Housing Law Commons^™

Exploring Due Process Rights And Litigation Strategies For Homeless Youth Under Federal Law, John A. Salois, Liz Harding Chao

Maine Law Review

Over fifty years after the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, this Article explores the due process rights youth have in shelter and other transitional housing covered under the Act. Further, this Article explores whether youth have a property interest under the Act’s recent reauthorization under the Reconnecting Homeless Youth Act of 2008. This Article also discusses the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act and the due process rights youth have in shelter and other housing options covered under the HEARTH Act’s extensive funding of homeless programs. Additionally, this Article explores litigation strategies that youth and advocates …

Pay-To-Play: Maine’S Unconstitutional Requirement For Indigent Defendants To Pay To Appeal Eviction Judgments, Shianne Bowlin, Fred Kerrigan, Alice Neal

Maine Law Review

Maine’s eviction appeal process imposes financial barriers that effectively condition appellate review on a tenant’s ability to pay. Under Maine law, tenants must pay rent or arrears—often in dispute—before filing an appeal. This “pay-to-play” requirement disproportionately harms low-income tenants, particularly those receiving public assistance, and violates constitutional due process and equal protection guarantees. Despite federal and state precedent rejecting financial barriers to appeals, Maine’s eviction appeal system continues to restrict access to justice for indigent tenants. This Article examines the legal and constitutional implications of these requirements, comparing Maine’s approach to eviction appeals with those of other states. It explores …

A Seventh Amendment Remedy For Housing Instability, Gregory M. Zlotnick

Maine Law Review

After the 2023–2024 Supreme Court term, housing advocates despaired over the expected, yet still unwelcome, decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson. While focusing on this case is understandable, this Article suggests that scholars, policymakers, and advocates should train their focus on another, perhaps less-expected case from the previous Supreme Court term: SEC v. Jarkesy. In Jarkesy, the Court affirmed a defendant’s constitutional right to a jury trial in an administrative proceeding that sought to enforce a right similar to one found at common law. The Court’s capacious interpretation of the Seventh Amendment in Jarkesy has implications for state-law …

An Argument For Housing Reparations, Lisa Lucile Owens

Maine Law Review

This Article explores recent applications and framing of municipal reparatory housing policies and assesses equal protection challenges, including specific discussion of an emerging case in Evanston, Illinois. Because of recent changes to the Supreme Court’s approach to applying strict scrutiny in equal protection challenges of race-conscious policies as reflected in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, race-based applications of reparations have been criticized as dead on arrival. However, this Article finds that housing-related reparatory policies are dissimilar from affirmative action admissions policies in several ways relevant to the Court’s application of strict scrutiny. Housing reparations policies are more in line …

Equitable Housing Policy, Peter R. Pitegoff

Maine Law Review

Foreword

Evicted From The Outside, Colleen Cosgriff

Maine Law Review

In recent years, Maine has seen an increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness who are living outdoors. People living in these circumstances often shelter together in groups of tents or other temporary structures commonly referred to as “encampments.”As municipalities across Maine struggled with how best to respond to the increase in encampments across the state, the United States Supreme Court decided City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, a case originating in Grants Pass, Oregon. Grants Pass wanted to issue civil and criminal fines to people for sleeping outdoors, even when no alternative shelter was available. The city ultimately …

Equity And Clarity: The Impact Of Tyler V. Hennepin County On Property Taxation And Homeowners’ Rights, Analy Feigel

Cardozo Law Review

This Note explores the implications ofthe U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Tyler v. Hennepin County, which significantly impacts property taxation and foreclosure laws. The Court ruled that property owners are entitled to surplus proceeds following a tax foreclosure, setting a new precedent by deeming it unconstitutional for governments to retain surplus proceeds without just compensation. Tyler clarified property rights under the Fifth Amendment, affirming that owners have a constitutional right to the surplus value of their foreclosed properties, even if local statutes do not explicitly allow it.

Further, this Note also addresses unresolved issues following Tyler's ruling, including how the …

Carceral Apartheid: Centering State Responsibility For The Racial Order, Ion Meyn

Cardozo Law Review

Racial harms are often attributed to private ordering. But the power of White communities to subordinate communities of color is not a constellation of private acts independent of state violence. When scrutinized, acts of racial exclusion, segregation, and violence persist to the extent they are aligned with the political order and backed by the state’s violent guarantee. The knowledge that any resistance to these acts will be met with state retribution bristles in the background.

There are different ways in which state violence produces and reproduces the racial order: (1) direct violence; (2) a violent guarantee backing communal acts of …

Minimal Justice, Bernhard Schlink

Cardozo Law Review

Stating what maximum justice demands is straightforward. Justice prevails if everyone is treated equally whenever anything is distributed or if any unequal distribution reflects a particular achievement or needs, and if compensation is always granted if something is taken. Such distribution includes according or assigning any kind of right or duty, which may take the form of opportunities, positions, services, and obligations. When it comes to what may be taken and the form that compensation assumes, the spectrum ranges from property or life and limb, taken through criminal acts and paid for by punishment for such crimes, to intentional or …

Whither Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing In New York? The Affh Mandate In An Era Of Land Use Reform, Timothy Gentles

Cardozo Law Review

New York is experiencing a severe housing affordability crisis. This crisis is driven by a housing supply shortfall decades in the making. The state’s housing shortage exacerbates economic, racial, and regional inequalities, and harms the economy by limiting growth. New York’s struggles with housing affordability reflect a national surge in housing costs since the pandemic that has disproportionally impacted communities of color. Yet, in many respects, the crisis in New York is worse than that in other states with comparably robust housing demand. The extent of New York’s housing affordability crisis has led to growing momentum behind legislative action in …

Bridge Or Barrier: The Intersection Of Wealth, Housing, And The Disparate Impact Standard

Florida A & M University Law Review

This note asserts that exclusionary zoning and housing based on income or economic standing can have a disparate impact on race. The disparate impact standard of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, 42, U.S.C.S § 3601 et seq., used in the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities, does not do enough to aid plaintiffs in bringing claims where there is a racial disparity in housing. Part One of this paper will discuss the Federal policies that historically contributed to the wealth gap that exists on the basis of race, the legacy of these policies, and how …

Corporate Consolidation Of Rental Housing & The Case For National Rent Stabilization, Brandon Weiss

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Rental housing in the United States is increasingly owned by corporate landlords that operate under a different set of incentives, behind a level of anonymity previously unavailable, and pursuant to practices that often exacerbate an already precarious housing landscape for tenants. Marketsensitive and nuanced rent stabilization laws have reemerged at the state and local level as a viable policy option to help regulate escalating rents and prevent tenant displacement. These laws, when well drafted, can address outdated critiques of strict rent caps and can complement alternative approaches, like those of the politically popular Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) movement, which …

Landlord Liability For Tenant-On-Tenant Harassment Under The Fair Housing Act, Mary Karapogosian

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Unqualified Prohibition Of Self-Help Eviction: Providing A Right To Court Process For All Residential Occupants, Matthew P. Main

Cardozo Law Review

Stability in one’s home is essential to safety, security, and human dignity. The right to court process prior to eviction should be unassailable. Yet, for some of the most marginalized residential occupants, that right does not exist. Nearly every state has codified laws that prohibit landlords from taking the law into their own hands to evict a tenant without a court order. In most states, however, the prohibition of so-called “self-help evictions” hinges on whether an occupant is considered a “tenant” or a “licensee.” The law shelters residential occupants who establish a formal landlord-tenant relationship in the premises where they …

Patent Law’S Externality Asymmetry, Peter Lee

Cardozo Law Review

Technologies such as social media, autonomous vehicles, and “big data” analytics generate enormous benefits for society, but they also create substantial harms. Many of these effects take the form of externalities—external benefits and harms that a decisionmaker (such as an inventor) imposes on third parties without charge or compensation. Considering negative externalities, for example, social media networks spread misinformation throughout the electorate, autonomous vehicles threaten the jobs of millions of professional drivers, and predictive policing based on big data can lead to unreasonable searches and seizures. Externalities can cause inefficient resource allocation, and the classic remedy is to “internalize” externalities …

Staying In The Takings Lane: The Compensation Issue In Cedar Point Nursery, Mark Kelman

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

The Supreme Court held in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid that a California regulation mandating that union organizers have occasional access to privately owned farms was a per se taking because it stripped the farm owners of the right to exclude. The decision almost certainly departed from prior law, and I briefly review some of the critiques of the majority opinion. But my focus is on questions that arise if one accepts the Court’s conclusion that the regulation is indeed a taking: First, I briefly discuss whether we should permit the taking so long as the owners are compensated or …

Clarifying Nonprofit Purchase Rights In Affordable Housing, Brandon Weiss

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Disputes around the country are proliferating as limited partner investors attempt to thwart the ability of nonprofits to exercise statutorily defined rights of first refusal to acquire low-income housing tax credit developments upon the expiration of rent restrictions. Such efforts, increasingly being made by "aggregator" investors, frustrate congressional intent, violate long-held norms and expectations in the industry, are costly for nonprofits to litigate, jeopardize the ongoing affordability of an already scarce federally assisted housing stock, and threaten to displace low-income tenants. This Essay describes the problem, explores the collision of housing policy and tax policy that gives rise to it, …

Zoning And The Cost Of Housing: Evidence From Silicon Valley, Greater New Haven, And Greater Austin, Robert C. Ellickson

Cardozo Law Review

Municipal zoning, shockingly, may be the most consequential regulatory program in the United States. This Article develops metrics for measuring the extent to which a locality’s zoning practices are exclusionary, that is, limit construction of least-cost housing. It applies the metrics to actual zoning ordinances and zoning maps, materials that legal scholars have seldom closely appraised. The municipalities chosen for study lie in three metropolitan areas, the ones listed in the Article’s title. Of the three, zoning in Greater Austin, one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the United States, is—to no one’s surprise—the most conducive to housing development. …

Certifying Second Chances, Cara Suvall

Cardozo Law Review

Policymakers around the country are grappling with how to provide a second chance to people with criminal records. These records create collateral consequences—invisible punishments that inhibit opportunity in all facets of a person’s life. Over the past seven years, states have repeatedly tried to legislate new paths for people trying to move on with their lives. State legislators passed more than 150 laws targeting collateral consequences in 2019 alone.

But what happens when these paths to second chances are littered with learning, compliance, and psychological costs? The people who most need these new opportunities may find that they are out …

Challenging Domestic Injustice Through International Human Rights Advocacy: Addressing Homelessness In The United States, Eric Tars, Tamar Ezer, Melanie Ng, David Stuzin, Conor Arevalo

Cardozo Law Review

This Article explores how international human rights norms and procedures can serve as a powerful tool in addressing injustice in the United States context, using work addressing the criminalization of homelessness as a case study. Moreover, it explores how civil and political rights and negative obligations by the government can serve as an entry point for asserting a more robust understanding of rights that includes social and economic rights and affirmative obligations by government. The Article documents and analyzes original work led by the National Homelessness Law Center and other pioneering advocates, reflecting on lessons learned and next steps to …

"Complaints" About Eviction: Central Housing And Minnesota’S Approaches To Retaliatory Eviction Protection, Tyler C. Dixon Iii

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Power And Possibility In The Era Of Right To Counsel, Robust Rent Laws & Covid-19, Erica Braudy, Kim Hawkins

Articles & Chapters

New York City (NYC) finds itself in an unprecedented housing crisis as the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic reveals with devastating force that safe, sustainable and affordable housing is both a human right and a public health necessity. The profound humanitarian and economic devastation of COVID-19 puts millions of New Yorkers at risk of eviction especially those within Black and Latinx communities. In addition, the pandemic hit just as the legal landscape for tenants was transformed through landmark legislation ensuring the Right to Counsel in eviction proceedings and sweeping reforms of New York's rent laws. The unparalleled COVID-19 pandemic, the influx of …

Reframing Housing: Incorporating Public Law Principles Into Private Law, Kristen Barnes

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

A new public-private law paradigm is developing with respect to the relationship of the state to private contracts. The paradigm melds private law concepts like unconscionability, good faith, and fair dealing with the public human rights principles of dignity and vulnerability. I trace this paradigm shift in the context of the housing law of Spain, where several rich cultural and legal resources have inspired a new sensibility with regard to residential mortgage loan contracts, rental agreements, and the overall duties and obligations of governments to address the citizenry's housing needs. Although this reorientation reflects decisions from the European Court of …

Disabling Fascism: A Struggle For The Last Laugh In Trump’S America, Madeleine M. Plasencia

Articles

Six years before the start of the Second World War and seven months after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany, the German government instituted the “Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases.” The moral depravity that started as a sterilization program targeting “useless eaters” and lives “unworthy of life” degenerated into a “euthanasia” program that murdered at least 250,000 people with mental and physical dis/abilities as an “open secret” until 1941, when the Bishop of Munster, Clemens August Count von Galen, delivered a sermon protesting the killing of “unproductive people.”2 Although the Trump Administration has not yet driven …

The Eviction Geography Of New Orleans: An Empirical Study To Further Housing Justice, Davida Finger

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

Low-income tenants in the U.S. have weak bargaining power as well as limited housing and mobility options in the housing market. With no enforceable "right to housing," tenants are stuck-quite literally in the case of uninhabitable property - in unsafe and unhealthy living conditions. Poverty and economic instability make it challenging for tenants either to leave or to force repairs to substandard rental units. The author completed an empirical study of eviction cases in New Orleans in order to quantify the problem of evictions, learn more about where evictions occur throughout the municipality, and better understand who is evicted. The …

No Brakes: Loan Acceleration And Diminishing Foreclosure Defenses, Eric A. Zacks, Dustin A. Zacks

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

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.

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

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Eviction Court And A Judicial Duty Of Inquiry, Harold Krent, Peter Cheung, Kayla Higgins, Matthew Mcelwee

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of Disparate Impact: An Opportunity To Realize The Promise Of The Fair Housing Act, Valerie Schneider

School of Law Faculty Publications

Abstract:

Twice in the past three years, the Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Fair Housing cases, and, each time, under pressure from civil rights leaders who feared that the Supreme Court might narrow current Fair Housing Act jurisprudence, the cases settled just weeks before oral argument. Settlements after the Supreme Court grants certiorari are extremely rare, and, in these cases, the settlements reflect a substantial fear among civil rights advocates that the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in cases such as Shelby County v. Holder and Fisher v. University of Texas are working to dismantle many of the protections of …