially and economically disadvantaged families; the past and present of the destabilization of urban neighborhoods due to redlining, 城市电子游戏正规平台, and rising markets; the role of law and policy in ameliorating housing inequality and housing insecurity; and the issues rural and urban so-called heirs’ property owners face in retaining their properties and realizing the potential of their ownership. By helping communities of color preserve and expand their property rights, the initiative seeks to help narrow the racial wealth gap. It also strives to reform or create laws and policies to increase property and housing access, 效率, 和股票.
米切尔拿着罗伯特F. 德里南，SJ, BC法学院特聘教授. He is a national expert on property issues facing disadvantaged families and communities, and has published leading scholarly works addressing these matters in academic journals, 政府出版物, and publications for trade associations such as the American Bar Association.
麦克阿瑟“天才奖”获得者, Mitchell has engaged in extensive law reform and policy work, most prominently serving as the principal drafter of a widely adopted uniform real property act named the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act (UPHPA), which is designed to substantially enhance the ability of disadvantaged families to maintain ownership of their property and their property-related generational wealth. The act has been adopted by twenty-four states and other jurisdictions at this time, 其他几个州也在考虑, making it one of the two or three most successful uniform real property acts the Uniform 法律 Commission (ULC) has promulgated in the past thirty years. Mitchell also has helped draft some congressional farm and housing bills, including one that Congress is considering at this time.