Law Commons^™

Law School News: Mike Andrews '97 Nominated To U.S. Court Of Federal Claims 12-15-2020, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Injustice Is An Underlying Condition, Yael Cannon

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Race, poverty, and zip code serve as critical determinants of a person's health. Research showed the links between these factors and poor health and mortality before COVID-19, and they have only been amplified during this pandemic.

People of color experience higher rates of asthma, heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic conditions. People of color who live in poverty are even more likely to suffer from poor health; they face a “double burden” of health disparities associated with both racial and socioeconomic marginalization. Neighborhoods with concentrated poverty and with residents who are primarily people of color have even faced a life …

Boards In Information Governance, Faith Stevelman, Sarah C. Haan

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Shelter Mobility, And The Voucher Program, Ezra Rosser

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

What is to be done about the poor and about poor neighborhoods? When it comes to housing policy, the current hope is that the Housing Choice Voucher Program (formerly the Section 8 Voucher Program) can provide an or ambitiously the answer to this perennial societal question. By piggybacking on the private rental market, the voucher program supposedly has numerous advantages over traditional, project-based, public housing. Not only is it less costly to house poor people in privately owned units compared to the cost of constructing and maintaining public housing, but the voucher program also offers the possibility of deconcentrating the …

We Must Avoid A Repeat Of The Battle Between Upper West Siders And Homeless New Yorkers, Adam Herbst

Other Publications

This post originally appeared in https://www.gothamgazette.com/opinion/9700-homeless-new-yorkers-upper-west-side-supportive-housing?fbclid=IwAR0HFnh3PKjSUG36wtz91PdM-IjDyHMYxDZvcd02qpQQAZEg2CDNeQHOGOs

Housing Stability And Diabetes Among People Living In New York City Public Housing, Sungwoo Lim, Sze Yan Liu, Melanie H. Jacobson, Eugenie Poirot, Aldo Crossa, Sean Locke, Jennifer Brite, Elizabeth Hamby, Zinzi Bailey, Stephanie Farquhar

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Public housing provides affordable housing and, potentially, housing stability for low-income families. Housing stability may be associated with lower incidence or prevalence and better management of a range of health conditions through many mechanisms. We aimed to test the hypotheses that public housing residency is associated with both housing stability and reduced risk of diabetes incidence, and the relationship between public housing and diabetes risk varies by levels of housing stability. Using 2004-16 World Trade Center Health Registry data, we compared outcomes (housing stability measured by sequence analysis of addresses, self-reported diabetes diagnoses) between 730 New York City public housing …

Health Justice Is Racial Justice: A Legal Action Agenda For Health Disparities, Sheila Foster, Yael Cannon, Maxwell Gregg Bloche

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Acknowledging the urgency of both health and racial justice in this moment, Sheila Foster, Yael Cannon, and M. Gregg Bloche set forth a legal agenda to fight the health effects of racism in housing, policing, the environment, and other areas.

The Pieces Of Housing Integration, Kristen Barnes

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

Notwithstanding the enactment of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, accomplishing racially-integrated housing across the United States remains an unattained goal. The costs associated with this failure are innumerable. Black Americans have endured harms in many areas, including health, education, wealth, and employment. More broadly, the nation has incurred considerable socioeconomic and political costs. In the interdisciplinary book, Moving Toward Integration, authors Richard Sander, Yana Kucheva, and Jonathan Zasloff analyze why the promise of racially-integrated housing remains unfulfilled and identify noteworthy strategies for changing course. Engaging with their arguments, this article highlights several structural impediments to altering racial housing …

Micro-Housing In Seattle Update: Combating “Seattle-Ization”, Taylor Haines

Seattle University Law Review SUpra

No abstract provided.

How The Law Fails Tenants (And Not Just During A Pandemic), Sarah Schindler, Kellen Zale

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, all levels of government are considering how to protect public health by keeping people in their homes, even if they can no longer afford their monthly mortgage or rent payments. The protections that have emerged thus far have been far more protective of homeowners than renters. This essay exposes how the disparity in legal protections for these two groups is not unique to this pandemic. Rather, the crisis has merely uncovered longstanding, deep-rooted patterns within legal doctrines, governmental programs, and public policies that bestow favorable treatment upon homeowners at the expense of renters. …

Should Covid-19 Empower Strata Corporations To Ban Non-Residents?, Douglas C. Harris

All Faculty Publications

Stories are appearing of condominium developments that have banned non-residents in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, they are following governments in Canada at many levels, including national, provincial, and Indigenous, that have prohibited non-residents who are not essential service workers from entering their jurisdictions.

Community Building At Amalgamated Housing Co-Operative, Janet Butler Munch

Publications and Research

Amalgamated Housing Co-operative is located north of the Jerome Park Reservoir in The Bronx. Sponsored by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union (A.C.W.U.), this development opened in 1927 under the New York State Limited Dividend Housing Law of 1926.1 Built as affordable housing for moderate-income workers, the limited dividend housing legislation granted tax exemptions to the co-operative for a period of 20 years. Its residents were "co-operators," not tenants, who would own shares for their apartments in the development. Now in its ninth decade of operation, the Amalgamated is the oldest limited dividend housing development in the country and has been …

The Right To Housing In Spain: Community Action And Alternative Housing Models, Georgia Sparks

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The right to housing is guaranteed by Spain's constitution, the principles of the European Union, and U.N. human rights treaties to which Spain is signatory, yet Spain scarcely provides affordable housing and leaves its citizens struggling with poverty and unable to find a place to live. Unlike much of the rest of Europe, Spain’s social rented sector represents less than 1% of its total housing stock. Through policies that favor homeownership, promote the real estate market, and privatize social housing, Spain has left its citizens reliant on the private market for their fundamental need for housing. Social movements and nonprofit …

Landlord-Tenant Revolution Redux: New York’S “Rad” Landlord-Tenant Law Revisions, Shelby D. Green, Samuel R. Middleton, Britney L. Frates

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In June 2019, New York adopted the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 (HSTPA), 2019 N.Y Laws ch. 36, amending various sections of the existing substantive and procedural laws regulating landlord-tenant relations. Calling the HSTPA “rad” suggests two things: from the perspective of housing advocates and tenants, it is “awesome” but for property owners and investors, it is concernedly “radical.”

Both meanings are apt because of the sweeping changes the HSTPA makes to the traditional landlord-tenant dynamic--from tenancy creation to perpetual rent controls to post-judgment relief, creating what might be described as a “statutory lease.” Both sides of …

Housing The Homeless Population During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Governments’ Ethical Responsibility, Amy Holmes

Center for Health Law Policy and Bioethics

COVID-19 took the world by storm in late 2019. Governments acted to ensure that their populations were as protected as possible through stay-at-home orders and the closure of stores, restaurants, and public spaces around the world. Stay-at-home orders work well when citizens have somewhere to stay, but those experiencing homelessness face the almost insurmountable challenge of staying safe and healthy without access to a safe place to stay. COVID-19 has spread rapidly through the homeless population, and as such poses a risk to the population as a whole as the world begins to reopen. Without access to adequate sanitation supplies …

In West Philadelphia Born And Raised Or Moving To Bel-Air? Racial Steering As A Consequence Of Using Race Data On Real Estate Websites, Nadiyah J. Humber

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fair Housing Enforcement In The Age Of Digital Advertising: A Closer Look At Facebook’S Marketing Algorithms, Nadiyah J. Humber, James Matthews

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reframing Housing: Incorporating Public Law Principles Into Private Law, Kristen Barnes

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

A new public-private law paradigm is developing with respect to the relationship of the state to private contracts. The paradigm melds private law concepts like unconscionability, good faith, and fair dealing with the public human rights principles of dignity and vulnerability. I trace this paradigm shift in the context of the housing law of Spain, where several rich cultural and legal resources have inspired a new sensibility with regard to residential mortgage loan contracts, rental agreements, and the overall duties and obligations of governments to address the citizenry's housing needs. Although this reorientation reflects decisions from the European Court of …

Religious Liberty In A Pandemic, Caroline Mala Corbin

Articles

The coronavirus pandemic caused an unprecedented shutdown of the United States. The stay-at-home orders issued by most states typically banned large gatherings of any kind, including religious services. Churches sued, arguing that these bans violated their religious liberty rights by treating worship services more strictly than analogous activities that were not banned, such as shopping at a liquor store or superstore. This Essay examines these claims, concluding that the constitutionality of the bans turns on the science of how the pathogen spreads, and that the best available scientific evidence supports the mass gathering bans.

Critical Developments In Housing Policy, Kat Meyers, Cheryl Gonzales, Edward Josephson, Andrew Scherer, Michael C. Pollack

Articles

The 2019 Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights and Social Justice Symposium, Critical Developments in NY Housing Policy, brought leaders in NYC housing law to campus for a discussion on recent changes to tenants’ rights in the 2019 New York Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act.

The event began with a keynote introduction by Kat Meyers, Staff Attorney in the Law Reform Unit of the Legal Aid Society, explaining the context of the new laws.

After a short break, Cardozo's Professor Pollack moderated a panel with participants Honorable Cheryl Gonzales, Supervising Judge in Kings County, Edward Josephson, Director of Litigation …

Discrimination, The Speech That Enables It, And The First Amendment, Helen Norton

Publications

Imagine that you’re interviewing for your dream job, only to be asked by the hiring committee whether you’re pregnant. Or HIV positive. Or Muslim. Does the First Amendment protect your interviewers’ inquiries from government regulation? This Article explores that question.

Antidiscrimination laws forbid employers, housing providers, insurers, lenders, and other gatekeepers from relying on certain characteristics in their decision-making. Many of these laws also regulate those actors’ speech by prohibiting them from inquiring about applicants’ protected class characteristics; these provisions seek to stop illegal discrimination before it occurs by preventing gatekeepers from eliciting information that would enable them to discriminate. …

Disabling Fascism: A Struggle For The Last Laugh In Trump’S America, Madeleine M. Plasencia

Articles

Six years before the start of the Second World War and seven months after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany, the German government instituted the “Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases.” The moral depravity that started as a sterilization program targeting “useless eaters” and lives “unworthy of life” degenerated into a “euthanasia” program that murdered at least 250,000 people with mental and physical dis/abilities as an “open secret” until 1941, when the Bishop of Munster, Clemens August Count von Galen, delivered a sermon protesting the killing of “unproductive people.”2 Although the Trump Administration has not yet driven …

A Tale Of Two Markets: Regulation And Innovation In Post-Crisis Mortgage And Structured Finance Markets, William Wilson Bratton, Adam J. Levitin

Articles

This Article takes stock of post-financial crisis regulatory developments to tell a tale of two markets within a political economy of financial regulation. The financial crisis stemmed from excessive risk-taking and dodgy practices in the subprime home mortgage market, a market that owed its existence to private-label securitization. The pre-crisis boom in private label mortgage-backed securities could never have happened, however, without financing from an array of structured products and vehicles created in the capital markets-CDOs, CDO2 s, and SIVs. It was these capital markets products that magnified mortgage credit risk and transmitted it into the financial system's vulnerable nodes. …

Reflections On Moving Toward Integration And Modern Exclusionary-Zoning Cases Under The Fair Housing Act, Robert G. Schwemm

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article has two parts: Part I presents my views on Moving Toward Integration [Richard H. Sander et al., Moving Toward Integration: The Past and Future of Fair Housing (2018)], and Part II examines one of the book’s policy recommendations for furthering residential integration—exclusionary zoning litigation—along with some of the roadblocks to this and other pro-integration efforts erected by the Trump Administration.

Source-Of-Income Discrimination And The Fair Housing Act, Robert G. Schwemm

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Amending the federal Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) to ban “source-of-income” discrimination has been discussed for over twenty years. During this time, a growing number of states and localities (including many of the nation’s largest cities) have taken this step by amending their fair housing laws to prohibit discrimination against Section 8 voucher holders and others based on their source of income. Meanwhile, bills proposing such an amendment to the FHA have regularly been introduced, including four in the current Congress.

Proponents of such an amendment say it would help fulfill the voucher program’s goal of providing low-income families with a …

The Costs And Benefits Of Affordable Housing: A Partial Solution To The Conflict Of Competing Goods, Michael R. Diamond

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this Article, I extend a prior inquiry into the costs borne by society due to the lack of enough decent, affordable housing units. I previously outlined those costs and suggested a combination of public cost savings and public and private benefits that would accrue by providing that housing. I posited that the savings and benefits, in the aggregate, could at least substantially offset the costs and might even exceed them. If that is so, I queried, why has society not produced the needed units? In answering that question, I offered several possible responses: inadequate resources, racism, and public choice …

Zoning For Families, Sara C. Bronin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Is a group of eight unrelated adults and three children living together and sharing meals, household expenses, and responsibilities—and holding themselves out to the world to have long-term commitments to each other—a family? Not according to most zoning codes—including that of Hartford, Connecticut, where the preceding scenario presented itself a few years ago. Zoning, which is the local regulation of land use, almost always defines family, limiting those who may live in a dwelling unit to those who satisfy the zoning code’s definition. Often times, this definition is drafted in a way that excludes many modern living arrangements and preferences. …

The Lihtc Program, Racially/Ethically Concentrated Areas Of Poverty, And High-Opportunity Neighborhoods, Brandon Weiss, Kirk Mcclure, Anne R. Willamson, Hye-Sung Han

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit ("LIHTC") program remains the nation's largest affordable housing production program. LIHTC units are under-represented in the neighborhood that both promote movement to high opportunity neighborhoods and affirmatively further fair housing. State and local officials should play an active role in guiding site selection decisions and ensuring that LIHTC developments are located in a manner that affirmatively furthers fair housing. Planners can use newly available data discussed herein to identify high-opportunity tracts.

Critical Developments In Housing Policy - Symposium Comments, Kat Meyers, Cheryl Gonzales, Edward Josephson, Andrew Scherer

Articles & Chapters

Professor Scherer's talk starts on page 245

Affh And The Challenge Of Reparations In The Administrative State, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

America’s summer of racial reckoning has led to increased attention on proposals to provide reparations to Black Americans.

Reparations discussions typically concern securing compensation for slavery. The racial harm caused by the administrative state is generally less of a focus, even though racial exclusions and discrimination in 20th-century administrative programs helped shape contemporary disparities in housing, wealth, and opportunity that endure today. A provision of federal housing law provides a window into the roots of racial harm enacted through administrative state programs, as well as the limits of administrative law as a tool for repairing this harm.