Kenneth Bumbrey was born 55 years ago on the second floor of a house on Adelaide Street where he still lives today.

Back then, it was his grandparents' home, but his mother, her siblings and other family members lived there, too. At one time, 12 people lived in the five-bedroom home in the heart of Pittsburgh's Hill District.

They're all gone now. Some have died. Others have moved on. Over the years, Mr. Bumbrey has taken over paying the taxes and utilities, and has struggled to maintain the only home he has ever known.

But more than a dozen family members scattered across the country continue to have fractional ownership of the property due to his grandmother's will, which left her half interest in the house to six beneficiaries and their heirs. Mr. Bumbrey has been unable to legally obtain the title, although he has been serving as head of household since his mother died 23 years ago.

"At times, I just want to give up. I just want to quit," said Mr. Bumbrey, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1987 and has been relying on a wheelchair since 1993.

As a last resort, he will take the extraordinary step of filing a civil lawsuit to gain ownership of the house based on an obscure state law that gives one person the right to take ownership of another person's home if the rightful owner fails to take any action to control the property after 21 years.

There is no way to know exactly how many Pennsylvanians are in similar predicaments, maintaining property and acting as the owner in the absence of the true owner, but the problem is believed to be widespread. A bill sponsored by state Rep. Jake Wheatley, D-Hill District, is meant to address the issue by reducing the required time frame for filing a so-called Adverse Possession lawsuit from 21 to 10 years, and in some rare cases only three years.

"If the roof needs to be fixed and there's no owner to fix it and the person living there can't even apply for a loan because [he] can't prove ownership, it lends itself to blight issues," Mr. Wheatley said.

"The law has not changed in more than 100 years. We want to update it to current situations, but also be sensitive to homeowners so squatters can't just take over."

While the idea of taking another's property for one's own use without paying could be considered a hostile act, the spirit of the bill, supporters say, is to reduce blight. They argue that reducing the time frame required to file an adverse possession claim could reduce the likelihood that someone maintaining a home would abandon it, in turn helping stabilize vulnerable neighborhoods and improving the real estate tax base.

The Pennsylvania Bar Association, which represents more than 29,000 lawyers throughout the state, is opposed to making it easier for anyone to acquire someone else's property.

"The bar's concern is that [the bill], as written, may have the unintended results of encouraging speculators to act as squatters who seize property from distant property owners, and increasing the potential for disputes between and among neighbors and family members as to the title to real property," said Louis Kodumal, an attorney at Vincent B. Mancini & Associates in Media, in southeastern Pennsylvania, in testimony before the state House Urban Affairs Committee in September.

If House Bill 1322 gets out of the committee, it would go to the House floor. From there it would go to the Senate for a vote. The bill would have to pass both the House and the Senate before it goes to the governor to be signed into law.

"Every now and then, landlords and owners and heirs walk away from their properties," said Elizabeth Hersh, executive director of the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania, which endorses the bill. "Or they pass away. And when their heirs are not interested, it increases the supply of abandoned properties."

Currently, she said, there are 300,000 vacant properties in the state. Many properties that end up abandoned had people living in them legitimately paying rent. When a landlord dies and no one steps up to collect the rent, in some cases a resident takes care of the property but must wait 21 years to file a claim to be treated as an owner.

Not many make it to the 21-year mark. They often do not have the financial means to maintain property that long without being able to refinance the property or obtain renovation grants or loans without proof of title.

The bill, as proposed, would lower the time frame to file a claim to 10 years under most circumstances, although it could be seven years if the resident pays the taxes for seven consecutive years and three years when an ownership dispute is as simple as a defective deed or some other claim of title that needs to be fixed.

If someone claims adverse possession based on paying property taxes, the case would have to be built on records of seven separate annual payments, not a lump sum payment. That is designed to prevent squatters or speculators from claiming they had been occupying a place for seven years. One requirement of the law is that occupancy of the house not be in secret. It also has to be hostile - without the owner's permission - and continuous.

Supporters say the bill would reward decent people who feel like they own a house because of unusual circumstances. It would apply to only single-family residences on less than one acre of land. Even vacant lots in urban areas would be exempt.

Irene McLaughlin said she met Mr. Bumbrey about five years ago while she was managing a project to keep lower-income occupants in their homes in the wake of the city of Pittsburgh selling property tax liens to private debt collectors. Mr. Bumbrey was referred to her for title services when his home was placed on the treasurer's sale list.

"In my work with the Homeownership Preservation Project, a third of the people I saw did not have title in the current owner-occupant's name," she said. "They worked, maintained the property, paid the taxes, but had no money to hire an attorney to legally own the property."

After the city sold all tax liens to a third-party collector, Mr. Bumbrey was among many people threatened with foreclosure for unpaid taxes. Ms. McLaughlin helped him arrange a payment plan for the back taxes and connected him with an attorney to handle his case pro bono.

Mr. Bumbrey's grandmother's will was "one of the most convoluted documents I had ever read," she said.

It left her half interest in the property to six beneficiaries and their heirs. The other half interest belonged to an aunt, and passed to her only child, who ended up with a majority interest.

Mr. Bumbrey's mother was one of six beneficiaries under the will. When she died in 1987, her share passed to her five children. As beneficiaries keep dying, their interest has passed to their heirs.

"There is just a zillion fractional interests making up now 40 percent of the property," Ms. McLaughlin said.

Ashley Taylor, an attorney with the Brennan Robins & Daley law firm, Downtown, is preparing a lawsuit on Mr. Bumbrey's behalf under the Adverse Possession law.

"There's no alternative other than tracking down numerous heirs who live all over the country and have them transfer their ownership to him," said Ms. Taylor, who was introduced to the case as a first-year law student in 2006 while working as a volunteer with Ms. McLaughlin's project.

Mr. Bumbrey gets by on $1,040 a month he receives from Social Security disability. He spends about $400 a month on herbs and vitamins for his medical care. Two nephews who live with him are responsible for groceries.

He paid for a new furnace, refrigerator and hot water heater nine years ago on credit. He's still making those payments and major repairs need to be done on the foundation, the wheel chair ramp, the porch and the roof. Sometimes he thinks it would be simpler to walk away from the property, which has been appraised at $35,800 for tax purposes.

"My grandmother bought this house in 1944, so I guess it's more like a sentimental thing," he said. "I know if I was to leave from here, the house would be empty. I was the only one from the family who tried to keep the place up.

"My attitude is why should I have to go to [other family members] and ask for their permission when I don't even see them or talk to them? If I see them on the street, I might not know who they are."

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