Initiative on Land, Housing and Property Rights

The Initiative aims to develop a generation of real estate and community development attorneys who, individually and collectively, defend and enhance property rights through a wide range of legal work. The program has launched a Real Estate and Community Development Law Concentration to guide these students toward successful career paths that also help them use their legal skills in a variety of ways and contexts to benefit disadvantaged communities with property-related challenges. A Concentration capstone seminar explores legal topics often not addressed at all, or in any depth, in traditional law school classes and engages students with practicing attorneys with deep experience from a variety of practice areas. Students who are interested in the Concentration will fill out this planning form.

The Initiative also has created rich experiential learning opportunities for law students through BC Law's Externship Program as well as internships the Initiative has created and administers on its own. The Initiative has recruited a diverse set of organizations to provide law students with these new opportunities. The externships and internships offer students hands-on opportunities to do critically important legal work on a variety of legal issues and projects. For example, students can work on impact litigation and legislative matters; projects that involve developing and advocating for policy solutions to various land and housing matters; assignments that require research and data analysis on issues including fair housing, affordability, and closing racial gaps in housing; and matters involving the provision of estate planning legal services. To date, students have been placed at externships at Citizens' Housing & Planning Association (CHAPA) and the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) and internships at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School (LSC).

The Initiative sponsors law school policy panels for students, the public, faculty, and others on topics of significant public concern including: “MBTA Communities Act: Legal Analysis for the Frontlines,” “Rent Control and Rent Stabilization Bills: What Would They Do,” and “Beyond Single-Family Housing: Collective Ownership Models and Opportunities.” Outside of the law school, the Initiative’s Special Projects Manager, David Price, teaches an undergraduate class at Boston College called The State of Affordable Housing in the U.S., which is sponsored by the Corcoran Center for Real Estate and Urban Action within Boston College’s Carroll School of Management. In the coming years, the Initiative’s leadership team will consider developing new training opportunities for graduate and professional students from various other academic disciplines who are interested in working on land, housing, and community development matters.

The Initiative’s Legislative and Policy Lab works to advance concrete policy proposals and law reform solutions that address land, housing, and community development challenges, in particular those that disproportionately impact disadvantaged communities. The Initiative partners with local, state, regional, and national stakeholders to develop impactful legal reform proposals; supports coalitional advocacy; provides legal and policy analysis; and designs and disseminates policy proposals that work to strengthen property rights, intergenerational asset building, and housing and land security.      

A centerpiece of the Lab’s activity is to address a wide range of issues in the heirs’ property field, which Professor Mitchell has played a major role in helping to build over the course of the past three decades and a field for which he is considered the preeminent national thought leader. The Lab’s activity in this space includes providing support to various stakeholders interested in the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act (UPHPA), a model state statute for which Professor Mitchell served as the principal drafter. The UPHPA has been adopted by 25 states and other jurisdictions – states with two-thirds of the U.S. population – with several other states considering it at this time, making it one of the most successful uniform acts the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) has promulgated in the past 30 years. Often in collaboration with other organizations, the Lab also works to advance other policy solutions, complementary to the UPHPA, to remedy economic vulnerability and property loss among heirs’ property owners.

In addition to its advocacy on heirs’ property issues, the Lab engages in a growing scope of work on other reforms to advance affordable and fair housing for homeowners and renters, prevent land loss among disadvantaged communities, and support intergenerational asset building. The Lab is in the process of scaling up its policy portfolio with the hires of its first Policy Director, Senior Policy Advisor, and Policy Associate, and the development of a formal policy agenda encompassing our work across a range of issues. 

The Initiative spurs theoretical and applied research about significant property issues affecting disadvantaged communities. The research team will produce policy-relevant research, drawing on a variety of research methods in its work. Some of the research work will be done in collaboration with other organizations that conduct research on land, housing, and community development issues. 

The Initiative’s research arm also sponsors conferences, workshops, and other gatherings. In addition to having participants who are academics and researchers, many of these gatherings are open to other constituencies, including those in government, nonprofit organizations, students, and the public. The Initiative hosts a signature annual conference focused on deepening understanding of heirs’ property and other critical property challenges affecting disadvantaged communities. The focus of the June 2025 conference will be Heirs’ Property and the Preservation of Affordable Housing. See the “Events” tab below for information on all the Initiative’s conferences. In addition, the Initiative sponsors a Property Law Schmooze, which is an invitation-only academic workshop for property scholars doing cutting edge work in law and in other disciplines. The October 2025 Schmooze is titled Interdisciplinary Property Law Schmooze.

The Initiative promotes the professional development of both attorneys and community practitioners by strengthening their expertise in estate planning, property-related matters, and community development on behalf of disadvantaged communities. The Initiative also closely engages with communities to learn from them in order to inform the work of the Initiative; to “ground truth” proposed legal reform and policy proposals the Initiative develops; and to be of service to them. That service includes sponsoring events such as community legal education programs designed to help community members better understand the laws and policies that impact the property challenges they face. 

One of the Initiative’s key efforts is the Homeownership Estate Planning Project aimed at sustaining long-term homeownership and facilitating an effective, successful transfer of family homes and family wealth to future generations. Research shows that increased access to estate planning among disadvantaged homeowners can help reduce the rate of homeownership loss experienced by these communities and thereby help close the racial wealth gap. The Massachusetts Affordable Homeownership Alliance (MAHA) partners with the Initiative by hosting classes on heirs’ property and estate planning reaching about 1,000 homeowners annually. The Initiative refers many of these class participants to another project partner, the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School (LSC), for legal services to create their own wills, simple trusts, and other forms of estate plans. Beginning in the summer of 2025, Boston College Law Students will be placed at the LSC as Summer Student Attorneys working with homeowner clients in need of estate plans. The Homeownership Estate Planning Project has generated interest from some key stakeholders in Massachusetts as well as some key nonprofit and governmental stakeholders nationwide.

The Initiative also collaborates with strategic partners to raise public awareness about the challenges to sustainable property ownership. At the Players Coalition’s “Building Black Wealth” convening during Super Bowl LIX week in New Orleans, Professor Mitchell served as a featured panelist, along with two NFL players who are among the leaders of the Players Coalition and the Executive Director of Louisiana Appleseed, highlighting the power of cross-sector collaboration to drive lasting, systemic changes.