Project Guardian is an early-warning system in Jacksonville, Florida. It pairs county records with an AI model to find homeowners whose property may be at risk of ending up with an outside investor. The Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) Jacksonville, a community development nonprofit, launched it in 2023 with the Duval County Property Appraiser’s Office. Smart Cities Dive profiled it in September 2026.
Heirs’ property and the investors circling it
Smart Cities Dive reports that investor home purchases in Jacksonville rose 145 percent between 2018 and 2024, or about 8,000 homes. Investors now own more than 20 percent of the city’s single-family rental homes, according to the same report. Some of them tracked probate filings, tax delinquencies and neighborhood turnover to find houses worth buying.
Many longtime residents live in what is called heirs’ property. That’s a home passed down without a will or formal estate transfer, so the legal title may still name a deceased relative. Owners in that spot may not hold clear title. They can struggle to get financing or tap their home equity, and some don’t know another person holds an interest in the house.
How the system finds a house before it’s lost
LISC built the platform with Smart North Florida. It combines parcel-level records (deeds, probate filings, tax certificate activity, code violations) with census tract and county indicators. An AI model then looks across those signals for ownership patterns, financial strain and neighborhood change that suggest risk.
The county’s part is practical. The Property Appraiser’s Office helped identify usable data, and it supplies periodic data on vital statistics, veterans exemptions and senior exemptions to generate leads. It has also provided witnesses and notaries for estate-plan signing days.
The model only points. Once an area is flagged, LISC staff contact residents in person and connect families with legal partners who help with clear titles, probate, property tax debt and wills. The article doesn’t describe any automated decision about an individual. LISC’s Kristopher Smith put it this way to Smart Cities Dive: “In some cases, we’re the fire department; in other cases, we’re the smoke detector.”
Why It Matters to You
If you or your family own a home in Duval County that was passed down without a will or formal transfer, this program is aimed at you, and you can contact LISC Jacksonville directly to ask about help. The sources list no eligibility rules or fees, so ask before assuming anything. Elsewhere, the benefit is still hypothetical: the approach rests on records many counties already hold, but nothing here shows it running outside Jacksonville.
What the reported results can and can’t tell us
LISC reports 2,200 estate plans resolved, 180 probate cases resolved and nearly $54 million in home value preserved. Those are the organization’s own figures as relayed by Smart Cities Dive, and no independent audit turned up. “Value preserved” isn’t defined in the article. It isn’t the same as cash saved or sales prevented, and it’s unclear how LISC calculates it.
The results also don’t isolate the AI. LISC staff outreach and legal partners do much of the work, and the sources don’t say how many cases came from AI-flagged leads. No source gives the model’s accuracy or how often it flags homes that were never at risk. The 145 percent and 8,000 figures describe investor purchases citywide, not how many of those were heirs’ homes.
One more caution. The project won a 2026 Smart Cities Dive Community Project Award, but Smart Cities Dive also published the profile, so the award shouldn’t be read as outside validation. An earlier LISC Jacksonville page from May 2023 reported more than 50 families with clear titles and more than $3.7 million in housing value preserved. That page doesn’t mention Project Guardian or AI, so the two sets of figures can’t be compared directly.
Quick answers
Does the AI decide who gets help?
No. The model flags patterns and areas. LISC staff then reach out in person and work with residents.
Who can get help?
Sources do not list eligibility rules or fees. Homeowners in Duval County who think they hold heirs’ property can contact LISC Jacksonville directly.
Could other places copy it?
Possibly. Whether it works elsewhere depends on data quality and on having staff and legal partners, which the sources do not evaluate.
Sources
- Smart Cities Dive: How one Florida county is using data to help vulnerable residents keep their homes (Sep 10, 2026)
- LISC Jacksonville: Heirs’ Property Work Continues to Build Momentum (May 22, 2023)