Once a week, a team of canvassers receives a list of addresses. Each address is a Kashmere Gardens home. But the canvassers, charismatic and familiar, weren’t knocking on their doors to make a bid on behalf of a political candidate, a lord and savior, or even an electrical plan.
The homes, according to a nonprofit’s analysis of public records, had likely been passed down through a family in a way that put the family at risk of losing it. And they were there to try to sell them on trusting a team, including lawyers, ready to offer free services to help them stay in their home.
The team is happy to talk about the Land and Legacy Project, which is a partnership between the Earl Carl Institute, a legal aid nonprofit at Texas Southern University’s law school, the nonprofit Lone Star Legal Aid, the Collective Action for Youth and the Harris County Public Probate Administrator, as well as other organizations addressing needs including repairs, hunger and financial support. They want to get the word out and hope to one day expand their work from Kashmere Gardens, where a large share of properties have been inherited, to the entire county. But they’re protective of their list of homes likely to need their assistance.
“We’re very concerned about sharing our data points in general because of the predatory investors,” said Sarah Guidry, the Institute’s executive director. “We don’t want to tip them off with too much detail because they already have apps to run things.”…