Just over half of Philadelphians own their own homes, the highest rate of any major U.S. city. Yet despite this impressive statistic, homeowners in Philadelphia struggle against a decades-old crisis known as a tangled title. In a 2021 report, the Pew Charitable Trusts identified 10,407 Philadelphia homes with tangled titles. These homes comprise 2% of all residential properties and are collectively worth $1.1 billion in family wealth. While a family’s home is a wealth-building tool poised to provide stability for generations to come, a tangled title can cause a family to lose their home. It can also prevent a family from obtaining repairs, paying a mortgage, resolving tax debt, and most importantly, building and preserving intergenerational wealth.

Tangled titles affect homeowners across the city, but they disproportionately affect Black homeowners. As the 2021 Pew Report found: “There is also a clear correlation between the incidence of tangled titles in an area and residents’ race and ethnicity. The tracts with the highest rate of tangled titles are those in which Black residents constitute the largest percentage of the population.” Historically, Black homeowners were excluded from homeownership opportunities. Accordingly, addressing tangled titles is an even more important step to build and preserve intergenerational wealth and close the racial wealth gap.

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