Housing Law Commons^™

Mortgage Modification And Strategic Behavior: A Contrarian Interpretation Of The Countrywide Financial Corporation Settlement, Gregory S. Crespi

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Christopher Mayer, Edward Morrison, Thomas Piskorski and Arpit Gupta of Columbia University have recently published in the Law and Finance eJournal a comprehensive study demonstrating the significant impacts on strategic default rates of the widely publicized Countrywide Financial Corporation settlement of 2008. While their study is comprehensive and carefully done, their implicit assumption that strategic defaults are something to be discouraged rather than encouraged, a position that I have criticized in my earlier work, undercuts the usefulness of their work for policy guidance. From their perspective the Countrywide settlement provides a cautionary tale about difficult trade-offs to be faced in …

A Psychological Investigation Of Consumer Vulnerability To Fraud: Legal And Policy Implication, 35 Law & Psychol. Rev. 61 (2011), Jessica M. Choplin, Debra Pogrund Stark, Jasmine N. Ahmad

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Neighbor-On-Neighbor Harassment: Does The Fair Housing Act Make A Federal Case Out Of It?, Robert G. Schwemm

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Does the federal Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) ban harassing statements to a minority family who has just moved into a predominantly white neighborhood? The FHA does contain an antiharassment provision (42 U.S.C. § 3617), and this certainly applies to firebombings and other types of physical assault designed to drive the family out of the area. But does § 3617 also outlaw purely verbal attacks? And if so, how egregious must the remarks be before a federal case should be made out of them? For example, would substituting "Niggers" for "people like you" in the above quote make a difference?

Today, …

Can Public Nuisance Law Protect Your Neighborhood From Big Banks?, Kermit J. Lind

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article considers how the law of public nuisance might be applied to protect neighborhoods from the destructive forces of the mortgage crisis. For more than thirty years I have been a close observer and a participant in community development at the neighborhood level in Cleveland, Ohio. I now supervise a law school clinical practice that provides legal counsel to an array of nonprofit community development corporations that, for more than thirty-five years, have been renewing housing and neighborhood sustainability in a city going through major social and economic change.

Oklahoma Landlords Beware: Miller V. David Grace, Inc. Abandons Caveat Emptor In Residential Leases, Jamie M. Powers

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Determinants Of High-Cost Mortgages To Homeowners In Low- And Moderate-Income Neighborhoods, Michael S. Barr, Jane K. Dokko, Benjamin J. Keys

Book Chapters

In spite of the recent impetus to reform home mortgage markets, particularly as they affect low- and moderate-income (LMI) households, little systematic evidence is available about how potential abuses in mortgage lending manifest in the mortgages held by those households. While racial discrimination in mortgage markets has a long history in the United States, the role of mortgage brokers in lending has only recently increased and become controversial. In this chapter, we uncover two mechanisms through which differential mortgage pricing occurs among LMI homeowners: black borrowers and borrowers who use mortgage brokers pay more for mortgage loans than other borrowers, …

Mortgage Modification And Strategic Behavior: A Contrarian Reading Of The Countrywide Financial Corporation Settlement, Gregory S. Crespi

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Christopher Mayer, Edward Morrison, Thomas Piskorski and Arpit Gupta of Columbia University have recently published in the Law and Finance eJournal a comprehensive study demonstrating the significant impacts on strategic default rates of the widely publicized Countrywide Financial Corporation settlement of 2008. While their study is a solid and convincing descriptive effort, their implicit assumption that strategic defaults are something to be discouraged rather than encouraged, a position that I have criticized in my earlier work, undercuts the usefulness of their work for policy guidance. From their perspective the Countrywide settlement provides a cautionary tale about difficult trade-offs to be …

Municipal Predatory Lending Regulation In Ohio: The Disproportionate Impact Of Preemption In Ohio's Cities, Brett Altier

Cleveland State Law Review

Whether in the case of predatory lending or other issues that will differ from location to location, municipalities should continue to protect their cities by exercising their power under the Home Rule Amendment to enforce regulations not in direct conflict with Ohio law. Even though the Framers of the Home Rule Amendment intended to protect municipal power by ensuring that only those ordinances in actual conflict would be voided, Ohio courts have denied municipalities their Home Rule police power by applying a conflict by implication test, contributing to the housing crisis still plaguing Ohio's cities. While Ohio courts have made …

Mortgage Foreclosure Mediation In Florida - Implementation Challenges For An Institutionalized Program,, Sharon Press

Faculty Scholarship

This Symposium is filled with examples from around the country of states grappling with how to respond to the economic crisis in general and the overwhelming number of mortgage foreclosure cases in particular. In Part II of this article, the author identifies the key impacts institutionalization had on implementation efforts. Part III describes the various approaches pursued to address the obstacles. In this part, the author examines in detail the development of a rule to define “appearance” at mediation because of its implications for the practice of mediation as a whole beyond merely the foreclosure context. Part IV provides the …

The Due Process Rights Of Residential Tenants In Mortgage Foreclosure Cases., Henry Rose

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

The Foreclosure Crisis In Chicago, Ilyas Lakada

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Integration Proves Elusive, Challenging Under Cha's Plan For Transformation, Sheena Payne

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Are You There, Mayor Emanuel? It's Me, Chicago Public Housing, Aileen Che

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

The Fight To Stay At Cabrini-Green, Emily Magnusen

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

It's More Than Ramps: Housing Accessibility For People With Disabilities, Kim Borowicz, Hillary Coustan

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Mortgage Foreclosures, Mortgage Morality, And Main Street: What’S Really Happening?, Jennifer M. Smith

Journal Publications

The American economy is in the tank. Millions of citizens are without jobs, overwhelmed with credit card debt, and losing their homes. The brighter side is that as a result, America has finally embraced financial reform, and the unstable economy is stabilizing marriages. Nevertheless, the United States remains in the midst of a housing crisis, and the ending remains uncertain.

There has been a media blitz about the housing crisis and Wall Street - corporate interests, but much less about the actual impact of the housing crisis on Main Street - America's working class people and small business owners. This …

A Conversation With President Obama: A Dialogue About Poverty, Race, And Class In Black America, Joseph Karl Grant

Journal Publications

The date is November 13, 2012.1 Just mere days ago, I received the invitation of a lifetime. Last night, I arrived in Washington, D.C. I am staying in the Hay-Adams Hotel on the third floor. I still cannot believe the extent of my life's journey. I have just been summoned to the White House by second term President-elect Barack Obama, who defeated Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for President on November 6, 2012. The 2012 Presidential Election was a hard-fought battle between Barack Obama on the Democratic side, and Mitt Romney on Republican side. The election was a like the …

The Iqbal Effect: The Impact Of New Pleading Standards In Employment And Housing Discrimination Litigation, Raymond H. Brescia

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Rise And Fall Of The Implied Warranty Of Habitability, David A. Super

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Growing concern about poverty in the late 1960s produced two sweeping legal revolutions. One gave welfare recipients rights against arbitrary eligibility rules and benefit terminations. The other gave low-income tenants recourse when landlords failed to repair their homes. The 1996 welfare law exposed the welfare rights revolution's frailty. Little noticed by legal scholars, the tenants' rights revolution also has failed, and for broadly similar reasons.

Withholding rent deliberately to challenge landlords' failure to repair is unduly risky for most tenants in ill-maintained dwellings: either moving to better housing is a better option or the risk of retaliation is too great. …

Protecting The Right To Choose: Regulating Conscience Clauses In The Face Of Moral Obligation, Huseina Sulaimanee

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

The Last Plank: Rethinking Public And Private Power To Advance Fair Housing, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

The persistence of housing discrimination more than forty years after the passage of the federal Fair Housing Act (FHA) of 1968 is among the most intractable civil rights puzzle. For the most part, this puzzle is not doctrinal: the Supreme Court has interpreted the FHA only a handful of times over the last two decades – a marked contrast to frequent doctrinal contestations over the statutory scope and constitutionality of federal laws governing employment discrimination and voting rights. Instead, the central puzzle is the inefficacy of the FHA's enforcement regime given that, in formal terms, the regime is the strongest …

Towards A Convention For The International Sale Of Real Property: Challenges, Commonalities, And Possibilities, Christopher K. Odinet

Faculty Scholarship

In a world that is increasingly global in scope, society has come to view the ever-growing body of international commercial laws as being exceptionally important. This is evidenced through the adoption of several high profile pieces of legislation over the past several decades: International Interest in Mobile Equipment - Study LXXI, the EU’s Draft Common Frame of Reference, the EU Directives on Consumer Protection, and, most noteworthy of all, the Convention for the International Sale of Goods (CISG).

As raised by Professors Sprankling, Coletta, and Mirow, what has been conspicuously absent from this growing body of laws is an international …

Expanding The Role Of North Carolina State Courts In Resolving Public Housing Disputes, Nooree Lee

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.

Receiverships In The Prison Litigation Context: Factors Necessary For An Effective Judicial Remedy Of Last Resort, Liat Weingart

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

This note examines the effectiveness of judicial receiverships as a last-resort remedy in institutional reform litigation, particularly in the context of prison systems. It argues that the success of receiverships depends on the court's ability to supervise effectively and ensure the receiver's independence from political influence. The analysis highlights that appointing executive agents as receivers often leads to conflicts of interest, undermining the remedy's effectiveness, and emphasizes the need for robust supervisory structures, such as Special Masters, to ensure accountability and alignment with court objectives.

Armed And Dangerous: The Crime Of Mortgage Fraud And What Congress Must Do To Stop It, Gabriel Zitrin

Legislation and Policy Brief

Instead, it will simply argue that while the relevant monetary policymakers continue far too slowly in the pursuit of mortgage securities reform, lawmakers whose purview includes the housing sector should use this opportunity to pursue a two-part strategy of aggressively combating fraud in the terms and sales of individual mortgages and taking bold measures to ensure that not simply embattled mortgage-holders but the victims of fraudulent lending behavior can achieve financial sustainability, even as they keep ownership of their homes.

Discretionary Pricing, Mortgage Discrimination, And The Fair Housing Act, Robert G. Schwemm, Jeffrey L. Taren

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

For generations, mortgage lending has always been the gateway to the American dream of homeownership, and, historically, has also been characterized by widespread discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities and their communities. Mortgage discrimination in the modem era has often been accomplished through a technique known as discretionary pricing, in which lenders allow their loan officers and brokers to increase borrowers' costs from an objectively determined base rate. In the past decade alone, discretionary pricing has cost minority homeowners billions of dollars in extra payments, which, in tum, has led these minorities to suffer higher foreclosure rates than whites and …

Putting The Brakes On Private Transfer Fee Covenants, R. Wilson Freyermuth

Faculty Publications

This article will discuss private transfer fee covenants, using one popular model as an example. After explaining how a private transfer fee covenant operates, the article will review the background legal principles relevant to its enforceability As this article will argue, sound policy does not justify the enforcement of private transfer fee covenants. The article concludes with a discussion of recent state legislative efforts to invalidate private transfer fee covenants and highlights a new model statute that, if adopted, would declare such covenants void as contrary to public policy.

Citizen Police: Using The Qui Tam Provision Of The False Claims Act To Promote Racial And Economic Integration In Housing, Jan P. Mensz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Economic and racial integration in housing remains elusive more than forty years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act. Recalcitrant municipal governments and exclusionary zoning ordinances have played a large role in maintaining and exacerbating segregated housing patterns. After discussing some of the persistent causes of segregated housing patterns, this Note presents a novel approach to enforcing the Fair Housing Act and the "affirmatively furthering fair housing" requirement on recipients of federal housing grants. This Note presents a citizen suit that emerged from the Southern District of New York in Anti-Discrimination Center v. Westchester County, where a private …

A Case Study On Contracted Seasonal Workers And Farm Labor Contractors In The Stockton Area, Cristal Verduzco

Agribusiness

This study was conducted to define the current situation between contracted seasonal workers and farm labor contractors in the Stockton area. Specifically, this study focuses on the perception workers have of farm labor contracted employment. It also addresses the perception farm labor contractors have on the contracting business.

To gather the information needed to compare perceptions, interviews with twelve contracted seasonal workers and two farm labor contractors were conducted in Stockton. The analysis process consists of a detailed account of the problems workers and farm labor contractors encounter in the farm labor contracting business.

The results of these interviews concluded …

Above All Else Stop Digging: Local Government Law As A (Partial) Cause Of (And Solution To) The Current Housing Crisis, Darien Shanske

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

So many things have gone wrong with our housing market that it is hard to know where to start. One simple diagnosis is that we invested too much in houses that were not worth as much as we thought. Looked at in this way, it is relatively easy to see how innovations like interest-only loans contributed to an over-valuation of housing. Certain actions of the federal government were and are also clearly problematic, such as the longstanding tax breaks for home ownership.

This Article looks at state and local government law, and particularly at financing mechanisms created by state law …