Law Commons^™

Hip-Hop And Housing: Revisiting Culture, Urban Space, Power, And Law, Lisa T. Alexander

Faculty Scholarship

U.S. housing law is finally receiving its due attention. Scholars and practitioners are focused primarily on the subprime mortgage and foreclosure crises. Yet the current recession has also resurrected the debate about the efficacy of place-based lawmaking. Place-based laws direct economic resources to low-income neighborhoods to help existing residents remain in place and to improve those areas. Law-and-economists and staunch integrationists attack place-based lawmaking on economic and social grounds. This Article examines the efficacy of place-based lawmaking through the underutilized prism of culture. Using a sociolegal approach, it develops a theory of cultural collective efficacy as a justification for place-based …

The Rise And Fall Of The Implied Warranty Of Habitability, David A. Super

Faculty Scholarship

Growing concern about poverty in the late 1960s produced two sweeping legal revolutions. One gave welfare recipients rights against arbitrary eligibility rules and benefit terminations. The other gave low-income tenants recourse when landlords failed to repair their homes. The 1996 welfare law exposed the welfare rights revolution's frailty. Little-noticed by legal scholars, the tenants' rights revolution also has failed, and for broadly similar reasons. Withholding rent deliberately to challenge landlords' failure to repair is unduly risky for most tenants in ill-maintained dwellings: either moving to better housing is a better option or the risk of retaliation is too great. The …

A Conversation With President Obama: A Dialogue About Poverty, Race, And Class In Black America, Joseph Karl Grant

Journal Publications

The date is November 13, 2012.1 Just mere days ago, I received the invitation of a lifetime. Last night, I arrived in Washington, D.C. I am staying in the Hay-Adams Hotel on the third floor. I still cannot believe the extent of my life's journey. I have just been summoned to the White House by second term President-elect Barack Obama, who defeated Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for President on November 6, 2012. The 2012 Presidential Election was a hard-fought battle between Barack Obama on the Democratic side, and Mitt Romney on Republican side. The election was a like the …

A Herculean Leap For The Hard Case Of Post-Acquisition Claims: Interpreting Fair Housing Act Section 3604(B) After Modesto, Mary Pennisi

Fordham Urban Law Journal

On October 8, 2009, Committee Concerning Community Improvement v. City of Modesto created a split in federal circuit courts over whether FHA § 3604(b) applies to discrimination that occupants suffer after acquiring their dwelling. The question is whether the FHA only applies to discrimination in acquiring their property or afterwards as well. This Note examines the split in federal circuit courts created by Modesto. Part I examines the history of the FHA and theories of statutory interpretation. Part II discusses the split in federal authority and both sides’ interpretative methodologies and rationales. . Part III.A maintains that meaning-based and intent-based …

The Rise And Fall Of The Implied Warranty Of Habitability, David A. Super

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Growing concern about poverty in the late 1960s produced two sweeping legal revolutions. One gave welfare recipients rights against arbitrary eligibility rules and benefit terminations. The other gave low-income tenants recourse when landlords failed to repair their homes. The 1996 welfare law exposed the welfare rights revolution's frailty. Little noticed by legal scholars, the tenants' rights revolution also has failed, and for broadly similar reasons.

Withholding rent deliberately to challenge landlords' failure to repair is unduly risky for most tenants in ill-maintained dwellings: either moving to better housing is a better option or the risk of retaliation is too great. …