Law Commons^™

Housing And Development Board Flats, Trust And Other Equitable Doctrines, Hang Wu Tang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Although 85% of the population of Singapore reside in Housing and Development Board (HDB) flats, this area of the law remains largely under investigated. A perennially contentious issue is the complex interplay between equitable doctrines and the Housing and Development Act. In this article, the author reviews the jurisprudence pertaining to express trust, resulting trust and common intention constructive trust and the HDB flat. This article will also examine the applicability of other equitable doctrines such as donatio mortis causa and proprietary estoppel in relation to the HDB flat. In particular, this article will explore the applicability of the common …

Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing: The Search For Solutions That Are Just Right, John R. Nolon, Tiffany Zezula

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

A federal False Claims Act action against Westchester County, New York launched a unique effort to explore whether zoning, subsidies, and advocacy could significantly Increase the percentage of minorities living in largely white communities. A Voluntary Cooperation Agreement entered into by Marin County, California raises a similar question. This article describes the legal background of the lawsuit brought against Westchester County, the Settlement Agreement that arose from it, and the attempt by Westchester County to carry out its obligations to affirmatively further fair housing. It traces the evolution of exclusionary zoning law in New York State courts, contrasts it to …

Can The Next Housing – And Financial Crisis Be Averted?, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Global financial systems and economies are still far from recovering from the recent financial crisis triggered by the burst of the American housing bubble. Naturally, the investment community, the academia, and of course, the regulators would be keen to find out how to prevent history from repeating itself.

Rapid Re-Housing Of Families Experiencing Homelessness In Massachusetts: Maintaining Housing Stability, Tim H. Davis, Terry S. Lane

Center for Social Policy Publications

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (“Recovery Act”) provided $1.5 billion for the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP), a temporary program that addressed both homelessness prevention and rapid re-housing of families already experiencing homelessness. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) allocated $44.5 million, including $26.1 million to individual Massachusetts communities and $18.4 million to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Of its funds, the state allocated $8.3 million for rapid re-housing of families who were living in shelters or motels.

This report explores the experiences of 486 of these families who received rapid re-housing assistance …

The Past And Future Of Deinstitutionalization Litigation, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Law & Economics Working Papers

Two conflicting stories have consumed the academic debate regarding the impact of deinstitutionalization litigation. The first, which has risen almost to the level of conventional wisdom, is that deinstitutionalization was a disaster. The second story does not deny that the results of deinstitutionalization have in many cases been disappointing. But it challenges the suggestion that deinstitutionalization has uniformly been unsuccessful, as well as the causal link critics seek to draw with the growth of the homeless population. This dispute is not simply a matter of historical interest. The Supreme Court’s 1999 decision in Olmstead v. L.C., which held that unjustified …

Message In Mortgage: What Dodd-Frank's 'Qualified Mortgage' Tells Us About Ourselves, David Reiss

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Emergence Of International Property Law, John G. Sprankling

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

This Article explores a new field: international property law. International law increasingly creates, regulates, or otherwise affects the property rights of individuals, business entities, and other non-state actors. Globalization, democratic reforms, technology, and human rights principles have all contributed to this development.

The Article begins by examining the unsuccessful effort to create a broad, internationally-enforceable human right to property during the second half of the twentieth century. Despite this failure, international property law doctrines have evolved in specialized contexts over recent decades. The Article demonstrates that these doctrines stem from four sources: (a) regulation of the global commons; (b) …

Cutting Municipal Services During Fiscal Crisis: Lessons From The Denial Of Services To Condominium And Homeowner Association Owners, Gerald Korngold

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

The New Progressive Property And The Low-Income Housing Conflict, Zachary A. Bray

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The foundation of property law has been much debated in recent years, as several scholars have sought to provide a theoretical alternative to what they call the dominant, “law-and-economics” approach to property. In place of the law-and-economics approach, these scholars advance a new theoretical approach, which I call “the new progressive property.” At its core, this new approach favors rules thought to promote the collective well-being of the larger community while ensuring that relatively disadvantaged members of society have access to certain basic resources. This Article explores the boundaries and practical implications of the new progressive property. To do so, …

Annual Report 2011-2012: Building Bridges, California Housing Finance Agency

California Agencies

No abstract provided.

Out Of House, And Home: Refocusing On Homelessness, Vulnerable Populations, And Human Rights, Adele M. Morrison

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Complaint, Kristofek V. Richard Yanz, Et Al, Docket No. 1:12-Cv-08340 (Northern District Of Illinois Oct 17, 2012), Allison Bethel, John Marshall Law School Fair Housing Legal Clinic

Court Documents and Proposed Legislation

No abstract provided.

Response/Reply Brief Of Appellants/Cross-Appellees, Jacob Scoggins V. Lee's Crossing Homeowners, 718 F.3d 262, Docket No. 11-02202 (Seventh Circuit Court Of Appeals 2013), J. Damian Ortiz, John Marshall Law School Fair Housing Legal Clinic

Court Documents and Proposed Legislation

No abstract provided.

Consumer Rights Screening Tool For Domestic Violence Advocates And Lawyers, Leah A. Plunkett, Erica A. Sussman

Law Faculty Scholarship

The information is this document is intended for use by advocates and attorneys working with survivors of domestic violence in understanding the common types of consumer problems faced by the survivors. The document provides an overview of the common consumer issues faced by survivors and offers solid guidance on how advocates and attorneys can identify these issues when working the survivors. The report begins with an overview of the role of economic abuse in cases of domestic violence. This is followed by a brief look at common consumer issues faced by survivors that include managing household income and expenses, credit …

Does America Need Public Housing?, Peter W. Salsich

All Faculty Scholarship

Does Twenty-First Century America Need Publicly-Owned Housing? This question was being asked in 2011, as an era of sharply-curtailed discretionary government spending dawned in the aftermath of the debt limitation crisis. From its inception in 1937 to the present, public housing remains the housing program with the deepest subsidy, designed for households who cannot compete effectively in the private housing market and, since the 1950s, the program that reaches the lowest income quadrant of society. Questions posed in 2011 center around the future of the 1.1 million public housing units in existence (down from 1.4 million two decades ago), all …

Imagining A Right To Housing, Lying In The Interstices, Shelby D. Green

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article explores whether the philosophical and constitutional predicates for the recognition of a right to housing exist in some form in our nation’s jurisprudence and political order. Part II traces the evolution of the concept of “rights” from that embraced by the country’s founders to the present, how such a right to housing would fit within the dialogue of property rights, the notion of ownership, and the interest in liberty. Part III discusses the historical role of the court in protecting housing. Part IV discusses the notion of protecting rights to housing under existing equal protection and due process …

Misbehavior And Mistake In Bankruptcy Mortgage Claims: Some Caveats Regarding The Porter Study, Gregory S. Crespi

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Article reviews the comprehensive empirical study of the bankruptcy mortgage foreclosure process conducted by Professor Katherine Porter and subsequently published in 2008 in the Texas Law Review. The results of her study, which analyzed 1,768 proof of claim submissions filed in a sample of 1,733 Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceedings, strongly suggest that there is a pervasive failure on the part of mortgage creditors to meet all of the formal documentation requirements for filing such bankruptcy claims. This documentation failure arguably impedes many mortgage debtors or bankruptcy trustees from reviewing these claims for their accuracy.

Porter's conclusion that the itemization …

Insurance And Cultural Perspectives On Katrina, Jeffrey E. Thomas

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Responding To The Mortgage Crisis: Three Cleveland Examples, W. Dennis Keating, Kermit J. Lind

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Just as SVD [Slavic Village Development] fought back against predatory lending, mortgage fraud, and speculator flipping, the City of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County also sought to prevent these practices and stem the rising tide of foreclosures. This included legislation, litigation, and homeowner counseling. This article will focus on three examples of the response to the mortgage crisis in Cleveland: the Cleveland Housing Court, the Cuyahoga County Land Reutilization Corporation (land bank), and community development corporations (CDCs) and local intermediaries (namely, the Cleveland Housing Network (CHN) and Neighborhood Progress, Inc. (NPI)). Each of these entities has developed initiatives aimed at the …

Homeownership — Dream Or Disaster?, Peter W. Salsich

All Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the impact of the foreclosure crisis on the housing prospects of American families. Foreclosure is governed by state law, which establishes a procedure to enable lenders to recover property from defaulting borrowers through a public sale process. States authorize two different methods, judicial foreclosure, in which the foreclosure process requires a judicial hearing, and power of sale foreclosure, in which a trustee can offer mortgaged property to the highest bidder at a public sale after giving twenty days public notice. Judicial foreclosure is administered by state courts in twenty-three states. The power of sale foreclosure process is …

Community Economic Development And The Paradox Of Power, Michael R. Diamond

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article starts from the premise that poverty is a growing problem in the United States. Intergenerational poverty, the entrenchment of a class of very poor people, is a major sub set of that problem and is tied very closely to the issue of race. The author claims that missing in the fight by the poor and their allies against stratified poverty is the creation and utilization of power. This paper examines the disparate ways in which commentators have defined power. It suggests that those seeking to obtain power must understand the concept’s varying meanings and direct their activities to …

Historic Preservation And Its Cultured Despisers: Reflections On The Contemporary Role Of Preservation Law In Urban Development, J. Peter Byrne

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The past years have seen widely noticed critiques of historic preservation by “one of our leading urban economists,” Edward Glaeser, and by star architect Rem Koolhaas. Glaeser, an academic economist specializing in urban development, admits that preservation has value. But he argues in his invigorating book, Triumph of the City, and in a contemporaneous article, Preservation Follies, that historic preservation restricts too much development, raises prices, and undermines the vitality of the cities. Koolhaas is a Pritzker Prize-winning architect and oracular theorist of the relation between architecture and culture. In his New York exhibit, Cronocaos, he argued …

Three Principles For Federal Housing Policy, David Reiss

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

De-Concentrating Poverty: De-Constructing A Theory And The Failure Of Hope, Michael R. Diamond

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Since the late 1980s, led by William Julius Wilson’s The Truly Disadvantaged, scholars have been writing about the social problems caused by the concentration in residential communities of high levels of poverty. Even before Wilson’s book, government policy, which previously had resulted in racially and economically segregated communities, had begun to shift towards de-concentration. The consent decree in Hills v Gautreaux, and the HOPE VI and Moving to Opportunity Programs all pointed towards de-concentration of poverty. Commentators have suggested both benign and not-so-benign reasons for the policy shift.

There were a variety of quite hopeful goals promoted by …

Overcoming Structural Barriers To Integrated Housing: A Back-To-The-Future Reflection On The Fair Housing Act's "Affirmatively Further" Mandate, Robert G. Schwemm

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

A key goal of the 1968 Fair Housing Act (“FHA”), which was passed as an immediate response to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, was to replace the ghettos with “truly integrated and balanced living patterns.” It hasn’t happened. Today, more than four decades after the FHA’s passage, “residential segregation remains a key feature of America’s urban landscape,” continuing to condemn new generations of minorities to a second–class set of opportunities and undercutting a variety of national goals for all citizens.

But recent developments dealing with an underutilized provision of the FHA – § 3608’s mandate that federal housing funds …

Crisis Management: Principles That Should Guide The Disposition Of Federally Owned, Foreclosed Properties, Raymond Brescia, Elizabeth A. Kelly, John Travis Marshall

Faculty Publications By Year

Residential home values in the United States have fallen considerably from their highs in the mid-2000s. This has had profound effects on consumer wealth and spending, creating a significant drag on the U.S. economy. What is worse, this loss in values corresponded with a steep rise in unemployment, which started in late 2007, and has yet to fall considerably. The loss in home values has wreaked havoc on household finances, and bank ledgers, as the outstanding principles of the mortgages those banks hold and service all too often exceed the current value of the homes against which they are secured. …