Law Commons^™

Legal And Regulatory Framework For The Mortgage Industry In Nigeria, Kehinde Ogundimu

Economic and Financial Review

This article examines the legal and regulatory framework for the mortgage industry in Nigeria. The article examines the concept of housing as a global need and provides an overview of the Nigerian Housing Market with a population of 183 million people and increasing rapidly, a huge housing deficit of around 17 million units. This is further compounded by a rapid rising need for housing by about 20 per cent a year in cities like Lagos, Ibadan, Kano, and Abuja. At least 700,000 housing units across different segments are needed annually to keep up with demand, whereas, production was around 100,000 …

The Land Use Act And The Nigerian Housing Sector, Yusuf Yahaya

Economic and Financial Review

The article discusses the Land Use Act and the and how it has affected developments in the Nigerian housing sector. Prior to the Land Use Act, all the existing tenure systems encouraged land holding without an obligation to develop them, fragmentation and uncoordinated alienation, hoarding speculatively for value appreciation and without precise documentation. Consequently, the Land Use Act was enacted to: make land easily accessible to all Nigerians; prevent speculative purchases of communal land; streamline and simplify the management and ownership of land; make land available to government at all levels for development; provide the system of government administration of …

Law Library Blog (November 2019): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Community In Property: Lessons From Tiny Homes Villages, Lisa T. Alexander

Faculty Scholarship

The evolving role of community in property law remains undertheorized. While legal scholars have analyzed the commons, common interest communities, and aspects of the sharing economy, the recent rise of intentional co-housing communities re-mains relatively understudied. This Article analyzes tiny homes villages for unhoused people in the United States, as examples of co-housing communities that create a new housing tenure—stewardship—and demonstrate the growing importance of community, co-management, sustainability, and flexibility in con-temporary property law. These villages’ property relationships challenge the predominance of individualized, exclusionary, long-term, fee simple ownership in contemporary property law and exemplify property theories such as progressive property …

Singapore, Land Use And The Lessons For Human Development, Wellington Migliari

Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy

A study of the impact of using land use controls as a strategic tool to further human development among all social classes is presented. We advocate that human rights include a long-term practice of combining public policies, manufacturing industry, and property system. Further, this study strives to educate economists and those in other academic areas (e.g. humanities) on the importance of considering land use, ownership, and urban planning with economics to form a new theory of developmentalism. Singapore provides a case study demonstrating similar aspects that may shed light on that debate. The Housing & Development Board and the Urban …

Illegal Substance Abuse And Protection From Discrimination In Housing And Employment: Reversing The Exclusion Of Illegal Substance Abuse As A Disability, Leslie P. Francis

Utah Law Review

When landlords or employers know that someone is using opioids, either legally or illegally, the consequences can be significant. Rental housing or employment are both critical to well-being, yet may be at particularly high risk. As this Article argues below, legal protections in these areas are inadequate. To summarize the argument briefly, a crucial legal problem for people suffering from substance abuse disorders is that current illegal use of controlled substances is excluded from the definition of disability in federal anti-discrimination statutes. A history of substance abuse is a disability protected from discrimination, but recent relapses vitiate this protection. Relatedly, …

Vouchers And Affordable Housing: The Limits Of Choice In The Political Economy Of Place, Rigel C. Oliveri

Faculty Publications

America's housing segregation problem, and the direct role of government and private actors in creating it, is well documented. What to do about it is less clear. And even when consensus develops about particular strategies, they can be difficult to implement because of significant headwinds that impede change. These headwinds-including market forces, government policies, and private prejudices-continue to stymie progress, and even well-intentioned reform efforts can fail at best and lead to negative consequences at worst. This piece seeks not to provide answers, but rather to describe one such set of reforms and headwinds and to propose some modest policy …

Rwu Law: The Magazine Of Roger Williams University School Of Law (Issue 10, 25th Anniversary Issue) (May 2019), Roger Williams University School Of Law

RWU Law

No abstract provided.

Supbrime Lending/Foreclosure Crisis, Jacob Rugh

Faculty Publications

Subprime mortgage lending in the USA rose alongside home prices and lasted about 15 years, ending abruptly in late 2007, setting off a national foreclosure crisis. Between 2007 and 2012 there were 9 to 12 million foreclosures filings and 4 to 5 million completed foreclosures. The ensuing foreclosure crisis stemmed more from falling home prices but its unequal distribution across society by race and space was also the product of legacies of exclusion and a shared consensus on the expansion of mortgage credit and home ownership. Modest federal interventions to buffer communities and homeowners from the crisis likely reinforced the …

Bringing Home The Right To Housing To Advance Urban Sustainability, Lisa Alexander

Lisa T. Alexander

No abstract provided.

Getting It Right: Examining The Local Land Use Entitlement Process In California To Inform Policy And Process, Moira O'Neill, Giulia Gualco-Nelson, Eric Biber

Eric Biber

California’s housing affordability crisis has rightly received a great deal of attention by state lawmakers, the press, academics, and ordinary Californians. Important questions raised in this discussion are: What laws or regulations might impede housing construction in high-cost areas? What solutions might help reduce those barriers with a minimum impact on other important values, such as environmental protection, public participation, and equitable treatment of low-income communities of color? More specifically, does state environmental law (the California Environmental Quality Act, CEQA), or local land-use regulations, constrain housing development? To help answer that last question, we collected data on all residential development …

The Pro Bono Collaborative Project Spotlight: Pro Bono Collaborative License Restoration Project Makes A Fresh Start Possible March 2019, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Pro Bono Collaborative Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

When A Tent Is Your Castle: Constitutional Protection Against Unreasonable Searches Of Makeshift Dwellings Of Unhoused Persons, Evanie Parr

Seattle University Law Review

This Note will argue that all jurisdictions should follow the Washington State Court of Appeals, Division II in validating makeshift dwellings used by people experiencing homelessness as spaces protected from unwarranted police intrusions by shifting evaluations of “reasonable expectations of privacy” to a more equitable standard that appreciates the realities of economic disparity. This approach to constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures is imperative to protect the rights of people experiencing homelessness, given that such individuals are regularly subjected to invasions of privacy and heightened exposure to the criminal justice system.

Champions For Justice & Public Interest Auction 2019, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Public Interest Auction

No abstract provided.

Privatizing The Reservation?, Kristen A. Carpenter, Angela R. Riley

Publications

The problems of American Indian poverty and reservation living conditions have inspired various explanations. One response advanced by some economists and commentators, which may be gaining traction within the Trump Administration, calls for the “privatization” of Indian lands. Proponents of this view contend that reservation poverty is rooted in the federal Indian trust arrangement, which preserves the tribal land base by limiting the marketability of lands within reservations. In order to maximize wealth on reservations, policymakers are advocating for measures that would promote the individuation and alienability of tribal lands, while diminishing federal and tribal oversight.

Taking a different view, …

The Properties Of Integration: Mixed-Income Housing As Discrimination Management, Audrey Mcfarlane

All Faculty Scholarship

Mixed-income housing is an increasingly popular approach to providing affordable housing. The technique largely went unnoticed until developers of mixed-income housing constructed buildings containing separate entrances for rich and poor residents. The ensuing “poor door” controversy illustrated that mixed-income housing, as both a method of affordable housing production and an integration strategy, is in unacknowledged tension with itself. This Article argues that, mixedincome housing is implemented as a surreptitious form of racial and economic integration that accommodates and replicates prevailing race and class assumptions detrimental to the needs and interests of low to moderate-income individuals in need of housing. The …

The Least Restrictive Environment For Providing Education, Treatment, And Community Services For Persons With Disabilities: Rethinking The Concept, Donald H. Stone

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Environmental Determinism: Functional Egalitarian Spaces Promote Functional Egalitarian Practices, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

Egalitarian, place-based thinking belongs at the table when considering approaches to improving early childhood. Places connect people’s lives. They also generate patterns that organize, and can re-organize, our social order and behavior. Places can spark and support the development of self-governance and cultivate a political voice grounded in the needs of the same community that place generates. Whether considered as community schools, community centers, or more ambitiously, community housing developments designed to include services that meet the needs of residents, the spatial dimensions of early childhood policy require explicit consideration.

Do You Believe In Ghost Apartments?, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

According to the popular press, expensive cities are being overrun by "ghost apartments"- condominiums owned by wealthy foreigners, but used as investments rather than being rented out to local residents. This article points out that such apartments are in fact a very small percentage of housing supply, even in some cities that are supposedly overran with such condos.More importantly, the existence of new “ghost apartments” does not justify exclusionary zoning policies. If a city popular with foreign investors discourages construction of new housing, investors are likely to purchase older housing units, outbidding local residents for those units. In this scenario, …

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

Faculty Scholarship

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 Homestead Act For The 21st Century, Mehrsa Baradaran

Scholarly Works

The goal of the 21st century Homestead Act is to counteract the longstanding legacy of racially discriminatory housing policies by revitalizing distressed communities through public investment. The basic structure of the program is a wholesale transfer of land to residents who meet certain criteria. Accompanied by a holistic plan at the city level to revitalize the community through public investments in infrastructure and jobs, this proposal would benefit people who live in select small and medium-sized cities that are experiencing high vacancies.

Market Urbanism Blog Posts - First Half Of 2019, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

Do You Believe In Ghost Apartments?, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn