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Full-Text Articles in Housing Law

Review Of The Fight For Fair Housing: Causes, Consequences And Future Implications Of The 1968 Federal Fair Housing Act, Tim Iglesias Dec 2017

Review Of The Fight For Fair Housing: Causes, Consequences And Future Implications Of The 1968 Federal Fair Housing Act, Tim Iglesias

Tim Iglesias

This is a book review of The Fight for Fair Housing: Causes, Consequences and Future Implications of the 1968 Federal Fair Housing Act  ed. Gregory D. Squires (Routledge 2018).
In addition to summarizing and evaluating all 15 chapters this review highlights the two major contributions of the volume: (1) Some chapters (especially chapters 10, 11, 13, and 15) begin to articulate an argument that effective implementation of fair housing law is not just good for members of protected classes but valuable for everyone because it can help markets work better, promote democracy, and expand opportunity for all; (2) the chapters addressing …


Threading The Needle Of Fair Housing Law In A Gentrifying City With A Legacy Of Discrimination, Tim Iglesias Dec 2017

Threading The Needle Of Fair Housing Law In A Gentrifying City With A Legacy Of Discrimination, Tim Iglesias

Tim Iglesias

This essay tells the story of an extended and complex conflict between San Francisco and HUD and the creative solution that emerged from their negotiations. The conflict concerned the application of a community preference to a proposed senior housing development that would be located in a traditional African American neighborhood in San Francisco and its potential violation of federal fair housing law. After a brief background discussion of some of the policy and legal issues raised by community preferences, the essay tells the story of the conflict and its resolution. The essay concludes with reflections on the potential value of …


Evicted: The Socio-Legal Case For The Right To Housing, Lisa T. Alexander Apr 2017

Evicted: The Socio-Legal Case For The Right To Housing, Lisa T. Alexander

Lisa T. Alexander

Matthew Desmond's Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City is a triumphant work that provides the missing socio-legal data needed to prove why America should recognize housing as a human right. Desmond's masterful study of the effect of evictions on Milwaukee's urban poor in the wake of the 2008 U.S. housing crisis humanizes the evicted, and their landlords, through rich and detailed ethnographies. His intimate portrayals teach Evicted's readers about the agonizingly difficult choices that low-income, unsubsidized tenants must make in the private rental market. Evicted also reveals the contradictions between "law on the books" and "law-in-action." Its most …


Just, Smart: Civil Rights Protections And Market-Sensitive Vacant Property Strategies, James J. Kelly Jr. Oct 2016

Just, Smart: Civil Rights Protections And Market-Sensitive Vacant Property Strategies, James J. Kelly Jr.

James J. Kelly Jr.

This essay, prepared for and published by the Center for Community Progress, a national, non-profit intermediary dedicated to developing effective, sustainable solutions to turn vacant, abandoned and problem properties into vibrant places, examines the legal and normative implications of local governments' use of neighborhood real estate market data to strategically focus vacant property remediation tools. I and other writers, such as Frank Alexander, Alan Mallach and Joseph Schilling, have argued for the importance of understanding the economic feasibility of market-based rehabilitation of derelict, vacant houses in making decisions as to how and when to use a variety of code enforcement, …


Structural Subjugation: Theorizing Racialized Sexual Harassment In Housing, Kate Elengold Dec 2015

Structural Subjugation: Theorizing Racialized Sexual Harassment In Housing, Kate Elengold

Kate Elengold

ABSTRACT: This Article identifies and analyzes the structural forces that permit and ignore racialized sexual harassment in housing. Although scholarship on sexual harassment in housing is sparse, the existing research and resulting body of law generally advances a narrative focused on the female tenants’ economic vulnerability and violation of the sanctity of her home. The narrative advanced in scholarship and advocacy, along with the resulting jurisprudence, presents an archetype of a deviant male landlord abusing his authority to take advantage of women sexually who, because of their economic circumstances, have no alternatives. This Article terms it the “dirty old man” …


Branding Identity, Kate Elengold Dec 2014

Branding Identity, Kate Elengold

Kate Elengold

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects against discrimination on the
basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin—the so-called “protected
classes.” To make out a successful civil rights claim under the
current legal structure, a plaintiff must first identify the protected class
under which her claim arises (i.e., race or religion). She must then
identify a subclass of that protected class (i.e., African American race or
Christian religion) and assert that, due to her membership in or relationship
to that subclass, she was treated differently in violation of the law.
This Article explores the disconnect between self-identity and …


A Home With Dignity: Domestic Violence And Property Rights, Margaret Johnson Feb 2013

A Home With Dignity: Domestic Violence And Property Rights, Margaret Johnson

Margaret E Johnson

This Article argues that the legal system should do more to address intimate partner violence and each party’s need for a home for several reasons. First, domestic violence is a leading cause of homelessness and family homelessness. Second, the struggle over rights to a shared home can increase the violence to which the woman is subjected. And third, a woman who decides that continuing to share a home with the person who abused her receives little or no system support, despite the evidence that this decision could most effectively reduce the violence. The legal system’s current failings result from its …


Constitutional Amendment To End Homelessness, Ruben B. Botello Jd Jan 2013

Constitutional Amendment To End Homelessness, Ruben B. Botello Jd

Ruben B Botello JD

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO END HOMELESSNESS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

By Ruben Botello, JD

Founder, American Homeless Society

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." (U.S. Constitution, http://constitutionus.com/)

The above-quoted Preamble to our U.S. Constitution ordains and establishes a binding legal document of, by and for the founders of our nation and their Posterity …


Moving Beyond Two-Person-Per-Bedroom: Revitalizing Application Of The Federal Fair Housing Act To Private Residential Occupancy Standards, Tim Iglesias Dec 2011

Moving Beyond Two-Person-Per-Bedroom: Revitalizing Application Of The Federal Fair Housing Act To Private Residential Occupancy Standards, Tim Iglesias

Tim Iglesias

Moving Beyond the Two-Person-Per-Bedroom Standard: Revitalizing Application of the Federal Fair Housing Act to Private Residential Occupancy Standards

Tim Iglesias

Abstract

New empirical evidence demonstrates that the common residential occupancy standard of two-persons-per-bedroom substantially limits the housing choices of many thousands of families, especially Latinos, Asians and extended families. The federal Fair Housing Act makes overly restrictive policies illegal, but the enforcement practices of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have enabled the two-persons-per-bedroom standard to become de facto law. This article urges HUD to use its regulatory authority to remedy the situation and offers several solutions. …