Law Commons^™

White Picket Fences & Suburban Gatekeeping: How Long Island’S Land Use Laws Cement Its Status As One Of The Most Segregated Places In America, Jessica Mingrino

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

The average wealth of Black families is one-seventh that of white families in the United States today. Homeownership—the primary avenue through which Americans accumulate personal and generational wealth—is the leading driver of the wealth disparity between white and Black American families, known as the “racial wealth gap.” The systematic and intentional exclusion of Black people from developing communities during the twentieth century largely excluded people of color from the housing boom and denied them the opportunity afforded to white people to multiply their assets. Contrary to widespread belief, however, legislation-backed oppression of Black Americans did not end in the …

The Road To Affordable Housing: How To Replace Highways With Homes In New York City, Chad Hughes

Pace Law Review

Urban highways cause significant air, water, and soil pollution that disproportionately harm low-income and nonwhite residents. Many urban highways are reaching the end of their useful life and would be extremely expensive to repair or replace. Cities around the world have removed urban highways to improve environmental outcomes and to avoid wasteful spending.

While these teardowns have improved local and regional environmental quality and local traffic congestion, they have also led to increased land values near the retired rights of way. Without anti-displacement efforts, there is a risk that the very people who have been most harmed by urban highways …

Is Airbnb Polluting The Big Apple? The Impact Of Regulating The Short-Term Rental Service In New York City, Kayla Laskin

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

Imagine your boss calls you into his office on a Monday morning. You think you are going to chat about the weekly agenda ahead; however, you notice the sullen look on your boss’s face. You immediately become nervous and think that no good news could possibly come from this meeting. You begin to glance over his desk and notice printouts for unemployment counseling and job listings in the area. Sheer panic begins to spread throughout your body, and then your boss states, “I’m sorry, we’re going to have to let you go.” Your stomach drops to the floor. Your …

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 …

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

Faculty Scholarship

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 …

Catherine Lennon's Story: Lessons From Front Line Advocacy On The Human Right To Housing, Rob Robinson

Journal of Law and Social Policy

Discusses the United States housing crisis, where four and a half million families were foreclosed on between 2008 and 2013. Families who lacked universal or adequate health insurance, found the physical pain and suffering of a loved one was soon followed by the economic pain and suffering associated with the high costs of health care. The human reality of this suffering is reflected by the story of New York state resident Catherine Lennon. Ensuring the pay out to Bank of America was the law firm of Steven J. Baum, the notorious New York based foreclosure mill, which has since been …

The Eastside Exhibition Rule: The De Minimis Exception For Trifles And Trivialities In Partial Actual Evicition Cases In New York, Stephen L. Ukeiley

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sheltering Counsel: Towards A Right To A Lawyer In Eviction Proceedings, Raymond H. Brescia

Touro Law Review

This Article provides an overview of the current arguments presented by advocates who seek to establish a right to counsel for indigent tenants in eviction proceedings and assesses the strength of those arguments in the current political, social, and economic milieu. It is beyond question that the overwhelming majority of low-income tenants are unrepresented in proceedings in which their homes are in jeopardy and having counsel in such proceedings often prevents eviction and homelessness. Preventing those evictions reduces the human cost of homelessness, saves government substantial money by not having to provide shelter to the homeless, and preserves the stock …

Panel Discussion: International, National, And Local Perspectives On Civil Right To Counsel, Andrew Scherer, Martha F. Davis, Debra Gardner, Rosie Mendez, Juanita B. Newton, Adriene Holder, Laura K. Abel

Touro Law Review

The following is based on a transcript of a panel discussion which took place at An Obvious Truth: Creating an Action Blueprint for a Civil Right to Counsel in New York State, held at Touro Law Center, Central Islip, New York, in March, 2008.

Toward A Right To Counsel In Civil Cases In New York State: A Report Of The New York State Bar Association, Laura K. Abel

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Affordable Housing: Update On Federal And State Activities, Patricia E. Salkin

Patricia E. Salkin

No abstract provided.

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 …

No Dwelling Left Behind: Expanding New York’S Uniform Housing Statutes To Single And Two-Family Dwellings, Daniel R. Shortt

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Why People Who Face Losing Their Homes In Legal Proceedings Must Have A Right To Counsel, Andrew Scherer

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Securing A Civil Right To Counsel: The Importance Of Collaborating, Andrew Scherer

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Takings Clause

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Affordable Housing: Update On Federal And State Activities, Patricia E. Salkin

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Due Process

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Due Process

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Rights Of Unmarried Cohabiting Couples To Housing In New York, Matthew G. Connolly

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Note examines the protections available to unmarried couples against housing discrimination under the marital status provision of the New York City and New York State Human Rights Laws. After a brief examnitation of cohabitation, this Note will review judicial and administrative construction of the Human Rights Law since its inception. This Note concludes by proposing that unwed couples be given the same protection as married couples under the marital status provision in the New York Human Rights Law. This proposition finds support in: (1) the statutory mandate that the Human Rights Law be liberally construed to accomplish its purspose, …

Cooperative Apartments: A Survey Of Legal Treatment And An Argument For Homestead Protection, Carolyn S. Bratt

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

“The homestead may be a splendid mansion, a cabin or a tent,” but can it be a cooperative apartment? The supreme courts of both Florida and Georgia recently have answered this question in the negative. The Florida Supreme Court denied to a widow a homestead exemption in her deceased husband's cooperative apartment, ruling that a cooperator has no proprietary interest in the apartment, the building, or the land on which the building is situated. The Georgia Supreme Court denied a homestead tax exemption to cooperators because they lacked the characteristics of ownership needed to bring them within the constitutional exemption …

Neighborhood Preservation In New York City, Phillip Weitzman

Fordham Urban Law Journal

The push to the suburbs, financed in large part by federal mortgage guarantees and highway construction moneys and bolstered by exclusionary zoning, has generated forces which tend to leave old urban neighborhoods in shambles. The syndrome of housing deterioration is well known. The dilemma of the deteriorating neighborhood is heightened in a city such as New York, where a large proportion of its population lives in old multiple family buildings. After almost forty years marked by a succession of programs designed to eliminate slums and blighted areas, New York City has concluded that its older neighborhoods must be protected from …

Housing Legislation And Housing Policy In The United States, Ernest M. Fisher

Michigan Law Review

Passage by Congress of the "Emergency Relief and Construction Act of 1932" just prior to adjournment in July has served to arouse widespread hope for a revival of the construction industry as a whole, and especially those activities of the industry that are bent upon producing new housing facilities. One of the provisions of the Act authorized the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to "make loans to corporations, formed wholly for the purpose of providing housing for families of low incomes, or for reconstruction of slum areas, which are regulated by state or municipal law as to rents, charges, capital structure, rate …