Law Commons^™

Going The Extra Mile: Expanding The Promoting Affordable Housing Near Transit Act, Emily R. Casey

University of Richmond Law Review

The Promoting Affordable Housing Near Transit Act (“Act”), introduced in Congress in June 2021 and signed into law six months later, proposes a goal of balancing the disproportionately-high costs of housing and transportation felt by lower-income families by combining these resources in one project: transit-oriented housing developments. Middle-income and wealthy suburbanites have ready access to cities by car, but lower-income urbanites lack access to the suburbs without a private vehicle. While the goal of the Act recognizes this disparate outcome, the Act’s failure to include expansion of mass transit into the suburbs will continue to restrict low-income minorities to urban …

Prison Housing Policies For Transgender, Non-Binary, Gender-Non-Conforming, And Intersex People: Restorative Ways To Address The Gender Binary In The United States Prison System, John G. Sims

University of Richmond Law Review

“[I]t was the end of the last quarter of 2019 where I was able to drop the lawsuit against the correctional officer who had sexually harmed me when I knew . . . that the carceral state is not the way for me to find healing . . . . I was not going to seek my transformation and restoration through this system.”

Each year, rhetoric and legislation attacking transgender, non-binary, gender non-conforming and intersex individuals seemingly grows louder. Many political institutions in the United States perpetuate and enable the oppression of these individuals, one of which is the United …

Opportunity Gap: A Survey Of State Sourceof-Income Protection Laws And How They Address The Challenges Facing The Federal Housing Choice Voucher Program, Jamie H. Wood

University of Richmond Law Review

In 1968, the United States Congress enacted the Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) with the stated purpose of “prevent[ing] segregation and discrimination in housing, including in the sale or rental of housing . . . .” The FHA prohibits landlords from refusing to rent to members of certain protected classes, including race, color, national origin, sex, religion, disability, and familial status.2 Notably absent from this list is what is commonly referred to as “source-of-income” (“SOI”) protection, which extends antidiscrimination statutes to recipients of federal public assistance.

The federal government’s primary housing public assistance program is the Housing Choice Voucher (“HCV”) Program …

Housing Supply And The Common Wealth, Benjamin P. Campbell

University of Richmond Law Review

It’s a powerful thing to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, something that actually happened and has actually had an effect. I grew up in segregated Virginia, so I have a pretty powerful sense of the passage of time here. It’s given us the opportunity today to review and mark human progress, to take stock of where we are and to identify the efforts and issues of our time. The victories here have changed the nation, and the task is still daunting.

Fair Housing Act At Fifty, Sara Pratt

University of Richmond Law Review

I’m going to talk a little bit about why it is that the Fair Housing Act at fifty still is relevant. I mean, after all, should it really be relevant?

How is it that a law that languished in Congress for years and then was abruptly passed when our country was in deep anger, grief, and disbelief at the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King is still relevant? There’s virtually no legislative history around the passage of the law. It was going nowhere in Congress until Dr. King was assassinated. There was no time to build up to it in …

The Opportunity And The Danger Of The New Urban Migration, Richard Sander

University of Richmond Law Review

Twenty-first century America is witnessing a broad and unprecedented migration of middle- and upper-middle class families to old, dense, and often low-income urban neighborhoods. This “new urban migration” has the potential to create wholly gentrified neighborhoods that displace existing residents, or to engender racially and economically integrated neighborhoods that strengthen both neighborhoods and central cities. I argue that valuable lessons can be learned from the 1970s, when another large intraurban migration—the vast metropolitan movement of black households into white neighborhoods that followed passage of the Fair Housing Act—produced patterns of resegregation in many cities, but genuine housing integration in others. …

Unjust Cities? Gentrification, Integration, And The Fair Housing Act, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

University of Richmond Law Review

What does gentrification mean for fair housing? This article considers the possibility that gentrification should be celebrated as a form of integration alongside a darker narrative that sees gentrification as necessarily unstable and leading to inequality or displacement of lower-income, predominantly of color, residents. Given evidence of both possibilities, this article considers how the Fair Housing Act might be deployed to minimize gentrification’s harms while harnessing some of the benefits that might attend integration and movement of higher-income residents to cities. Ultimately, the article urges building on the fair housing approach but employing a broader set of tools to advance …

A New Home For Haters—Online Home Sharing Platforms: A Look At The Applicability Of The Fair Housing Act To Home Shares, Allison K. Bethel

University of Richmond Law Review

In 2018, we celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Fair Housing Act which outlawed discrimination in residential transactions. When the FHA was passed, the home search process was very different. Fifty years ago, most people searched for housing by viewing listings in newspapers and other printed publications or perhaps used a realtor. Today, most people use the internet to search for housing. Home sharing, where all or part of a home is rented on a short-term basis, has become very popular since 2008 when Airbnb entered the market. It has become a multimillion-dollar business and proponents see great potential in …

Racism Knocking At The Door: The Use Of Criminal Background Checks In Rental Housing, Valerie Schneider

University of Richmond Law Review

One of the harshest collateral consequences of an arrest or conviction is the impact a criminal record can have on one’s ability to secure housing. Because racial bias permeates every aspect of the criminal justice system as well as the housing market, this collateral consequence—the inability to find a place to live after an arrest or conviction—disproportionately affects minorities.

In 2016, after decades of appearing to encourage local public housing providers to adopt harsh policies barring applicants with criminal records, the Office of General Counsel for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”) issued guidance instructing public …

Coordinated Action On School And Housing Integration: The Role Of State Government, Megan Haberle, Philip Tegeler

University of Richmond Law Review

In this essay, we assess the prospects for more coordinated government efforts to address housing and school segregation at the federal, state and local level. We conclude that multiple barriers to concerted action at the federal and local level, particularly to addressing racial and economic segregation across local boundaries, suggest a more central role for state governments than has previously been the case. State-level laws and programs can succeed as drivers of integration in a way that is distinct from either federal or local interventions, because of the state’s direct control over the key policies that drive modern school and …

Affordable Housing: Of Inefficiency, Market Distortion, And Government Failure, Michael Diamond

University of Richmond Law Review

In this essay, I examine the types of costs that are imposed on society as a whole due to the absence of a sufficient number of decent housing units that are affordable to the low-income population. These costs present themselves in relation to health care, education, employment, productivity, homelessness, and incarceration. Some of the costs are direct expenditures while others are the result of lost opportunities. My hypothesis is that these costs are significant and offer, at the very least, a substantial offset to the cost of creating and subsidizing the operation of the necessary number of affordable housing units …

Fifty Years Of Fair Housing: Learning From The Past, Looking To The Future, Douglas Wilder

University of Richmond Law Review

I think sometimes you need to wonder where we were in 1968. It wasn’t just the Fair Housing Act that was passed in 1968. What happened in 1968? George Wallace was running for president. Hubert Humphrey was running for president, and Richard Nixon as well. It wasn’t just the assassination of Dr. King, we also had the assassination of Robert Kennedy. We likewise had the Vietnam War, and America was a mess. We had something else occurring in 1968. That was the Kerner Commission Report, that Dr. Crutcher mentioned had been instrumental in the fair housing bill. And they made …

Housing Resource Bundles: Distributive Justice And Federal Low-Income Housing Policy, John J. Infranca

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Please Check One--Male Or Female?: Confronting Gender Identity Discrimination In Collegiate Residential Life, Katherine A. Womack

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Barriers To Accessible Housing: Enforcement Issues In "Design And Construction" Cases Under The Fair Housing Act, Robert G. Schwemm

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Kelo Threshold: Private Property And Public Use Reconsidered, Steven E. Buckingham

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Real Estate And Land Use Law, John V. Cogbill Iii, D. Brennen Keene

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Housing - Virginia Attacks Blockbusting

University of Richmond Law Review

Discrimination in housing along racial, religious, ethnic, and class lines has long been a problem in the United States. The most widespread methods of housing discrimination have included preferential advertising, soliciting, and showings in housing sales and rentals. In recent years another type of discriminatory scheme, commonly referred to as blockbusting,' has surfaced. Blockbusting has been defined as "the practice of inducing owners of property to sell because of the actual or rumored advent into the neighborhood of a member of a racial, religious or ethnic group." Typically, the blockbuster preys upon the fears and prejudices of white property owners …