42 U.S.C. 5304(b)(7) · effective October 1, 2026
You certify it. We run it.
Section 104 of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act gave 1,202 CDBG entitlement grantees a new certification: a public, searchable database of the undeveloped land they own. Send us the parcel records you already hold. We build the database, host it, keep it current, and seal a dated record for the day you sign.
Paid from your CDBG grant Hosted on your domain Sealed and dated
the grantee maintains, on a publicly accessible website, a searchable database that identifies all parcels of undeveloped land owned by the grantee
Read the verb. The statute asks the grantee to certify. Everything upstream of that signature is work somebody has to do, and it is work we do for a living.
How it works
Send the parcel data you already hold, in whatever shape it is in. An assessor export, a spreadsheet, a shapefile, a printed list. We do the reconciling.
Assessor exports · CSV · shapefile · GeoJSON · paper
We build the searchable public database and host it on a page that reads as yours. Scoped to the statute's own words: undeveloped land the grantee owns.
Searchable · public · your branding · your domain
Every time the inventory changes, we seal what it contained and when. The record is content-addressed, so a later edit produces a different hash and shows as one.
SHA3-256 · dated · append-only
When you sign the certification, the evidence for that date already exists. When an auditor asks about a date eleven months back, that record is already sealed and waiting.
The part that exists before anyone asks
Step three is the one a mapping tool leaves out, and step four is the reason it matters. A page that is live today answers a question about today. The certification asks about a date that has already passed.
What you receive
Paid from the grant
Section 104(b)(3) added 42 U.S.C. 5305(a)(27), making the creation and maintenance of this database an eligible CDBG activity. The work is funded by the same grant the certification protects.
Read against its own heading
Section 104 is captioned DATABASE OF PUBLICLY OWNED LAND. The operative text reaches undeveloped land owned by the grantee. A jurisdiction that publishes every public parcel inside its boundaries has done far more work than the statute asks and has taken on accuracy liability for records held by other bodies.
Undeveloped is the word that decides what goes in the database, and the Act leaves it to HUD. We scope to the text, write down the judgment we made and why, and revise the day guidance lands. The reasoning travels with the data.
Subsection (c) sets the date for the amendment made by this subsection, while the amendments sit in (a) and (b). The date is real and close; its referent is worth watching. We track it and tell you the day it moves.
These come from reading the enacted text against itself. A summary starts from the heading, which is exactly where the first of the three goes wrong. Scoping is part of the build, and the reasoning ships with the data.
Start here
We read what your public site shows today against 5304(b)(7), send you that read at no charge, and quote the build from what we find. If your current surface already satisfies the text, we will tell you that.
Answers
It requires a CDBG grantee to certify that it maintains, on a publicly accessible website, a searchable database identifying all parcels of undeveloped land the grantee owns. The paragraph was added by Section 104 of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, Public Law 119-101.
October 1, 2026, the start of federal fiscal year 2027. The Act was enacted July 11, 2026.
Every entitlement grantee: metropolitan cities, urban counties, and consolidated city-county governments that receive CDBG directly. HUD's current grantee layer lists 1,202 of them.
Yes. That is the service. You send the parcel records you already hold, we build the searchable public database, host it on a page that reads as yours, and keep it current. You make the certification, which is the one part that stays with the grantee.
The parcel data you already hold, in whatever shape it is in: an assessor export, a spreadsheet, a shapefile, or a printed list. We handle the reconciling and the scoping.
Yes. Section 104(b)(3) added 42 U.S.C. 5305(a)(27), covering the creation and maintenance of the database as an eligible CDBG activity. The obligation arrives with its own funding channel.
The section is captioned DATABASE OF PUBLICLY OWNED LAND, and the operative text reaches undeveloped land owned by the grantee itself. School district, transit authority, and state holdings sit outside it. We scope to the text.
It leaves the term open, so any schema built today rests on a documented judgment. We write that judgment down alongside the data and revise it the day HUD publishes guidance.
That is an open question. The certification block gates grants under section 5306, which covers the state allocation as well as the entitlement one, so read literally a state would certify a database of land the state owns. Treat it as unsettled until HUD addresses it.
That the database was accurate and current on the date the certification was signed. That is a records question, which is why every change to your inventory is sealed and dated as it happens.