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 and surrounding counties impacted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton in Fall 2024--Asheville, NC; Tampa, FL; Greenville, SC, and Atlanta, GA to: 1) assess the state of informal property ownership in these cities, 2) categorize the various levels or types of informality, as informal ownership exists along a continuum from milder to more extreme forms, 3) determine which kinds and costs of legal services would be required to formalize property titles for the different types of informally held property, and 4) identify those properties mostly likely to be eligible for CDBG-DR funding tied to Public Law 118-158.

Questions shall be submitted via email to Shannon Wrobel, by email at shannon.wrobel@usda.gov with a courtesy copy to Keith Friot at keith.d.friot@usda.gov no later than January 20, 2026. This will ensure enough time to respond before the solicitation period ends. Please include the solicitation name and number as the subject line of the email.