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Full-Text Articles in Law
Conflict Preemption: A Remedy For The Disparate Impact Of Crime-Free Nuisance Ordinances, Meredith Joseph
Conflict Preemption: A Remedy For The Disparate Impact Of Crime-Free Nuisance Ordinances, Meredith Joseph
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Thousands of municipalities across the country have adopted crime-free nuisance ordinances—laws that sanction landlords for their tenants’ behaviors, coercing them to evict tenants for actions as innocuous as calling 9-1-1 in an emergency. These facially neutral ordinances give wide discretion to municipal officials, leading to discriminatory enforcement of evictions. As a result, these ordinances have a devastating impact on victims of domestic violence and are used as a tool to inhibit integration in majority-white municipalities. Many plaintiffs have brought lawsuits alleging violations of the U.S. Constitution and the Fair Housing Act. However, bringing lawsuits under various anti-discrimination protections presents many …
Democratizing The American Dream: The Role Of A Regional Housing Legislature In The Production Of Affordable Housing, Thomas A. Brown
Democratizing The American Dream: The Role Of A Regional Housing Legislature In The Production Of Affordable Housing, Thomas A. Brown
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Economic, ethnic and racial residential segregation are ubiquitous across United States metropolitan regions. As a result, the majority of affordable housing is located in central cities or inner-ring suburbs, generally in areas of highly concentrated poverty. Outer suburbs are often exempt from providing significant housing for the economically disadvantaged regional citizens. This should not be. If housing policy in metropolitan regions were established in a democratic fashion, the give-and-take of the political process would create strong incentives for regional cooperation in the creation of affordable housing. Drawing together scholarship in the fields of local government law, administrative law, and housing …
Redevelopment Redefined: Revitalizing The Central City With Resident Control, Benjamin B. Quinones
Redevelopment Redefined: Revitalizing The Central City With Resident Control, Benjamin B. Quinones
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Misguided redevelopment has been both a symptom of, and a means for achieving, inappropriate urban development goals. Requiring resident control will improve the redevelopment process itself, and simultaneously redirect the development goals towards which it channels its energy. One hopes that by shifting control of the redevelopment process, we also would shift the goals that redevelopment would pursue and the development forms it would take. Presumably, this would result in urban development designed to benefit residents of the urban core.
Accelerating Integration : Effective Remedies In Public Housing Discrimination Suits, Adam M. Shayne
Accelerating Integration : Effective Remedies In Public Housing Discrimination Suits, Adam M. Shayne
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This Note examines the different remedies employed by judges to integrate public housing and recommends a standard approach for courts to employ in the future. Part I describes the status of local and federal public housing policy in the United States. Part II examines litigation aimed at achieving the integration of public housing. This Part details short-term remedies employed by judges in several cities and long-term integration efforts by the courts in two cities: Chicago, Illinois, and Yonkers, New York. The Chicago and Yonkers suits exemplify the major obstacles that plaintiffs and judges face in developing appropriate measures to integrate …
Lead-Based Paint Poisoning: Remedies For The Hud Low-Income Homeowner When Neglect Is No Longer Benign, Thomas P. Sarb
Lead-Based Paint Poisoning: Remedies For The Hud Low-Income Homeowner When Neglect Is No Longer Benign, Thomas P. Sarb
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Lead-based paint poisoning is a completely preventable disease which particularly afflicts young children living in deteriorating areas of the cities. It is caused by the ingestion of paint chips containing significant amounts of lead that have fallen or been picked off ceilings, floors, and woodwork of older houses. Repeated ingestion of such paint chips can lead to mental retardation, permanent impairment of intellectual ability, cerebral palsy, and blindness. Every year at least 400,000 children show some effect of lead poisoning; 50,000 of them need treatment; and 200 children die of the disease. The early symptoms of lead poisoning are changes …
Exclusionary Zoning: A Wrong In Search Of A Remedy, Leonard S. Rubinowitz
Exclusionary Zoning: A Wrong In Search Of A Remedy, Leonard S. Rubinowitz
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This article discusses affirmative approaches to providing effective relief in two types of exclusionary zoning cases: (1) remedies specific to a particular proposed development or a given site and (2) regional remedies, which provide a generalized framework for meeting what courts are increasingly identifying as a regional problem: the need for decent housing for all families. In the first instance (the "single-site" case) a court would remove obstacles in order to facilitate development of low- and moderate- income housing on a particular suburban site. In the second case (the regional approach) a court would specify the obligation of the municipalities …
Detroit Housing Code Enforcement And Community Renewal: A Study In Futility, Brett R. Dick, John S. Pfarr Jr.
Detroit Housing Code Enforcement And Community Renewal: A Study In Futility, Brett R. Dick, John S. Pfarr Jr.
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This article will demonstrate that the inconsistency is, to a large extent, more apparent than real and results from the application of two different conceptions of the purpose of the program to the same facts. Furthermore, it will be demonstrated that Detroit's Building (housing) Code has failed in its attempt to force rehabilitation of residential structures through Code enforcement. Although it can be made to work more efficiently, the Code will never serve as an effective solution to the housing problem.
Overcoming Barriers To Scattered-Site Low-Cost Housing, Darrel J. Grinstead
Overcoming Barriers To Scattered-Site Low-Cost Housing, Darrel J. Grinstead
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The effect of most zoning devices which have been used in suburban and non-ghetto city planning in the past few decades has been to erect substantial economic barriers around entire cities. These devices include minimum lot size requirements, density zoning, frontage requirements, single family restrictions, and minimum living space requirements. While such zoning practices may not be exclusionary in purpose, exclusion of minority groups has been the result. Moreover, since most minorities are heavily concentrated in low income groups, economic segregation will bring about a high degree of racial and ethnic segregation. Indeed, it has been suggested that these economic …
Persuader: Mobilization Of Support, Mary Ann Beattie
Persuader: Mobilization Of Support, Mary Ann Beattie
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Law reform can be achieved through precedent-setting case law and through legislation. Each is a time-consuming activity with its own stumbling blocks. To establish law through the case method, one must have a fact situation directly on point with the inequity which one is trying to remedy. In many situations the client must be willing to follow through a long process of trial and appeal, instead of settling for a more immediate but incomplete resolution of his problem. The costs of litigation may become an insurmountable problem. Another difficulty with the test case as a vehicle for law reform is …