06/10/2026
Your first Summer Reading Assignment is here!
Each Wednesday this summer, we will give you a story that shines a light into the dark corners of the heirs property crisis in Louisiana. Most of us are unlikely to run into this information unless we are looking for it, so please follow so you get the updates on this weird, arcane, and damaging element of Louisiana law, so you can be informed when you have the opportunities to help fix this pervasive problem.
Heirs Property and the Insurance Crisis
How a legacy of discrimination leaves Black families in legal limbo
Brya Arcement’s January article for illuminates the nexus of historically racist housing segregation and feckless, unregulated home insurance practices, creating a “perfect storm” of exposure to both natural disasters and financial barriers to repair.
“Predominantly Black neighborhoods are twice as likely to flood as predominantly white ones,” writes Arcement. “Decades of redlining pushed Black families into flood-prone areas and neighborhoods with fewer infrastructure investments. And without insurance, families bear the full financial weight when disaster hits.”
Homes damaged by disaster and excluded from public programs designed to provide relief are even more likely to be designated heirs property. This is especially relevant as the Deep South, which has a disproportionate share of heirs property designations and fewer protections for Black homeowners, braces for another hurricane season.
Arcement lays bare in simple terms the genesis of the heirs property dilemma: the faithless and scheming actions of banks and policy makers that intentionally worked to limit Black property ownership during the “Jim Crow” period, in which blatantly, facially racist laws were created with the express purpose of robbing Black people from their property.
“With a legal system mired in decades of discrimination and the loss of the majority of Black land ownership, between 1910 and 1997, Black families lost about 90% of their farmland…,” she writes. “That distrust of the legal system is earned, and it means fewer Black families historically use formal estate planning tools.”
