Assessment of Title Complexity Associated with Informally Owned Real Property

This contract supports research examining the distribution of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Community Development Block Grants for Disaster Relief (CDBG-DR) to communities, and ultimately to non-industrial, private property owners. Real property owners with informal homeownership (also called heirs property) may be constrained in their ability to access CDBG-DR funding because these owners cannot demonstrate ownership in their property. Informally owned property includes homes/land for which there are no formal documents (i.e., deeds, titles) in the current owners name. This informality severely curtails these owners ability to recover financially following traumatic, weather-related events or other natural disasters. This work will examine informal property ownership in four cities