Housing Law Commons^™

One Step Further: An Overview Of Canada’S Past And Present Responses To Homelessness And The Argument For Alternative Conceptions Of Property Ownership, Logan Billard

Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies

Homelessness in Canada continues to worsen year after year. Despite the shift from punitive, neoliberal policies to a human rights-based model, homelessness remains a national crisis. Federal initiatives like the National Housing Strategy Act and the Housing First Model aim to provide stable housing, but their impact remains limited. This paper explores the structural factors contributing to homelessness, including poverty, housing financialization, and systemic discrimination, particularly against Indigenous communities. It also highlights the limitations of the current human rights-based approach, focussing on the lack of enforceability and failure to create substantial, sustainable change due to systemic reliance on the financialization …

Goodbye, Zoning?, Michael Allan Wolf

UF Law Faculty Publications

American zoning is under attack on multiple fronts. The concerns of zoning's many critics range from social and racial justice, to private property rights, to the extreme shortage of affordable housing, to climate-change resilience and sustainability. A growing number of voices have called for, at a minimum, the elimination of single-family zones; some even champion the abolition of this ubiquitous method of American land use regulation. This Article is the first detailed look at what would happen if zoning's critics got their way. The most efficient means for erasing zoning from American law would be for the U.S. Supreme Court …

The Role Of Affordable Housing In Enhancing Tenants' Economic Stability In Connecticut: A Focus On Income, Employment, And Housing Stability, Osaid Zubi

Dissertations

This study examined the role of affordable housing in promoting economic stability among low- and moderate-income households in Connecticut. Focusing on income security, employment opportunities, and housing retention, this research highlighted the significance of affordable housing as a means to alleviate financial strain, support job retention, and foster community resilience. Utilizing a phenomenological approach, the study gathered insights from tenants, policymakers, and developers through conducting interviews and a focus group. Connecticut was chosen as the study site due to its high cost of living and affordable housing shortage, exacerbated by its proximity to New York City. Findings underscore the economic …

The Ghost Of Jim Crow: The Human Right To Housing, Generational Wealth, The Neighborhood Homes Investment Act, And The American Legal System, Miranda Guedes

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Living Constitution: Why The Supreme Court Must Part Ways With Exclusionary Eminent Domain, Aaron Mackay

Indiana Law Journal

The Fifth Amendment’s “public use” requirement for takings is no longer a requirement at all. Instead, the meaning of “public use” has been expanded far beyond its original intent and public understanding. The broadening of the “public use” requirement reached its breaking point in Kelo. Since Kelo, state legislatures have responded by restricting eminent domain use to remove “blighted” areas. In effect, contemporary eminent domain reduces the availability of affordable housing, which has exacerbated the affordable housing crisis. This Note explores a constitutionally permissible re-working of the eminent domain doctrine to encourage the provision of affordable housing. Interpreting the “public …

Persistent Impediments And The Geography Of “Affirmatively Furthering” Fair Housing: The Case Of Erie County, Ny, Jason Knight, Heather R. Abraham, Christopher Holtkamp, Russell Weaver

Journal Articles

Despite the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, segregation and discrimination remain key characteristics of the American housing system. The Act sought to reverse decades of private and public sector policies that contributed to segregated neighborhoods and the exclusion of protected classes from equal access to housing. Under the Act, communities receiving funds from US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) are required to “affirmatively further fair housing” (AFFH). This paper examines the AFFH mandate as operationalized by HUD grantees in Erie County, NY, by evaluating six Analysis of Impediments (AI) to Fair Housing reports prepared from …

Measuring Local Policy To Advance Fair Housing And Climate Goals Through A Comprehensive Assessment Of Land Use Entitlements, Moira O'Neill, Eric Biber, Nicholas J. Marantz

Pepperdine Law Review

California’s legislature has passed several laws that intervene in local land-use regulation in order to increase desperately needed housing production—particularly affordable housing production. Some of these new laws expand local reporting requirements concerning zoning and planning laws, and the application of those laws apply to proposed housing development. This emphasis on measurement requires the state to develop a housing data strategy to support both enforcement of existing law and effective policymaking in the future. Our Comprehensive Assessment of Land Use Entitlements Study (CALES) predates, but aligns with and supports, this state-led effort to improve local reporting. For the cities that …

The Failed Federalism Of Affordable Housing: Why States Don't Use Housing Vouchers, Noah Kazis

Articles

This Article uncovers a critical disjuncture in our system of providing affordable rental housing. At the federal level, the oldest, fiercest debate in low-income housing policy is between project-based and tenant-based subsidies: should the government help build new affordable housing projects or help renters afford homes on the private market? But at the state and local levels, it is as if this debate never took place. The federal government (following most experts) employs both strategies, embracing tenant-based assistance as more cost-effective and offering tenants greater choice and mobility. But this Article shows that state and local housing voucher programs are …

The Failed Federalism Of Affordable Housing: Why States Don't Use Housing Vouchers, Noah M. Kazis

Michigan Law Review

This Article uncovers a critical disjuncture in our system of providing affordable rental housing. At the federal level, the oldest, fiercest debate in low-income housing policy is between project-based and tenant-based subsidies: should the government help build new affordable housing projects or help renters afford homes on the private market? But at the state and local levels, it is as if this debate never took place.

The federal government (following most experts) employs both strategies, embracing tenant-based assistance as more cost-effective and offering tenants greater choice and mobility. But this Article shows that state and local housing voucher programs are …

Delayed Synergy: Challenging Housing Discrimination In Chicago In The Streets And In The Courts, Leonard S. Rubinowitz, Michelle Shaw

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

During the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Montgomery Improvement Association combined a boycott with a successful constitutional challenge to bus segregation laws, producing more progress to desegregate the buses than either strategy could have brought about on its own. The Montgomery Improvement Association’s approach was a paradigm of the synergy between a social movement and social change litigation.

This Article argues for opportunities for synergy between social movements and social change litigation in three ways: 1) extending the time frame; 2) joining the forces of two separate organizations to produce change, unlike the single organization in Montgomery; and 3) creating an …

A Twisted Fate: How California's Premier Environmental Law Has Worsened The State's Housing Crisis, And How To Fix It, Noah Dewitt

Pepperdine Law Review

California, the iconic Golden State, holds the infamous record for the largest population of people experiencing homelessness in the United States. These record-setting numbers have been steadily on the rise for decades and are due in large part to the state’s severe housing shortage, which is currently just under one million housing units. From those directly experiencing homelessness to those living in the country’s most expensive zip codes, the compounding economic and social impacts of the crisis touch every Californian. The extent of the crisis is not lost on California’s leaders, but despite countless initiatives on both the state and …

Tiny Homes: A Big Solution To American Housing Insecurity, Lisa T. Alexander

Faculty Scholarship

“There’s no place like home,” said Dorothy. Yet, millions of people in the United States may face eviction, foreclosure, or homelessness in 2021 and beyond. America is on the brink of an unprecedented housing crisis in the wake of Covid-19. The federal government, and various states and localities, have taken actions to avert a housing crisis in the aftermath of Covid 19. While these actions have undeniably helped mitigate widespread foreclosure and eviction crises, they do not fully address the more fundamental American housing challenge—an inadequate supply of affordable housing at all income levels, a longstanding problem that Covid-19 has …

Equitable, Affordable And Climate-Cognizant Housing Construction, Shelby D. Green

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The almost universal sentiment by a growing body of physical and social scientists is that climate change--with its floods, drought, heat, and cold-- portend losses of life, communities, property, and the rhythms of living. Some are more vulnerable to these impacts than others: individuals and the poor, who through official government policy and self-interest in the housing markets, have been relegated to live in poorly-constructed and poorly-placed structures--in the wake of ocean surges; in the path of strong winds; near hazardous and noxious facilities; stranded in urban heat islands. Failing to heed climate change omens will lead to a world …

Challenges And Opportunities For Hotel-To-Housing Conversions In Nyc, Noah Kazis, Elisabeth Appel, Matt Murphy

Other Publications

As the country continues to grapple with the COVID-19 crisis and its aftermath, policymakers in New York City and Albany have debated how to support the conversion of hotels into housing—and especially affordable housing—as part of a solution to the city’s ongoing housing crisis. The basic intuition is compelling. COVID has forced the shuttering of many commercial establishments, especially in hard-hit New York City. In certain sectors, the effect has been particularly large: these include hotels devastated by shutdowns in tourism, international travel, and business travel. At the same time as these spaces are sitting empty, though, Americans have faced …

Stratégie Foncière Et Immobilière Au Maroc, Recomposition Territoriale Et Rapport À La Production Du Logement « Abordable » Quelles Perspectives Pour Agadir ?, Mohamed Ben Attou

Dirassat

Recent investment in housing programmes exerted great pressure on land capital so as to accommodate demographic urbanization. The public policies of the strategic planning of urbanization overlook issues of sustainability and land equity. Besides, speculations have tainted most practices associated with the land market and manipulated the mechanisms of demand and supply so that investors and stakeholders make wealth out of housing programs. Morocco managed to increase GDP per capita , however there are still many challenges to live up to namely those of draught and sustainability. The land market claims agricultural land uncontrollably to cater for a inexhaustible urbanization …

Market-Anticipatory Approaches To Rural Property Vacancy, Ann M. Eisenberg

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Towards A Law Of Inclusive Planning: A Response To “Fair Housing For A Non-Sexist City”, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

Noah Kazis’s important article, Fair Housing for a Non-sexist City, shows how law shapes the contours of neighborhoods and embeds forms of inequality, and how fair housing law can provide a remedy. Kazis surfaces two dimensions of housing that generate inequality and that are sometimes invisible. Kazis highlights the role of planning and design rules – the seemingly identity-neutral zoning, code enforcement, and land-use decisions that act as a form of law. Kazis also reveals how gendered norms underlie those rules and policies. These aspects of Kazis’s project link to commentary on the often invisible, gendered norms that shape …

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 …

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 …

Community In Property: Lessons From Tiny Homes Villages, Lisa T. Alexander

Faculty Scholarship

The evolving role of community in property law remains undertheorized. While legal scholars have analyzed the commons, common interest communities, and aspects of the sharing economy, the recent rise of intentional co-housing communities re-mains relatively understudied. This Article analyzes tiny homes villages for unhoused people in the United States, as examples of co-housing communities that create a new housing tenure—stewardship—and demonstrate the growing importance of community, co-management, sustainability, and flexibility in con-temporary property law. These villages’ property relationships challenge the predominance of individualized, exclusionary, long-term, fee simple ownership in contemporary property law and exemplify property theories such as progressive property …

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 …

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 …

Book Review: Evidence And Innovation In Housing Law And Policy, John Infranca

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

This is a review of Evidence and Innovation in Housing Policy, edited by Professors Lee Anne Fennell of the University of Chicago Law School and Benjamin Keys of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and published in 2018 by Cambridge University Press. The volume contains thirteen essays by scholars from multiple disciplinary and methodological perspectives. Early chapters concentrate on how land use regulations, including historic preservation, constrain new development, reduce supply, and drive up housing costs. The book then shifts to focus on community formation in relationship to both the individual home and urban redevelopment more broadly. Later …

Are The Stars Aligning For Fannie And Freddie Reform?, David J. Reiss

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

There has been a lot of talk of the closed-door discussions in the Senate about a reform plan for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two mammoth housing finance government-sponsored enterprises. There has long been a bipartisan push to get the two entities out of their conservatorships with some kind of permanent reform plan in place, but the stars never aligned properly. There was resistance on the right because of a concern about the increasing nationalization of the mortgage market and there was resistance on the left because of a concern that housing affordability would be unsupported in a new …

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

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Accessible Credit, Sustainable Credit And The Federal Housing Administration, David Reiss

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The secondary mortgage market stands on three legs. The first leg, created in the early 1930s, is made up of government instrumentalities like the Federal Housing Administration (the FHA) and the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae). The second leg, created in the 1930s, but taking off in the 1970s, is made up of public/private hybrids like the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac). The third leg, created in the 1970s, but taking off in the 1990s, is the “private label” market, which is made up of private companies that package …

Living Tiny Legally, James G. Rollin

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Over the last 40 years, the average new United States house has increased in size by more than 1,000 square feet, from an average size of 1,660 square feet in 1973 (earliest year available from the Census Bureau) to 2,687 square feet last year (Perry, 2016). In that same time period, there was a 91% increase in home square footage per inhabitant and a decrease in average household size. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average home in the United States costs approximately $358,000 to build, an increase of roughly $200,000 since 1998. Meanwhile, the average annual income in …

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 …

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 …

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 …