Housing Law Commons^™

Does Climate Disclosure Work To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions? Emerging Evidence Suggests Cautious Optimism, Cynthia A. Williams

Seattle University Law Review

Significant regulatory resources have been spent developing global, voluntary climate and sustainability disclosure standards, such as the TCFD, TNRD, and ISSB’s Sustainability and Climate Disclosure standards, or domestically required disclosures, such as in the EU and in the U.S. Thus, it is important to evaluate whether this disclosure, particularly voluntary, qualitative disclosure, will have the power to shift the allocation of capital, will have a significant effect on the management of climate risk within firms, and ultimately will reduce climate change risk and biodiversity loss.

In this Article, several interrelated questions will be discussed. First, what does the empirical evidence …

Housing As A Human Right Through Legislative Action: Comparing France And Scotland’S Enforceable Rights To Housing, Emily Peterson, Jack E. Turman Jr., Ph.D.

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

The Law Of The Land: An Analysis Of Recent Reforms To Housing Policy In California, Ryan A.T. Lenney

CMC Senior Theses

While substantial literature exists on the causes of California’s housing crisis, relatively little is known about the state legislature’s attempts to increase housing supply. This study attempts to address that shortcoming by creating a catalog of all recent changes made to land use law in California. It finds that the state legislature has passed 167 laws related to planning, zoning, and entitlement processes over the previous decade. Through an analysis of the content of those laws, this study identifies 12 policy subtopics. Subtopics that were subject to significant political opposition typically saw less legislative activity. Exceptions to this finding may …

Teaching Client Counseling In The Shadow Of Homelessness, Gregory Zlotnick

Faculty Articles

Working with clients at risk of or experiencing, homelessness teaches personal and professional humility like few other experiences in law school or the practice of law. Yet such sensitive work also provides an opportunity for law students to develop both a keener understanding of their own professional identity-with its capacities and limitations and critical counseling skills. This essay draws upon experiences gained in three distinct law school projects that work with clients at risk of or experiencing, homelessness.

After providing a brief overview of each project, the essay will explore methods used for training and supervising students during their counseling …

Gilead: Municipal Liability For Punitive Damages Under The Fair Housing Act, Robert G. Schwemm

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The 1968 Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) has always been understood to apply to local governments, which have proved to be among the most frequent and significant violators of this law, especially in their opposition to housing of particular value to racial minorities and persons with disabilities. Yet not until the Second Circuit’s decision last year in Gilead Community Services, Inc. v. Town of Cromwell did an appellate court approve an FHA-based punitive-damage award against a municipality. Before Gilead, district courts had generally blocked such awards, applying § 1983’s immunities to protect local governments and their officials from the FHA’s …

Mailing It In: Due Process Requires Technology-Driven Safeguards In Public Benefits, Eric Lukoff

Celebrating WCL Student Authors

Due process in safety net public benefit programs requires agencies to employ modern technology in providing notice that is reasonably likely to reach participants. The Supreme Court has held that due process is dependent on the time, place, and circumstances in which it operates. Scholars have further argued that due process is adaptable to changing facts and circumstances over time. Yet, mailed paper notices remain the standard in providing notice to participants in public benefit programs.

Living in poverty today looks significantly different than it did nearly fifty years ago at the time of Mathews v. Eldridge, where the Court …

Social Purpose Reit, Evan Absher

Faculty Works

The United States grapples with a severe housing affordability crisis, often attributed to restrictive zoning laws, speculative private equity investment, and policy deficiencies. Each of these factors contributes to the housing shortage, but addressing any single factor in isolation is insufficient to resolve the underlying issue. A holistic solution requires increasing housing availability across the entire affordability spectrum through both the production of new units and the preservation of existing affordable housing.

This article argues the misalignment of interests among key local stakeholders—residents, community organizations, and investors is the fundamental cause of the housing crisis. Realignment requires a transformation of …

Controlling The Mischief Of New York’S Foreclosure Abuse Prevention Act Through Constitutional Pre-Emption, Shelby D. Green

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

FAPA aimed to ease the burdens of long-delayed foreclosure proceedings by restating the operation of the statute of limitations. It contains provisions across several sections of state statutes that specify that once the six year statute of limitations on actions to foreclose commences, typically by the acceleration of the balance due on the promissory note and commencement of suit, it continues to run, even after the parties have entered into a workout agreement and have dismissed the complaint. By express terms, the Act had immediate effect, such that those lenders who withdrew complaints pursuant to a workout agreement before the …

Binding Rights: Contractual Federalism And The Right To Housing In Canada, Alexandra Flynn

All Faculty Publications

Canada’s housing crisis continues to deepen, exacerbated by constitutional fragmentation and intergovernmental reluctance to implement human rights-based housing policy. While the federal National Housing Strategy Act recognizes housing as a human right, its application is limited and its legal force is limited to the federal level, leaving provinces and municipalities unbound. This article argues that contract law – particularly conditional funding agreements between the federal government and subnational actors – can serve as a pragmatic and legally coherent mechanism to bind municipalities to housing obligations, including the recognition of housing as a human right. Drawing on the Canada Health Act …

Minority Housing In Virginia, Travis Hicks, Celes Davis, Brandan Simmons, Dalila Medrano, Lathaniel Kirts

GEHLI - 2026 VCUL Team Project Publications

No abstract provided.

Embrace The Suck: Why States And Localities Should Use Property Rights To Fix Broken Housing Voucher Programs, Elizabeth Elia

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The largest federal affordable housing program is an income supplement program called Housing Choice Vouchers (formerly Section 8). When a low-income person has a housing voucher, they find and rent privately owned, market-rate housing. The tenant pays a portion of the rent, and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development pays the rest of the rent directly to the landlord. Unfortunately, most voucher-holders end up renting in high-poverty neighborhoods and more than one in three tenants who receive a housing voucher are unable to use it before it expires. This is because most private landlords choose not to rent …

Housing Justice Pipeline: Harnessing Housing Clinics To Transform The Right To Counsel Movement, Erica Braudy, Thomas Honan, Tuhfa Begum

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

A Seventh Amendment Remedy For Housing Instability, Gregory Zlotnick

Faculty Articles

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 …

Relocating Inclusionary Housing Obligations To The New Capital Nusantara: Legal And Policy Implications, Muhammad Ilham Hermawan, Nasywa Ananda Herliana

Indonesia Law Review

The philosophical meaning of balanced housing lies in achieving a harmonious and equitable life among various social strata. To realize this philosophical essence, regulatory engineering is required, aimed at fulfilling the goals of balanced housing. The obligation for balanced housing is theoretically known in the literature of several countries as an inclusionary housing policy. Triggered by the need for residential development in the new capital city (IKN), the Government has "relocated" the previously unfulfilled balanced housing obligation to IKN. The IKN Law explicitly regulates “exceptions to the provisions of legislation in the field of housing and residential areas.” There …

Artificial Intolerance: The Disparate Impact Of Ai In Housing, Kaitlin Carroll

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

From the intentional displacement of Native Americans to the racially motivated redlining of cities across the country, housing discrimination has always been an issue in the United States. Congress enacted the 1968 Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) to eradicate the rampant discriminatory practices present in housing decision-making. Since its enactment, courts have interpreted §§ 3604 and 3605 to not only hold housing providers directly responsible for their own policies, but have also applied this interpretation to a wide range of entities that provide housing- related services. Additionally, because not all biases are intentional, or even recognizable at a cursory glance, the …

From Evictions To Innovations: The 2024 Access To Justice Symposium In Review, Pavan Parikh, Nick Zingarelli

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

Property Rights Or Obstacles To Progress?: The Fundamental Flaws In Takings Jurisprudence, Liam Higgins

Journal of Law and Policy

New York boasts some of the strongest protections for tenants out of all jurisdictions throughout the country. Chief among these laws is the state Rent Stabilization Law (“RSL”). Among other protections, the RSL has limited excessive rent increases on regulated apartments, granted tenants a right of renewal so that they could remain in their homes, and permitted family members to take over the tenancy of their loved ones upon their passing. The RSL has been amended several times throughout its history, each time providing more or less protections depending on the administration at the time. Recently, in 2019, the New …

Rural Renting: An Empirical Portrait Of Eviction, Cassie Chambers Armstrong, Christopher J. Ryan Jr.

University of Cincinnati Law Review

In this Study, we examine eviction from the renter’s perspective. Specifically, we seek to understand what factors influence the eviction process—and the likelihood it will result in a judgment against a renter—once a property owner initiates legal proceedings. To this end, we used records from 202,572 eviction cases filed by landlords in Kentucky state courts. We employed statistical modeling to determine what impacted whether each case ultimately ended in a judgment of eviction against the renter.

Many of our findings were novel, and they were staggering. We found that, holding all else equal, those living in rural areas were at …

Integrating Doctrine & Diversity Speaker Series: Owning Our Values: Supplementing Our Textbooks For Those Engaged In Social Justice, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.