Who Owns the Land on Which We Stand?
/By Max Blau
Photo by Dustin Chambers
On a sweltering summer day in 2016, Atlanta city workers pulled up outside the Ogletree family house at the top of Sunset Avenue. For four years, Chiliquila Ogletree had fought Atlanta’s Watershed Department over how much she owed. But the amount kept climbing, as high as $21,885.63, prompting the city to remove the meters.
So, Chiliquila re-engineered family life without running water, using bottled water to bathe her grandkids, cook meals, and quench their thirst.
I first met Chiliquila in the early months of the drought, and two years later wrote about how the lack of running water affected her family’s life in a story called “The Redemptive Love of Chiliquila Ogletree,” which The Bitter Southerner published one year ago this week. Unsurprisingly, many readers expressed outrage. They wanted to know more about how the family lost the water service — and how they could help. After searching for answers, I published a column on September 6 about how the Ogletrees’ situation exposed a policy flaw that was exacerbating Atlanta’s income inequality gap across the board.
Someone at City Hall took notice. The following night, Chiliquila took a rare evening away from the house. She got an unexpected call from her family: The water’s back on!
When Chiliquila returned home, the water was flowing. Her prayers were answered. And she felt blessed. Soon, she realized it was also flowing down the street outside. Rust had corroded the house’s pipes. If she wanted running water — without racking up more bills — the pipes needed fixing.
At first, she was in luck: A nonprofit offered to cover the repair costs. But to get the pipes patched, she needed to show that she held a clean title to the house. To get one would require resolving a complicated family dispute, and further reveal the amount of red tape that prevents families like hers from full access to running water.
“I’m going to fight to end,” Chiliquila recently told me. “Even if it kills me.”
***
On the night Grandpa Willie died, in the fall of 2011, Chiliquila Ogletree fixed him one of his favorite meals: cube steak, mashed potatoes, and green peas. When she brought the meal out to the patio, she remembers him saying: Don’t you let nobody take the house from my grandson.
Chiliquila’s husband, Burt, had stayed with Willie for much of his adult life. In 2008, Chiliquila moved in, too. Within months, she assumed the role of primary caretaker for Willie. Whenever Willie tapped his cane against the wall — a sign that he needed something — she would help him out. As Chiliquila tells it, Willie wanted Burt to get the house.
“This house is supposed to be a family home,” she told me.
But property records don’t list Burt’s name. Instead, it lists the name of his late great-grandmother, Jessie Ogletree. There was a will — Chiliquila said she remembers seeing it — but somehow the document got lost.
Without a proper will — or with no will at all — state law requires the division of property among descendants. In this case, the title was supposed to go to Willie’s son, Wilbert, according to state law. But he, too, had never claimed the title. Chiliquila had paid the property taxes.
Research has found that property laws affecting heirs, such as the Ogletrees, have contributed to the loss of landholdings for black Americans during the 20th century. Researcher John Pollock called the laws “the worst problem no one’s heard of.” Skipper StipeMaas, executive director of the Georgia Heirs Property Law Center, describes their result as the “equivalent to having a pile of money in a glass box,” In theory, family members can work together for the sake of a home. But in reality, families bicker and feud about financial affairs including property, and the lack of a clean title can hinder access to home-repair loans and property-tax exemptions, or limit a family’s ability to sell the property.
In the years after Grandpa Willie’s passing, the Ogletree family — Burt, Chiliquila, her daughter, her mother, and her six grandchildren — kept living there. Life went on as expected — until the pipes corroded.
***
After seeking help from a nonprofit in her neighborhood, Chiliquila connected with a lawyer named Erik Provitt. A staff attorney with the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation, he had worked with families on the city’s west side facing landlord-tenants disputes. He realized two things about the Ogletrees’ predicament. To fix the pipes, they had to fix the title. A clean title could clear the way for the Ogletree family to stay in the house for decades to come.
“There were a lot of unknowns without a will,” Provitt said. “If we can keep the Ogletree family in the house, they’ll keep living there, and they’ll be a line to leave it to.”
Last year, Provitt scheduled a meeting between Wilbert and Chiliquila. (She sat in to represent her husband Burt, who faces several health issues.) The two had rarely seen each other, in part because Wilbert and Burt were estranged. With a lawyer in the room, they talked about the possibility of Burt and Chiliquila staying in the house. Provitt understood Wilbert would have to give up, voluntarily, his claim to ownership. He asked Wilbert what would convince him to give up his claim to the title.
Wilbert wanted something in return: a new roof for his own house. Provitt knew of a nonprofit willing to cover the repair costs. But first, Wilbert would need help clearing the title on that house, too. Wilbert’s mother had owned his house, four miles away in Atlanta’s Westview neighborhood, but she also died without a will. Ownership of the property was divided among multiple family members.
Last week, I called Wilbert about the title situation. His view is simple: He’s the rightful owner of the house.
“I’m my father’s only son,” Wilbert said. Although the titles aren’t clean — a process he’s struggled to navigate on his own — he questions whether he would gain anything by taking part in the process.
“I could’ve been charging them rent,” Wilbert said. “I could’ve gone downtown, got the deed, and told them to go. They let the water get into that situation. Now, they want my help.”
Given the complexity of the dispute, Provitt referred the case to the Georgia Heirs Property Law Center. As of late March, Provitt said, the local nonprofit that had helped Chiliquila, Chris 180, was working to set up a meeting with Wilbert. They hope to complete the title paperwork for the house where he lives. At that point, Georgia Heirs Property Law Center could move forward with cleaning the title. (StipeMaas declined to comment, citing client confidentiality concerns.)
Over the past two months, Chiliquila hasn’t heard from the lawyers about the title saga. For now, that leaves Ogletree family buying bottled water for all their needs. Chiliquila keeps praying that someday, a change might come her way.