Law Commons^™

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 …

Racism Didn't Stop At Jim Crow, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Reviews

Nearly 50 years ago, the Kerner Commission famously declared that “[o]ur nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” The picture has changed distressingly little since then. In the 1950 Census, the average African American in a metropolitan area lived in a neighborhood that was 35 percent white—the same figure as in the 2010 Census. In 2010, the average white American still lived in a neighborhood that was more than 75 percent white. America’s largest metropolitan areas—particularly, but not exclusively, in the North—continue to score high on many common measures of racial segregation. And racial segregation …

Rights At Risk In Privatized Public Housing, Jaime Alison Lee

All Faculty Scholarship

Traditional public housing is dwindling. Federal policy has increasingly encouraged privatization, shifting stewardship of public housing out of the hands of government and into the hands of private, for-profit companies. Privatization in this context has both benefits and risks. A particularly compelling area of study is the attempt by lawmakers to conscript private contractors into serving public policy goals. Private landlords are obligated not merely to provide housing, but to conduct themselves in ways that promote the interests of vulnerable people. The case of public housing suggests that legislative mandates and contractual obligations are not enough to assure this outcome, …

Poverty, Dignity, And Public Housing, Jaime Alison Lee

All Faculty Scholarship

Antipoverty efforts are persistently subverted by broad societal contempt for poor people. The belief that poor people are morally and behaviorally inferior, and that their personal failings are the cause of their own poverty, is a staple of American opinion polls and political rhetoric. This presumption is so widespread that it even permeates antipoverty programs, which treat poor people with disdain even as they offer aid and assistance.

Income discrimination creates not just social stigma, but legal inequalities. The Supreme Court recognized some forty years ago that welfare law promoted wealth-based Constitutional inequalities, and responded by invoking the doctrines of …

Arrests As Regulation, Eisha Jain

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

For some arrested individuals, the most important consequences of their arrest arise outside the criminal justice system. Arrests alone—regardless of whether they result in conviction—can lead to a range of consequences, including deportation, eviction, license suspension, custody disruption, or adverse employment actions. But even as courts, scholars, and others have drawn needed attention to the civil consequences of criminal convictions, they have paid relatively little attention to the consequences of arrests in their own right. This article aims to fill that gap by providing an account of how arrests are systemically used outside the criminal justice system. Noncriminal justice actors …

Housing And Development Board Flats, Trust And Other Equitable Doctrines, Hang Wu Tang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Although 85% of the population of Singapore reside in Housing and Development Board (HDB) flats, this area of the law remains largely under investigated. A perennially contentious issue is the complex interplay between equitable doctrines and the Housing and Development Act. In this article, the author reviews the jurisprudence pertaining to express trust, resulting trust and common intention constructive trust and the HDB flat. This article will also examine the applicability of other equitable doctrines such as donatio mortis causa and proprietary estoppel in relation to the HDB flat. In particular, this article will explore the applicability of the common …

A Domestic Right Of Return?: Race, Rights, And Residency In New Orleans In The Aftermath Of Hurricane Katrina, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

This article begins with a critical account of what occurred in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This critique serves as the backdrop for a discussion of whether there are international laws or norms that give poor, black Katrina victims the right to return to and resettle in New Orleans. In framing this discussion, this article first briefly explores some of the housing deprivations suffered by Katrina survivors that have led to widespread displacement and dispossession. The article then discusses two of the chief barriers to the return of poor blacks to New Orleans: the broad perception of a race-crime nexus …

The Paradox Of The Drug Elimination Program In New York City Public Housing, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Garth Davies, Jan Holland

Faculty Scholarship

In this study, we examine the effects of the DEP intervention at three levels of complementary theoretical and practical relevance: the public housing development itself, the neighborhood in which public housing is situated, and the police precinct where the tract is located. From surveys of residents, observations of program activities, and analyses of NYCHA's program records, we compiled detailed information on the components of DEP and the reactions of public housing residents to each type of intervention. We then analyzed panel data from 1985-1996 to estimate the effects of DEP on crime rates in and around the city's public housing …

Seniors In Public Housing, Jan Mutchler, Francis G. Caro

Gerontology Institute Publications

In recent years, the Boston Housing Authority (BHA) discovered that nearly 40% of the seniors (residents aged 62 and over) living in their public housing developments were living in family housing developments rather than in senior/disabled housing developments. Administrators at the BHA were aware that some seniors lived in family developments, but they were committed to learning more systematically about this population and their needs. They turned to the Gerontology Institute at the University at Massachusetts Boston as a partner in this effort. With funding from the Boston Foundation, the collaboration resulted in a research and policy development effort on …

Book Review, W Dennis Keating

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Reviewing L. Vale, Reclaiming Public Housing: A Half Century of Struggle in Three Public Neighborhoods, Harvard University Press (2002)

Recent Development, Public Housing In Singapore: The Use Of Ends-Based Reasoning In The Quest For A Workable System, Aya Gruber

Publications

No abstract provided.

Trial-Type Ceremonies And Defendant Behavior: 'Moralizing' And 'Cooling In' In An Eviction Setting, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

This study uses hearing transcripts to examine judge-defendant interaction in a trial-type setting. The setting is a public housing eviction hearing; judges are eviction board members and defendants are tenants facing eviction for non-payment of rent. All tenants in the sample were formally evicted, but in each case the execution of the eviction order was stayed on the condition that the tenant pay his rent. Two forms of verbal interaction are identified. The first, “moralizing” is deemed present when one or more board members directs a degrading remark toward the tenant. The second, “cooling in” is deemed present when one …