Housing Law Commons^™

Racism Knocking At The Door: The Use Of Criminal Background Checks In Rental Housing, Valerie Schneider

University of Richmond Law Review

One of the harshest collateral consequences of an arrest or conviction is the impact a criminal record can have on one’s ability to secure housing. Because racial bias permeates every aspect of the criminal justice system as well as the housing market, this collateral consequence—the inability to find a place to live after an arrest or conviction—disproportionately affects minorities.

In 2016, after decades of appearing to encourage local public housing providers to adopt harsh policies barring applicants with criminal records, the Office of General Counsel for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”) issued guidance instructing public …

Coordinated Action On School And Housing Integration: The Role Of State Government, Megan Haberle, Philip Tegeler

University of Richmond Law Review

In this essay, we assess the prospects for more coordinated government efforts to address housing and school segregation at the federal, state and local level. We conclude that multiple barriers to concerted action at the federal and local level, particularly to addressing racial and economic segregation across local boundaries, suggest a more central role for state governments than has previously been the case. State-level laws and programs can succeed as drivers of integration in a way that is distinct from either federal or local interventions, because of the state’s direct control over the key policies that drive modern school and …

Fifty Years Of Fair Housing: Learning From The Past, Looking To The Future, Douglas Wilder

University of Richmond Law Review

I think sometimes you need to wonder where we were in 1968. It wasn’t just the Fair Housing Act that was passed in 1968. What happened in 1968? George Wallace was running for president. Hubert Humphrey was running for president, and Richard Nixon as well. It wasn’t just the assassination of Dr. King, we also had the assassination of Robert Kennedy. We likewise had the Vietnam War, and America was a mess. We had something else occurring in 1968. That was the Kerner Commission Report, that Dr. Crutcher mentioned had been instrumental in the fair housing bill. And they made …

Fair Housing Act At Fifty, Sara Pratt

University of Richmond Law Review

I’m going to talk a little bit about why it is that the Fair Housing Act at fifty still is relevant. I mean, after all, should it really be relevant?

How is it that a law that languished in Congress for years and then was abruptly passed when our country was in deep anger, grief, and disbelief at the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King is still relevant? There’s virtually no legislative history around the passage of the law. It was going nowhere in Congress until Dr. King was assassinated. There was no time to build up to it in …

Housing Supply And The Common Wealth, Benjamin P. Campbell

University of Richmond Law Review

It’s a powerful thing to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, something that actually happened and has actually had an effect. I grew up in segregated Virginia, so I have a pretty powerful sense of the passage of time here. It’s given us the opportunity today to review and mark human progress, to take stock of where we are and to identify the efforts and issues of our time. The victories here have changed the nation, and the task is still daunting.

Unjust Cities? Gentrification, Integration, And The Fair Housing Act, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

University of Richmond Law Review

What does gentrification mean for fair housing? This article considers the possibility that gentrification should be celebrated as a form of integration alongside a darker narrative that sees gentrification as necessarily unstable and leading to inequality or displacement of lower-income, predominantly of color, residents. Given evidence of both possibilities, this article considers how the Fair Housing Act might be deployed to minimize gentrification’s harms while harnessing some of the benefits that might attend integration and movement of higher-income residents to cities. Ultimately, the article urges building on the fair housing approach but employing a broader set of tools to advance …

Affordable Housing: Of Inefficiency, Market Distortion, And Government Failure, Michael Diamond

University of Richmond Law Review

In this essay, I examine the types of costs that are imposed on society as a whole due to the absence of a sufficient number of decent housing units that are affordable to the low-income population. These costs present themselves in relation to health care, education, employment, productivity, homelessness, and incarceration. Some of the costs are direct expenditures while others are the result of lost opportunities. My hypothesis is that these costs are significant and offer, at the very least, a substantial offset to the cost of creating and subsidizing the operation of the necessary number of affordable housing units …

Affordable Housing: Of Inefficiency, Market Distortion, And Government Failure, Michael R. Diamond

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this essay, I examine the types of costs that are imposed on society as a whole due to the absence of a sufficient number of decent housing units that are affordable to the low-income population. These costs present themselves in relation to health care, education, employment, productivity, homelessness, and incarceration. Some of the costs are direct expenditures while others are the result of lost opportunities.

My hypothesis is that these costs are significant and offer, at the very least, a substantial offset to the cost of creating and subsidizing the operation of the necessary number of affordable housing units …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

When A Tent Is Your Castle: Constitutional Protection Against Unreasonable Searches Of Makeshift Dwellings Of Unhoused Persons, Evanie Parr

Seattle University Law Review

This Note will argue that all jurisdictions should follow the Washington State Court of Appeals, Division II in validating makeshift dwellings used by people experiencing homelessness as spaces protected from unwarranted police intrusions by shifting evaluations of “reasonable expectations of privacy” to a more equitable standard that appreciates the realities of economic disparity. This approach to constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures is imperative to protect the rights of people experiencing homelessness, given that such individuals are regularly subjected to invasions of privacy and heightened exposure to the criminal justice system.

Blackfeet Housing V. Reevis, Et Al, 18-Ap-02 (Blkft. Tr. Ct. App., Feb. 12, 2019), Blackfeet Appellate Court

Court Decisions

In the Blackfeet Tribal Court of Appeals, the Court upheld a lower court determination, upholding an eviction, and that the defendant did violate their lease agreement. The appellate Court finds nothing in the Tribal Trial Court record which gives cause for review of any legal issue and does not find cause to set aside any trial court determinations of fact.

Path To Destruction: Cook County's Property Tax System Is A Cause For Concern As It Mimics The Defunct Taxing Procedures That Led To The Detroit Foreclosure Crisis, Robert Romano

Chicago-Kent Law Review

For decades, Cook County, Illinois, has had one of the highest property tax rates in the country, and as a result the County has begun to experience unprecedented foreclosure rates which has contributed, in part, to the State’s significant population decline. Residents are forced to endure a property tax system that disproportionately burdens low-income homeowners, while providing tax breaks to higher-income individuals and commercial owners. The primary causes and characteristics of Cook County’s defunct property tax system are strikingly similar to those that sent the City of Detroit spiraling into bankruptcy in 2013.

This note provides a comparative analysis of …

Cities, Fair Housing, And Gentrification: A Proposal In Progressive Federalism, David D. Troutt

Cardozo Law Review

This Essay divides in two Parts. In Part I, I will situate the three fair housing interests in the familiar AFFH planning environment, offering arguments to shape context. The harder task is implementation. What constitutes the specific laws and policies that indicate a city's commitment to fair housing? In Part II, I will draw upon some of the work that the center I direct at Rutgers Law School (the Center on Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity) has done in Newark, New Jersey, a working-class city experiencing an affordable housing crisis amid increasing economic development activity in the middle of one …

Promises Still To Keep: The Fair Housing Act Fifty Years Later, Paula A. Franzese, Stephanie J. Beach

Cardozo Law Review

This Article considers how the Act's aims have been impeded by drastic declines in the quantity and quality of available subsidized housing, the practice of tenant blacklisting, and exclusionary zoning. Those and other barriers exist as the need for affordable housing rises, with one in three Americans struggling to get by.' Reclaiming the Act's promise depends on the coalescing of diverse and varied alliances around the unifying premise that decent housing is a human right. We can and must arrive at a collective will to assure that no one is denied a safe place to call home and all are …

Regulating Short-Term Rentals In California's Costal Cities: Harmonizing Local Ordinances With The California Costal Act, Lucy Humphreys

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

In the past several years, local governments throughout California have debated and implemented new ordinances in order to regulate short-term rentals, such as those listed on peer-to-peer vacation rental platforms like Airbnb.California’s coastal cities face distinct challenges whentrying to regulate short-term rentals due to the popularity of short-term rentals in their jurisdictions, rising housing prices along the coast, and California Coastal Act requirements. One of the primary goals of the California Coastal Act is to maximize public access to the coast. This Article explores the interplay between state policy embodied by the Coastal Act and the ordinances passed by local …

Rigor And Relationships: The Positive Case For Integration In Schools And Neighborhoods, Rachel D. Godsil

Cardozo Law Review

This Essay first explores the current conditions of schools and neighborhoods and the impediments to achieving successful integration in schools- implicit bias, racial anxiety, and stereotype threat. Second, the Essay then identifies the strategies that are being employed in some schools to overcome these impediments and create quality schools that educate all students in a just and effective manner. Finally, the Essay explains how integrated neighborhoods would be the most effective long-term solution to the stereotyping and biases that underlie racial injustices across the board.

A Flood-Not A Ripple-Of Harm: Proximate Cause Under The Fair Housing Act, Justin P. Steil, Daniel Traficonte

Cardozo Law Review

Over the past decade, several city governments across the country have filed suits against banks pursuant to the Fair Housing Act seeking redress for municipal damages caused by the banks' discriminatory lending practices. Following the ruling in Bank of America Corp. v. City of Miami, lower courts are now confronting the question of where to "draw the line" of proximate causation under the Fair Housing Act, and specifically whether the harms experienced by cities as a result of banks' discriminatory lending meet the requirements of proximate causation. In suggesting a direction for lower courts, the Court in City of …

The Fair Housing Act After Fifty Years: Opening Remarks, Julián Castro

Cardozo Law Review

Fifty years ago, on this day in late March, the United States was about to go through one of the darkest stretches in modern American history. At the end of March 1968, President Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not run for reelection. Just a few days later, of course, on April 4th, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. A couple of months after that, on June 6th, Robert Kennedy died as he campaigned for President of the United States. Cities across our country were in a state of total unrest. It was, as many have described it, a year …

"Social Engineering": Notes On The Law And Political Economy Of Integration, Olatunde C. A. Johnson

Cardozo Law Review

This Article shifts the question of how to achieve integration away from the technocratic questions of planning and policy devices, however important, to the equally important questions of political economyhow to move a legal and political infrastructure that is engineered for segregation towards integration. No doubt this question is not fully answerable in a short Article and perhaps at all. Yet, it might be possible to gather some of what is already known about the dynamics of social change towards integration, build on that knowledge, and find openings in current law, politics, and social movements for charting a future course …

Eminent Domain In New York City, Aiden Hannon

Fordham Undergraduate Law Review

On the first of February, 2008, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the condemnation and subsequent development of several Brooklyn properties in Vanderbilt Yards that were obstructing the construction of a new stadium for the New Jersey Nets. The rationale behind the decision in Goldstein v. Pataki derives from the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, which holds that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use without just compensation.” The new construction project would bring a National Basketball Association franchise to Brooklyn, theoretically raising the tax revenue and creating more jobs, alongside sixteen high-rise apartments …

Married On Sunday, Evicted On Monday: Interpreting The Fair Housing Act's Prohibition Of Discrimination "Because Of Sex" To Include Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity, Joseph J. Railey

Buffalo Public Interest Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Properties Of Integration: Mixed-Income Housing As Discrimination Management, Audrey Mcfarlane

All Faculty Scholarship

Mixed-income housing is an increasingly popular approach to providing affordable housing. The technique largely went unnoticed until developers of mixed-income housing constructed buildings containing separate entrances for rich and poor residents. The ensuing “poor door” controversy illustrated that mixed-income housing, as both a method of affordable housing production and an integration strategy, is in unacknowledged tension with itself. This Article argues that, mixedincome housing is implemented as a surreptitious form of racial and economic integration that accommodates and replicates prevailing race and class assumptions detrimental to the needs and interests of low to moderate-income individuals in need of housing. The …

Housing, Healthism, And The Hud Smoke-Free Policy, Dave Fagundes, Jessica L. Roberts

Northwestern University Law Review

On July 30, 2018, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) rule prohibiting residents of public housing from smoking within twenty-five feet of any housing project took effect. These new regulations—HUD’s “smoke-free policy”—received near-universal acclaim as a means to improve public health, in particular by reducing vulnerable populations’ exposure to secondhand smoke. This Essay analyzes the smoke-free policy from the perspective of healthism—discrimination on the basis of health status. We argue that banning public housing residents from smoking is unfairly discriminatory for a variety of reasons. To start, the rule may not achieve its desired effects. Because a …

Proving The Point: Connections Between Legal And Mathematical Reasoning, Maria Termini

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Make New York Affordable Again, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Suggests a package of zoning reforms to hold down New York City housing costs, and responds to counterarguments.

A Euclid Dissent, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

In Euclid v. Ambler Realty, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of zoning, including zoning that excluded apartment houses and retail businesses. Although the decision was not unanimous, the Euclid minority did not write a formal dissent. The purpose of this article is to show what such a dissent should have looked like.

Do You Believe In Ghost Apartments?, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

According to the popular press, expensive cities are being overrun by "ghost apartments"- condominiums owned by wealthy foreigners, but used as investments rather than being rented out to local residents. This article points out that such apartments are in fact a very small percentage of housing supply, even in some cities that are supposedly overran with such condos. More importantly, the existence of new “ghost apartments” does not justify exclusionary zoning policies. If a city popular with foreign investors discourages construction of new housing, investors are likely to purchase older housing units, outbidding local residents for those units. In this …

The Hidden Fences Shaping Resegregation, Jeannine Bell

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article offers a window into the experiences that inform the neighborhood choices of middle-class and upper-middle-class Blacks. As I suggest below, there are many hidden fences, walling off white neighborhoods and restricting Blacks’ housing choices in de facto ways. These hidden fences exist in the form of the many challenges Blacks face when moving to white neighborhoods. The obstacles to easy, contented lives range from police harassment to anti-integrationist violence that push Blacks into less affluent neighborhoods. Ultimately, this Article demonstrates how race can circumscribe housing choice and social mobility, even in the absence of legal barriers restricting where …

The Least Restrictive Environment For Providing Education, Treatment, And Community Services For Persons With Disabilities: Rethinking The Concept, Donald H. Stone

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Arlington Heights Won In The Supreme Court But The Fair Housing Act’S Goal Of Promoting Racial Integration Saved The Low-Income Housing, Henry Rose

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.