Spatial Dimensions of heirs’ Property in Maverick County, tX

As a form of tenancy in common, heirs’ property presents numerous obstacles to owners’ ability to build wealth. This is because the titles for such properties are unclear or “clouded” and cannot be uses as collateral for loans. The bulk of the heirs’ property literature focuses on rural, African American landholdings in the Black Belt South, where the extent of heirships have been estimated to be as high as 41 percent. However, heirs’ properties may also be pervasive in other persistently poor places such as colonia communities along the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas. As with other forms of social vulnerability, we expect this type of property ownership to cluster and to be proximal to other indicators of vulnerability. A hot spot (Getis-Ord Gi*) analysis indicated autocorrelation of heirs’ properties in Maverick County, TX and that the majority of these properties were proximal to colonias; heirs’ properties were also negatively correlated with median household income at the census block group level.