Housing Law Commons^™

K&P Homes V. Christiana Trust, 133 Nev. Adv. Op. 51 (July 27, 2017), Yolanda Carapia

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court determined that the SFR Investments Pool 1, LLC v. U.S. Bank, N.A. decision, extinguishing first security interests, applies retroactively to all foreclosures occurring prior to the date of the decision and since NRS 116.3116’s inception.

Race, Rhetoric, And Judicial Opinions: Missouri As A Case Study, Brad Desnoyer, Anne Alexander

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

It Takes A Village: Designating "Tiny House" Villages As Transitional Housing Campgrounds, Ciara Turner

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

A relatively new proposal to reduce homelessness in the United States involves extraordinarily small dwellings. While the “tiny house” movement is intuitively appealing and has found sporadic success, strict housing codes, building codes, and zoning laws often destroy the movement before it can get off the ground. One possibility for getting around these zoning and building code challenges, without drastic overhauls to health and safety codes, is to create a new state-level zoning classification of “transitional campgrounds.” A new zoning classification would alleviate the issue because campgrounds are consistently subject to less strict building codes, which could permit tiny houses ...

Foreword, Patricia A. Mccoy

Boston College Journal of Law & Social Justice

In the wake of the financial crisis, mortgage lending to lower-income and minority borrowers overcorrected and has not recovered. Although homeownership is a riskier investment than previously realized, still it remains a proven path to increased wealth on balance for lower-income households. There are a number of reasonable reforms that could achieve greater access to credit while containing default risk. These include strategies to reduce down payments safely and to keep monthly payments manageable, combined with fixed-rate loans. Prepurchase counseling is important to preparing applicants for the financial demands of homeownership and strengthening their credit histories, while rapid foreclosure prevention ...

Waiting For Homeownership: Assessing The Future Of Homeownership, Jonathan Spader, Christopher Herbert

Boston College Journal of Law & Social Justice

The decade-long decline in the homeownership rate in the United States has generated substantial discussion over its future path. In the face of continued uncertainty, this Article seeks to assess what we know and do not know about the sources of the decline and the likely trajectory of the homeownership rate in coming years. The analyses use the Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) of the Current Population Survey for 1985 to 2015 to examine the determinants of changes in the homeownership rate, using shift-share analyses to measure the extent to which changing demographics explain the observed changes. The results ...

Quantifying The Tightness Of Mortgage Credit And Assessing Policy Actions, Laurie S. Goodman

Boston College Journal of Law & Social Justice

This Article quantifies the dramatic tightening of mortgage credit that has occurred in the post-crisis period. It then describes the policy actions to loosen the credit box taken to date by both the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), as well as those taken by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), concluding the FHA still has some important actions it has yet to undertake. Finally, the consequences of tight credit are discussed: namely, a lower home ownership rate, particularly among minorities, leaving many unable to access what has historically been the single most powerful ...

Expanding The Mortgage Credit Box: Lessons From The Community Advantage Program, Roberto G. Quercia, Sarah Riley

Boston College Journal of Law & Social Justice

The Great Recession has raised concerns about the promotion of homeownership to low- and moderate-income families. The subprime credit boom of the early 2000s was replaced with an overall credit retrenchment. The reforms to the housing finance system, begun with the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, remain incomplete given the uncertain future of the Federal National Mortgage Association (“Fannie Mae”) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (“Freddie Mac”). In light of this uncertainty, can or should homeownership continue to be supported, and if so, in what way? In this paper, we examine one ...

One Mortgage: A Model Of Success For Low-Income Homeownership, Clark L. Ziegler, Elliot Schmiedl, Thomas Callahan

Boston College Journal of Law & Social Justice

A 1989 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston identified major racial disparities in mortgage lending in the City of Boston that could not be explained by income, credit scores, or other objective underwriting factors. In response, city and state officials, community organizations, and major banking institutions joined together in 1990 to design and launch what is now the Massachusetts ONE Mortgage program. The program is built around a low down payment mortgage loan with discounted interest rates, a state funded loan loss reserve that eliminates the need for mortgage insurance, retention of servicing and credit risk by the ...

The Housing Market Cannot Fully Recover Without A Robust Rental Policy, Michael A. Stegman

Boston College Journal of Law & Social Justice

There is no one explanation for why access to mortgage credit remains so tight this far into the housing recovery, nor is there a consensus on why our national homeownership rate has fallen to a fifty-year low, but one thing is clear: the homeownership and rental markets are two sides of the same coin. As such, policymakers must understand that pressures and problems in one have implications for the other. As we disentangle and address the interwoven causes of our credit access and homeownership challenges, we do have a set of affordable rental policies and programs, proven effective and informed ...

Discussion Of Papers On Cyclicality In Mortgage Markets, Edward J. Kane

Boston College Journal of Law & Social Justice

The mortgage market can be portrayed as a complicated machine that processes information and disinformation to help lenders and would-be homeowners to fashion an enforceable and fair set of mutual obligations. The papers in this symposium issue focus on ameliorating cyclical speed-ups and slowdowns in the lender-operated parts of this machine. My discussion focuses on two issues: (1) how transitioning to a gig economy is changing household needs for owner-occupied and rental homes across different age groups; and (2) how to use the legal system to lessen the informational disadvantage that would-be homeowners face in understanding the deals they are ...

Mortgage Supply Chain Failure And Innovation, Lisa Davis

Boston College Journal of Law & Social Justice

The standard mortgage supply chain is so costly and inefficient that large national banks have dramatically scaled back their provision of mortgages to low- and moderate-income households. Absent regulatory requirements, subsidy, improvement in the way the mortgage supply chain works, or maybe all three, low- and moderate-income households will continue to be underserved by those banks with the largest share of the mortgage market. A number of factors contribute to this problem, including expensive marketing costs and commissions, as well as the obsolete, paper-based technology for loan production. Arguably, the national banking system has never excelled at providing fairly priced ...

Why Cyclicality Matters To Access To Mortgage Credit, Patricia A. Mccoy, Susan M. Wachter

Boston College Journal of Law & Social Justice

Virtually no attention has been paid to the problem of cyclicality in debates over access to mortgage credit, despite its importance as a driver of tight credit. Housing markets are prone to booms accompanied by bubbles in mortgage credit in which lenders cut underwriting standards, leading to elevated loan defaults. During downturns, these cycles artificially impede access to mortgage credit for underserved communities. During upswings, these cycles make homeownership unnecessarily precarious for many who attain it. This volatility exacerbates wealth and income disparities by ethnicity and race. The boom-bust cycle must be addressed in order to assure healthy and sustainable ...

The Civil Asset Forfeiture Program An Analysis Of The Actual Use, Racial Subjectivity, And Unfairness To Lower Earning Individuals, Nicholas Schieber

Economic Crime Forensics Capstones

Being able to seize property without a criminal conviction has become a hot button topic in periodical and academic papers. The Civil Asset Forfeiture program gave law enforcement the ability to seize “guilty” property, which can be defined as contraband, proceeds from criminal activity, or tools and instrumentalities used in the commission of a crime, without a criminal conviction on the part of the owner. Numerous academic authors and journalists have called for reform, racial unfairness, and targeting of lower earning communities. However, the majority of data regarding the Civil Asset Forfeiture program is qualitative in nature with few quantitative ...

I Share, Therefore It's Mine, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

The Missouri Student Transfer Program, Howard E. Fields Iii

Dissertations

In 1993, the state of Missouri passed the Outstanding Schools Act. This law was created as a means to ensure that “all children will have quality educational opportunities, regardless of where in Missouri they live.” Section 167.131 of this law states that an unaccredited district must pay the tuition and transportation cost for students who attend an accredited school in the same or adjoining district. This portion of the law became known as the Student Transfer Program.

The Riverview Gardens School District (RGSD) was one of three unaccredited school districts in the state of Missouri in 2013. With close ...

Housing For The Elderly - 202 Program, Richard M. Millman

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Barriers To Housing Equality For The Lgbt Community: A Literature Review, Carissa Lavin

Georgia State Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.

Of Asthma And Ashtrays: Examining The Rights Of And Exploring Ways To Protect Maine Tenants Living In Multi-Unit Rental Housing Who Are Involuntarily Exposed To Secondhand Tobacco Smoke In Their Homes, Amy K. Olfene

Maine Law Review

Toxins found in tobacco smoke are deadly, and there is no safe level of exposure. Secondhand smoke contains over 7,000 chemicals, 69 of which are known to cause cancer in humans. In fact, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) has declared secondhand tobacco smoke a Group A carcinogen, a rating “reserved for those compounds or mixtures which have been shown to cause cancer in humans, based on studies in human populations.” Exposure to tobacco smoke can cause a number of diseases and ailments in both smokers and nonsmokers; in addition, such exposure can exacerbate existing illnesses. In the ...

Embracing Airbnb: How Cities Can Champion Private Property Rights Without Compromising The Health And Welfare Of The Community, Emily M. Speier

Pepperdine Law Review

Peer-to-peer services offer participants considerable advantages whether they are a provider of such services or a user of them. The Airbnb phenomenon is an example of how technological advancement has transformed the rental industry and has signaled a societal acceptance of a sharing economy. However, the question now is to what extent cities should regulate this influx of short-term rentals while still preserving the property rights of homeowners. Much of the answer to this question depends on each city’s individual interpretation of specific areas of the law. Some legal issues raised by regulation and explored by this article include ...

A Narrowing Of Section 1983 Claims: How Gonzaga Has Limited Recovery For Victims Of Lead Poisoning In Federal Court, Anna Snook

Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review

Dellita Johnson brought a claim against the City of Detroit on behalf of her minor son, asserting that her son sustained lead poisoning from the public housing unit in which they lived. She brought claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for the deprivation of federal rights created under provisions of the United States Housing Act, the Lead-Based Paint Poisoning Prevention Act, and administrative regulations created under those statutes. The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed the District Court’s dismissal of Ms. Johnson’s claims, holding that the applicable provisions of the United States Housing ...