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Full-Text Articles in Law
It Takes A Village: Designating "Tiny House" Villages As Transitional Housing Campgrounds, Ciara Turner
It Takes A Village: Designating "Tiny House" Villages As Transitional Housing Campgrounds, Ciara Turner
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
A relatively new proposal to reduce homelessness in the United States involves extraordinarily small dwellings. While the “tiny house” movement is intuitively appealing and has found sporadic success, strict housing codes, building codes, and zoning laws often destroy the movement before it can get off the ground. One possibility for getting around these zoning and building code challenges, without drastic overhauls to health and safety codes, is to create a new state-level zoning classification of “transitional campgrounds.” A new zoning classification would alleviate the issue because campgrounds are consistently subject to less strict building codes, which could permit tiny houses …
Accelerating Integration : Effective Remedies In Public Housing Discrimination Suits, Adam M. Shayne
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 …
Tenants' Rights In Police Power Condemnations Under State Statutes And Procedural Due Process, Eric Wills Orts
Tenants' Rights In Police Power Condemnations Under State Statutes And Procedural Due Process, Eric Wills Orts
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This Note explores the legal arguments available to tenants who want to resist arbitrary or unjustified condemnations of their buildings. Part I provides an overview of the legal and constitutional structure of the police power to condemn buildings. Part II analyzes state statutes governing the condemnation of buildings. Focusing on the statutory rights to notice and opportunity for a hearing provided to tenants, Part II concludes that a majority of states provide inadequate protection for tenants facing eviction by condemnation. Part II then proposes statutory reform, based on an approach taken by a minority of states. Part III demonstrates that …
Overcoming Barriers To Scattered-Site Low-Cost Housing, Darrel J. Grinstead
Overcoming Barriers To Scattered-Site Low-Cost Housing, Darrel J. Grinstead
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The effect of most zoning devices which have been used in suburban and non-ghetto city planning in the past few decades has been to erect substantial economic barriers around entire cities. These devices include minimum lot size requirements, density zoning, frontage requirements, single family restrictions, and minimum living space requirements. While such zoning practices may not be exclusionary in purpose, exclusion of minority groups has been the result. Moreover, since most minorities are heavily concentrated in low income groups, economic segregation will bring about a high degree of racial and ethnic segregation. Indeed, it has been suggested that these economic …
Housing Codes, Building Demolition, And Just Compensation: A Rationale For The Exercise Of Public Powers Over Slum Housing, Daniel R. Mandelker
Housing Codes, Building Demolition, And Just Compensation: A Rationale For The Exercise Of Public Powers Over Slum Housing, Daniel R. Mandelker
Michigan Law Review
In programs of housing improvement and slum clearance, public agencies must often make difficult choices between the exercise of public powers of land acquisition, which require the payment of compensation, and public powers of noncompensatory regulation, which require no payment of compensation. This Article focuses on three of these programs-building demolition, urban renewal, and housing code enforcement. Public agencies may demolish slum dwellings, one at a time, without compensation. Title to the cleared site is not affected and remains in the owner after the building has been demolished. Under statutory powers of urban renewal, local public agencies may designate entire …
Slumlordism As A Tort--A Dissenting View, Walter J. Blum, Allison Dunham
Slumlordism As A Tort--A Dissenting View, Walter J. Blum, Allison Dunham
Michigan Law Review
The persistence of substandard housing in urban centers stands as a challenge to law. There is a pressing need to re-examine whether prevailing legal doctrines are adequate for dealing with the problem and to suggest new doctrines where the old are found wanting. To their great credit, Joseph L. Sax and Fred J. Hiestand in their article "Slumlordism as a Tort" face up to these tasks boldly and vigorously. They conclude that, under existing conditions, it is imprudent to rely on public authorities to enforce housing codes and it is unlikely that legislatures will place sufficient enforcement powers in private …
Slumlordism As A Tort--A Brief Response, Joseph L. Sax
Slumlordism As A Tort--A Brief Response, Joseph L. Sax
Michigan Law Review
Professors Blum and Dunham begin their comment by accusing us of having a new idea. We plead guilty. Our purpose was to demonstrate that accepted principles in analogous areas of law would support a slumlordism action, not to argue that tort law as presently applied would do so. Indeed, our basic intent was to underscore the myopia of existing tort law perspectives.