Housing Law Commons^™

The Passage Of The Fair Housing Act Of 1968: Stories To Be Told, Shelby D. Green

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The enactment of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 ("FHA") is a story filled with intrigue - coercion, duplicity, and back-room deals. In The Secret History of the Fair Housing Act, Professor Jonathan Zasloff provides a riveting account of the maneuvers by the various protagonists in that story. Review of Jonathan Zasloff’s The Secret History of the Fair Housing Act, 53 Hary. J. on Legis. 247 (2016), http://property.jotwell.com/the-passage-of-the-fair-housing-act-of-1968-stories-to-be-told/.

Airbnb And The Battle Between Internet Exceptionalism And Local Control Of Land Use, Jamila Jefferson-Jones, Stephen R. Miller

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

The Federal Housing Administration And African-American Homeownership, David Reiss

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Healthy Zoning, Matthew J. Parlow

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Segregation, Violence, And Restorative Justice: Restoring Our Communities, 50 J. Marshall L. Rev. 487 (2017), Michael Seng

UIC Law Review

This article will explain why restorative justice is an effective remedy in resolving the social and economic problems that plague our communities. A narrow approach will not succeed. Restorative justice solutions require participation by the entire community; nothing less will work.

Does The Threat Of Gentrification Justify Restrictive Zoning?, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Historically, progressives have opposed restrictive zoning, arguing that by restricting the housing supply to high-end housing, zoning reduces the supply of housing available to lower-income Americans. But recently, some progressives have suggested that new market-rate housing facilitates gentrification and displacement of lower-income renters. This article critically examines that theory.

In Search Of Smarter Homeowner Subsidies, Matthew Rossman

Faculty Publications

Critics have long assailed the federal tax code’s principal homeowner subsidies as lucrative tax breaks for upper income households that are essentially worthless to those financially constrained from purchasing a home. This article examines the subsidies through a different lens and reveals another serious flaw. It demonstrates how the homeowner subsidies, which represent a massive federal investment in homeownership, do very little to contain and instead probably increase costs on others that result from certain types of housing choices and that other federal policies seek to remedy. These negative housing externalities include: (i) blight, deterioration, and public health risks in …

Bringing Home The Right To Housing To Advance Urban Sustainability, Lisa Alexander

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

The title of my talk today is Bringing Home the Right to Housing to Advance Urban Sustainability. You may ask what is the right to housing? Why do we need to bring it home? And what does it have to do with the broader topic of today’s symposium, urban sustainability?

The human right to housing, although not a formal American federal or constitutional right, provides an important legal and normative framework that can help American cities and states better balance the needs of owners and non-owners in local housing and development struggles. If American cities and states want to create …

The Multifaceted Manifestations Of The Poor Door: Examining Forms Of Separation In Inclusionary Housing, Conor Arpey

American University Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

Equitably Housing (Almost) Half A Nation Of Renters, Andrea Boyack

Faculty Publications

America’s population of renters is growing faster than the supply of available rental units. Rental vacancies are reaching new lows, and rental rates are reaching new highs. Millions of former homeowners have lost their homes in foreclosure and, due to today’s much tighter mortgage underwriting realities, will not realistically re-enter the ranks of owner-occupants. For a number of reasons – variety of incomes, different stages in life, and a range of personal preferences and lifestyles – homeownership is not for everyone. And yet federal government housing policy has consistently prioritized homeownership over renter-specific issues, such as affordability and rental supply …

Carson’S Call Of Duty, David J. Reiss

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

Dr. Ben Carson, the nominee for Housing and Urban Development Secretary, has made almost no public pronouncements about housing policy. The one exception is a 2015 Washington Times opinion piece in which he addresses the Obama Administration’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule. While Dr. Carson appears to agree with the Obama Administration’s diagnosis of the problem of segregation, he attacks its solution. If he refuses to vigorously enforce the rule at HUD, it is still incumbent on him to address the underlying problem it was meant to address.

Segregative-Effect Claims Under The Fair Housing Act, Robert G. Schwemm

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Two types of discriminatory-effect claims have been recognized under the federal Fair Housing Act (FHA): (1) disparate impact; and (2) segregative effect. Neither requires a showing of illegal intent, and both, according to a 2013 regulation promulgated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), are subject to the same three-step burden-shifting proof scheme, which assigns the plaintiff the initial burden of proving that the defendant’s challenged practice causes a discriminatory effect. Both the disparate-impact and segregative-effect theories date back to appellate decisions from the 1970s, although the Supreme Court’s endorsement of the former in 2015 in Texas …

Side By Side: Revitalizing Urban Cores And Ensuring Residential Diversity, Andrea Boyack

Faculty Publications

Fifty years ago, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. expressed a hope that someday people of all races would “live side by side in decent, safe, and sanitary housing.” Residential patterns in America today, however, remain highly segregated by race and income. The Fair Housing Act outlawed overt housing discrimination and unjustified discriminatory impacts, but zoning laws and housing finance structures have continued to impede housing integration, leaving communities nearly as racially homogenous as they were in the mid 20th century. These separate neighborhoods are far from equal. The majority of people who reside in financially distressed city-center neighborhoods are …

Reflections On The Persistence Of Racial Segregation In Housing, Alan C. Weinstein

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article is Weinstein's reflection on the Annual Sullivan Lecture entitled Crossing Two Color Lines: Interracial Marriage and Residential Segregation in Chicago by Dorothy E. Roberts (2016).

INTRODUCTION My reflection on Professor Roberts' Sullivan Lecture poses two questions. First, how far have we come as a nation from the hypersegregated housing patterns of the 1930s through 1960s that Professor Roberts described in her lecture? Regrettably, the answer appears to be not far at all. Further, we are today faced with a second form of hypersegregation, one based on income rather than race. Second, why have we made so little progress …

Cities, Inclusion And Exactions, Audrey G. Mcfarlane, Randall K. Johnson

Faculty Works

Cities across the country are adapting mandatory inclusionary zoning. Yet, consensus about the appropriate constitutional standard to measure the propriety of mandatory inclusionary zoning has not been fully reached. Under one doctrinal lens, inclusionary zoning is a valid land use regulation adopted to ensure a proper balance of housing within the jurisdiction. Under another doctrinal lens, challengers seek to characterize inclusionary zoning as an exaction, a discretionary condition subject to a heightened standard of review addressing the specific negative impact caused by an individual project on the supply of affordable housing in a jurisdiction. Drawing from the experience of Baltimore, …

Introduction, Julian Conrad Juergensmeyer, Karen Marie Johnston

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Ending Disparities And Achieving Justice For Individuals With Mental Disabilities, Robert K. Goldman, Sheila Shea

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Blowing Past Minnesota Nice: New Opportunities Arise To Utilize Disparate-Impact Theory And Practice In Twin Cities Low-Income Housing Discrimination Litigation, Anne M. Robertson

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Inclusion Imagined: Fair Housing As Metropolitan Equity, David D. Troutt

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fair Housing: Introduction, Buffalo Law Review

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Push Green Development Zone: Building Housing Equity From The Ground Up, Sam Magavern, Aaron Bartley

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Equitably Housing (Almost) Half A Nation Of Renters, Andrea J. Boyack

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Affirmatively Furthering Equal Protection: Constitutional Meaning In The Administration Of Fair Housing, Blake Emerson

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Evicted, Nicole P. Dyszlewski

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Race, Rhetoric, And Judicial Opinions: Missouri As A Case Study, Brad Desnoyer, Anne Alexander

Faculty Works

This Essay studies the relationship between race, rhetoric, and history in three twentieth century segregation cases: State ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, Kraemer v. Shelley, and Liddell v. Board of Education. Part I gives a brief overview of the scholarship of Critical Race Theory, majoritarian narratives and minority counter-narratives, and the judiciary’s rhetoric in race-based cases. Part II analyzes the narratives and language of Gaines, Kraemer, and Liddell, provides the social context of these cases, and traces their historical outcomes.

The Essay contends that majoritarian narratives with problematic themes continue to perpetuate even though court opinions have evolved to use …

The Federal Housing Administration And African-American Homeownership, David Reiss

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The United States Federal Housing Administration (“FHA”) has been a versatile tool of government since it was created during the Great Depression. It achieved success with some of its goals and had a terrible record with others. Its impact on African-American households falls, in many ways, into the latter category. The FHA began redlining African-American communities at its very beginning. Its later days have been marred by high default and foreclosure rates in those same communities.

At the same time, the FHA’s overall impact on the housing market has been immense. Over its lifetime, it has insured more than 40 …

New York City's "Universal Access" Legislation: One Giant Leap For The Civil Right To Counsel, Andrew Scherer

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Laying The Foundation: The Private Rental Market And Affordable Housing, Ezra Rosser

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The private rental housing market plays a critical, and often overlooked, role in shaping the lives of the poor and the surrounding community. This brief Article presents Matthew Desmond’s rich portrayal of low-income tenants and their landlords in his groundbreaking new book, Evicted, which shows how poor housing conditions and cycles of eviction impact poor families. The Article, which also draws upon Courtney Anderson’s work connecting housing instability with problematic student turnover at an elementary school, highlights the importance of story-telling. Without some sort of subsidy to cover the gap between the ability of the poor to pay for housing …

Disparate Impact And Mortgage Lending: A Beginner's Guide, Alex Gano

University of Colorado Law Review

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the federal government began to enforce fair lending laws with a vigor previously unseen. To hold lenders accountable for the racially discriminatory effects of their mortgage lending practices, federal prosecutors and financial regulators applied the theory of disparate impact to fair lending laws for the first time.

Unclear, however, is what legal standards exist to evaluate allegations of discriminatory effects in this industry. No court has ever decided a fair lending case under a theory of disparate impact on its merits. That will likely change soon as major municipalities are pushing the boundaries …

Owning And Dissolving Strata Property, Douglas C. Harris

All Faculty Publications

Strata or condominium property creates multiple privately owned lots or units within an association of owners. Dissolving strata property involves winding-up the association and terminating the private interests. As a result, the non-consensual dissolution of strata property involves the taking of property from those owners who oppose dissolution. The owners of individual lots become co-owners of the land formerly within the association, but the non-consenting owners have their property interests in separate lots taken from them. Beginning with the observation that non-consensual dissolution of strata property results in a taking of property, this article analyzes British Columbia’s move to facilitate …