Law Commons^™

Citizen Police: Using The Qui Tam Provision Of The False Claims Act To Promote Racial And Economic Integration In Housing, Jan P. Mensz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Economic and racial integration in housing remains elusive more than forty years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act. Recalcitrant municipal governments and exclusionary zoning ordinances have played a large role in maintaining and exacerbating segregated housing patterns. After discussing some of the persistent causes of segregated housing patterns, this Note presents a novel approach to enforcing the Fair Housing Act and the "affirmatively furthering fair housing" requirement on recipients of federal housing grants. This Note presents a citizen suit that emerged from the Southern District of New York in Anti-Discrimination Center v. Westchester County, where a private …

Eliminating The Labyrinth: A Proposal To Simplify Federal Mortgage Lending Discrimination Laws, Stephen M. Dane

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The object of this Article is to demonstrate that the statutory and regulatory framework established by the federal government in its efforts to fight mortgage-lending discrimination is an extremely complicated labyrinth of dead ends, false passages, and elusive goals. Instead of addressing the mortgage-lending discrimination problem directly and comprehensively, Congress has taken a piecemeal and incomplete approach that generally has failed to bring the mortgage-lending industry into equal access compliance.

After pointing out the problems and deficiencies in the current statutory and regulatory scheme, this Article suggests a bold, comprehensive solution to the problem that, if implemented effectively, should ensure …

Accelerating Integration : Effective Remedies In Public Housing Discrimination Suits, Adam M. Shayne

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note examines the different remedies employed by judges to integrate public housing and recommends a standard approach for courts to employ in the future. Part I describes the status of local and federal public housing policy in the United States. Part II examines litigation aimed at achieving the integration of public housing. This Part details short-term remedies employed by judges in several cities and long-term integration efforts by the courts in two cities: Chicago, Illinois, and Yonkers, New York. The Chicago and Yonkers suits exemplify the major obstacles that plaintiffs and judges face in developing appropriate measures to integrate …

Lead-Based Paint Poisoning: Remedies For The Hud Low-Income Homeowner When Neglect Is No Longer Benign, Thomas P. Sarb

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Lead-based paint poisoning is a completely preventable disease which particularly afflicts young children living in deteriorating areas of the cities. It is caused by the ingestion of paint chips containing significant amounts of lead that have fallen or been picked off ceilings, floors, and woodwork of older houses. Repeated ingestion of such paint chips can lead to mental retardation, permanent impairment of intellectual ability, cerebral palsy, and blindness. Every year at least 400,000 children show some effect of lead poisoning; 50,000 of them need treatment; and 200 children die of the disease. The early symptoms of lead poisoning are changes …