Law Commons^™

White Paper - Sustainable Housing For Downtown Jacksonville, Jose David Caicedo Gallego

Dean's Leadership Council Library Research Prize

This paper examines the issue of sustainable housing in downtown Jacksonville, focusing on the role of the Downtown Investment Authority (DIA). Established in 2012, the DIA serves to drive growth, and dynamic several aspects in the downtown core. The paper delves into the impacts of the lack of affordable housing on residents, businesses, and visitors, highlighting its implications for health, well-being, and economic prosperity. Drawing on scholarly research and empirical evidence, it exposes the importance of housing policies as determinants of health and advocates for integrated approaches to housing development. Additionally, the paper provides data-driven insights into population demographics, housing …

How Summary Eviction Proceedings Fail Individuals Facing Housing Discrimination, Katherine Alonzo

ERSJ Blog

Every year, over three million American households are threatened with eviction from their homes. The consequences of eviction are “dire” and affect “every facet of life” that go beyond someone’s physical safety and livelihood. For instance, evictions may leave people unhoused, “[fracture] the integrity of their families, [crush] their livelihoods, [damage] their mental and physical health and their safety, [deprive] them of their place in community and, ultimately, [tear] apart the fabric of their communities.” While Americans of all backgrounds face evictions, there are often large racial, ethnic, and gender disparities among those who face eviction with Black Americans, women, …

Sidewalk Government, Michael C. Pollack

Articles

This Article is about one of the most used, least studied spaces in the country: the sidewalk.

It is easy to think of sidewalks simply as spaces for pedestrians, and that is exactly how most scholars, policymakers, and laws treat them. But this view is fundamentally mistaken. In big cities and small towns, sidewalks are also where we gather, demonstrate, dine, exercise, rest, and shop. They are host to commerce and infrastructure. They are spaces of public access and sources of private obligation. And in all of these things, sidewalks are sites of under-appreciated conflict. The centrality of sidewalks in …

Do Americans Support More Housing?, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

An analysis of opinion poll data on housing issues. The article finds that Americans generally believe that their community needs more housing of all types, but are more closely divided about whether such housing should be in their own neighborhoods. The article further finds that members of minority groups, lower-income Americans, and younger Americans are more pro-housing than older, affluent whites.

Closing The Renter-Sized Gap In The Inflation Reduction Act: How Housing Policy Can Help Climate Legislation Achieve Environmental Justice, Madison M. Schettler

Connecticut Law Review

The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August 2022 was an important step forward in American climate policy. The Act is essential to the United States’ goal of effective climate change mitigation efforts, and other countries have even begun to use it as a model for climate mitigation. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provides the framework by which the United States will transition away from fossil fuels and move towards an energy grid powered predominantly by renewable sources. For the first time, the Act addresses head-on the climate and environmental injustices that exist in the United States due …

New York City Relaxing Environmental Review Rules For Housing Construction, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

Faced with a severe housing shortage, New York City is exempting the construction of much new housing from the environmental review processes and taking many other steps to encourage such construction throughout the city. Several of these moves will also help the transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Reflections On Arlington Heights: Fifty Years Of Exclusionary Zoning Litigation And Beyond, Robert G. Schwemm

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Fifty years ago, when I was two years out of law school, I began work on a case—Metropolitan Housing Development Corp. v. Village of Arlington Heights—that was destined to take on epic proportions in the housing discrimination field. The case started with a complaint filed in 1972, shortly before I joined the plaintiffs’ legal team, and was not finally resolved until 1980, after I’d left that team to become a law professor. During the seven years that I worked on the Arlington Heights case, it produced a major Supreme Court decision on standing and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause3 …

Policy Brief, Zachary Owen

Dean's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Scholarship

The US grapples with a housing crisis, exacerbated in part by a shortage of conventional mortgage loans. Data from 2020 reveals a severe racial disparity, with 27.1% of Black mortgage applicants denied compared to only 13.6% of White mortgage applicants. These denial trends are highly correlated with homeownership rates. Current trends in homeownership by race mirror or exceed those present during the discriminatory practices of the 1960s. Lenders often cite low credit scores and high debt-to-income ratios as grounds for denial. Therefore, proposed solutions include mandating the inclusion of rental payment history in credit scores, offering free homebuying education, and …

How Bad Is Bad Enough?: Gatekeeping A Tenant's Right To 100% Habitable Housing, Sean Ahern

Faculty Scholarship

Tenants seeking to defend against eviction and to correct substandard conditions in their homes are hamstrung. Even in jurisdictions with “progressive housing policies,” there are steep doctrinal hurdles placed in front of tenants who try to establish a breach of the warranty of habitability and to defend against eviction. Such obstacles are baked directly into the judicial system and the standards that the judiciary applies in practice. While there are many systemic barriers to tenants vindicating themselves of the right to a fully habitable home, the most perniciously overlooked offender is a “substantiality” standard which trial court judges use to …