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Full-Text Articles in Law
Rescaling City Property, Amnon Lehavi
Rescaling City Property, Amnon Lehavi
Arkansas Law Review
This Article seeks to identify the growing tension between the contemporary physical and digital reality of cities across the world and the formal, often archaic, body of norms that governs city powers and duties vis-à-vis different types of persons and corporations: locals, non-local residents of the same nation-state, and foreigners. The nation-state’s continuing dominance, both in the domestic division of power across various legal systems and in the international arena, often results in a systemic mismatch.
Conflict Preemption: A Remedy For The Disparate Impact Of Crime-Free Nuisance Ordinances, Meredith Joseph
Conflict Preemption: A Remedy For The Disparate Impact Of Crime-Free Nuisance Ordinances, Meredith Joseph
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Thousands of municipalities across the country have adopted crime-free nuisance ordinances—laws that sanction landlords for their tenants’ behaviors, coercing them to evict tenants for actions as innocuous as calling 9-1-1 in an emergency. These facially neutral ordinances give wide discretion to municipal officials, leading to discriminatory enforcement of evictions. As a result, these ordinances have a devastating impact on victims of domestic violence and are used as a tool to inhibit integration in majority-white municipalities. Many plaintiffs have brought lawsuits alleging violations of the U.S. Constitution and the Fair Housing Act. However, bringing lawsuits under various anti-discrimination protections presents many …
Urban Decolonization, Norrinda Brown Hayat
Urban Decolonization, Norrinda Brown Hayat
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
National fair housing legislation opened up higher opportunity neighborhoods to multitudes of middle-class African Americans. In actuality, the FHA offered much less to the millions of poor, Black residents in inner cities than it did to the Black middle class. Partly in response to the FHA’s inability to provide quality housing for low-income blacks, Congress has pursued various mobility strategies designed to facilitate the integration of low-income Blacks into high-opportunity neighborhoods as a resolution to the persistent dilemma of the ghetto. These efforts, too, have had limited success. Now, just over fifty years after the passage of the Fair Housing …
Title I Of The 1974 Housing And Community Development Act And Its Impact On Local Communities, Edward E. Haworth
Title I Of The 1974 Housing And Community Development Act And Its Impact On Local Communities, Edward E. Haworth
Pepperdine Law Review
No abstract provided.
Eminent Domain For The Seizure Of Underwater Mortgages, Sarah Thompson
Eminent Domain For The Seizure Of Underwater Mortgages, Sarah Thompson
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat
Like many cities in the United States, Richmond, California suffered greatly from the recent mortgage crisis. The foreclosure crisis hit Richmond hard in 2009, when more than 2,000 homes in Richmond went into foreclosure. This figure is especially shocking given that there were 18,659 owner-occupied housing units in the city at that time. In 2012, the city saw an additional 914 foreclosures and a foreclosure rate of thirty out of 1,000 homes (well above the national average of thirteen of every 1,000 homes). Today, it is reported that nearly forty-six percent of homes in Richmond are “underwater,” meaning that what …
Municipal Predatory Lending Regulation In Ohio: The Disproportionate Impact Of Preemption In Ohio's Cities, Brett Altier
Municipal Predatory Lending Regulation In Ohio: The Disproportionate Impact Of Preemption In Ohio's Cities, Brett Altier
Cleveland State Law Review
Whether in the case of predatory lending or other issues that will differ from location to location, municipalities should continue to protect their cities by exercising their power under the Home Rule Amendment to enforce regulations not in direct conflict with Ohio law. Even though the Framers of the Home Rule Amendment intended to protect municipal power by ensuring that only those ordinances in actual conflict would be voided, Ohio courts have denied municipalities their Home Rule police power by applying a conflict by implication test, contributing to the housing crisis still plaguing Ohio's cities. While Ohio courts have made …
Democratizing The American Dream: The Role Of A Regional Housing Legislature In The Production Of Affordable Housing, Thomas A. Brown
Democratizing The American Dream: The Role Of A Regional Housing Legislature In The Production Of Affordable Housing, Thomas A. Brown
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Economic, ethnic and racial residential segregation are ubiquitous across United States metropolitan regions. As a result, the majority of affordable housing is located in central cities or inner-ring suburbs, generally in areas of highly concentrated poverty. Outer suburbs are often exempt from providing significant housing for the economically disadvantaged regional citizens. This should not be. If housing policy in metropolitan regions were established in a democratic fashion, the give-and-take of the political process would create strong incentives for regional cooperation in the creation of affordable housing. Drawing together scholarship in the fields of local government law, administrative law, and housing …
Redevelopment Redefined: Revitalizing The Central City With Resident Control, Benjamin B. Quinones
Redevelopment Redefined: Revitalizing The Central City With Resident Control, Benjamin B. Quinones
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Misguided redevelopment has been both a symptom of, and a means for achieving, inappropriate urban development goals. Requiring resident control will improve the redevelopment process itself, and simultaneously redirect the development goals towards which it channels its energy. One hopes that by shifting control of the redevelopment process, we also would shift the goals that redevelopment would pursue and the development forms it would take. Presumably, this would result in urban development designed to benefit residents of the urban core.
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 …
The Validity Of Ordinances Limiting Condominium Conversion, Michigan Law Review
The Validity Of Ordinances Limiting Condominium Conversion, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
In 1974, the New York Times ran a front-page story about the dilemma of an elderly woman who lived in a Washington, D.C., apartment building that was being converted into a condominium. On a limited budget, she faced the choice of either finding a new place to live in the tight Washington housing market or paying $2000 down and $422.50 in monthly installments for the same one-bedroom apartment she had been renting for $ 155.00 per month. The woman's situation is not unusual: a federal study estimates that owners have recently converted 60,000 rental apartment units to condominiums, and real …
New Judicial Approaches To Maintaining Housing Quality In The Cities, Eugenia K. Manning
New Judicial Approaches To Maintaining Housing Quality In The Cities, Eugenia K. Manning
Fordham Urban Law Journal
Virtually every member of the urban community is a party to a landlord-tenant relationship. As the general tenor of urban life in America changes, so must the laws which govern the urban dweller. For years the doctrine of caveat emptor prevented the tenant from forcing the landlord to make necessary repairs or to retain the leased premises in a habitable condition. The doctrine of constructive eviction afforded him little relief; and housing and sanitation codes, while achieving a measure of success, were generally ineffective. Only when conditions because unbearable did the law protect him. Increasingly, however, the trend has been …
Lead-Based Paint Poisoning: Remedies For The Hud Low-Income Homeowner When Neglect Is No Longer Benign, Thomas P. Sarb
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 …
Exclusionary Zoning: A Wrong In Search Of A Remedy, Leonard S. Rubinowitz
Exclusionary Zoning: A Wrong In Search Of A Remedy, Leonard S. Rubinowitz
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This article discusses affirmative approaches to providing effective relief in two types of exclusionary zoning cases: (1) remedies specific to a particular proposed development or a given site and (2) regional remedies, which provide a generalized framework for meeting what courts are increasingly identifying as a regional problem: the need for decent housing for all families. In the first instance (the "single-site" case) a court would remove obstacles in order to facilitate development of low- and moderate- income housing on a particular suburban site. In the second case (the regional approach) a court would specify the obligation of the municipalities …
Detroit Housing Code Enforcement And Community Renewal: A Study In Futility, Brett R. Dick, John S. Pfarr Jr.
Detroit Housing Code Enforcement And Community Renewal: A Study In Futility, Brett R. Dick, John S. Pfarr Jr.
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This article will demonstrate that the inconsistency is, to a large extent, more apparent than real and results from the application of two different conceptions of the purpose of the program to the same facts. Furthermore, it will be demonstrated that Detroit's Building (housing) Code has failed in its attempt to force rehabilitation of residential structures through Code enforcement. Although it can be made to work more efficiently, the Code will never serve as an effective solution to the housing problem.
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 …
Persuader: Mobilization Of Support, Mary Ann Beattie
Persuader: Mobilization Of Support, Mary Ann Beattie
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Law reform can be achieved through precedent-setting case law and through legislation. Each is a time-consuming activity with its own stumbling blocks. To establish law through the case method, one must have a fact situation directly on point with the inequity which one is trying to remedy. In many situations the client must be willing to follow through a long process of trial and appeal, instead of settling for a more immediate but incomplete resolution of his problem. The costs of litigation may become an insurmountable problem. Another difficulty with the test case as a vehicle for law reform is …
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.
Rent Regulations Under The Police Power, Alan W. Boyd
Rent Regulations Under The Police Power, Alan W. Boyd
Michigan Law Review
Conditions resulting from the widespread housing shortage caused by the cessation of building during the war have given rise to legislation which must seem startling indeed to much of the legal talent surviving from a generation ago. The outstanding example is to be found in the New York laws which so far have succeeded admirably in eluding the constitutional pitfalls relied upon to nullify them. Three provisions have borne the brunt of the attack. The first prevents the recovery of an unreasonable rent in an action at law, and places the burden of showing reasonableness upon the landlord." Another suspends …