Housing Law Commons^™

Public Purpose Finance: The Government's Role As Lender, Nadav Orian Peer

Publications

This Article explores the workings of Public Purpose Finance, and its role within the U.S. political economy. “Public Purpose Finance” (PPF) refers to the broad range of institutions through which the government extends credit to private borrowers in sectors like housing, education, agriculture and small business. At a total of $10 trillion, PPF roughly equals the entire U.S. corporate bond market, and is around one half of the U.S. Gross national debt (2018 figures). The Article begins by surveying and quantifying the scope of PPF. It then demonstrates that PPF enjoys a considerable degree of insulation from the federal budgetary …

Critical Developments In Housing Policy, Kat Meyers, Cheryl Gonzales, Edward Josephson, Andrew Scherer, Michael Pollack

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The symposium discusses the New York Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019, highlighting its role in enhancing tenant protections by limiting rent increases and eviction practices, thereby addressing the housing crisis in NYC.

Fair Housing Enforcement In The Age Of Digital Advertising: A Closer Look At Facebook’S Marketing Algorithms, Nadiyah J. Humber, James Matthews

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

In West Philadelphia Born And Raised Or Moving To Bel-Air? Racial Steering As A Consequence Of Using Race Data On Real Estate Websites, Nadiyah J. Humber

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Lihtc Program, Racially/Ethically Concentrated Areas Of Poverty, And High-Opportunity Neighborhoods, Brandon Weiss, Kirk Mcclure, Anne R. Willamson, Hye-Sung Han

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit ("LIHTC") program remains the nation's largest affordable housing production program. LIHTC units are under-represented in the neighborhood that both promote movement to high opportunity neighborhoods and affirmatively further fair housing. State and local officials should play an active role in guiding site selection decisions and ensuring that LIHTC developments are located in a manner that affirmatively furthers fair housing. Planners can use newly available data discussed herein to identify high-opportunity tracts.

Critical Developments In Housing Policy - Symposium Comments, Kat Meyers, Cheryl Gonzales, Edward Josephson, Andrew Scherer

Articles & Chapters

Professor Scherer's talk starts on page 245

Discrimination, The Speech That Enables It, And The First Amendment, Helen Norton

Publications

Imagine that you’re interviewing for your dream job, only to be asked by the hiring committee whether you’re pregnant. Or HIV positive. Or Muslim. Does the First Amendment protect your interviewers’ inquiries from government regulation? This Article explores that question.

Antidiscrimination laws forbid employers, housing providers, insurers, lenders, and other gatekeepers from relying on certain characteristics in their decision-making. Many of these laws also regulate those actors’ speech by prohibiting them from inquiring about applicants’ protected class characteristics; these provisions seek to stop illegal discrimination before it occurs by preventing gatekeepers from eliciting information that would enable them to discriminate. …

Religious Liberty In A Pandemic, Caroline Mala Corbin

Articles

The coronavirus pandemic caused an unprecedented shutdown of the United States. The stay-at-home orders issued by most states typically banned large gatherings of any kind, including religious services. Churches sued, arguing that these bans violated their religious liberty rights by treating worship services more strictly than analogous activities that were not banned, such as shopping at a liquor store or superstore. This Essay examines these claims, concluding that the constitutionality of the bans turns on the science of how the pathogen spreads, and that the best available scientific evidence supports the mass gathering bans.

Trust, Contribution And Equitable Accounting: Analysing Imbalances In Contribution Towards Mortgage Payments, Sing Yong Lim, Hang Wu Tang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

A frequently litigated issue across the Commonwealth is determining the beneficial interest of property in light of a breakdown of close relationships such as domestic relationships or family members or friends who may have jointly bought property together. These cases are frequently complicated by the fact that there may be imbalances in contributions of the mortgage repayments by one party. How are parties’ beneficial entitlement determined using legal or equitable doctrines? Unfortunately, the current case law has not been entirely clear and judges have used a myriad of doctrines in relation to such a fact pattern which has resulted in …

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 …

Workforce Housing And Housing Preference Policies Under The Fair Housing Act, Jeffrey D. Jones

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The workforce housing movement grew out of two urgent realities. First, the lack of affordable housing near where workers are employed has a substantial impact on local economies and local business. Second, the lack of affordable housing near where workers live undermines the twin goals of inclusive com- munities and reversing historical patterns of segregation. The latter remains a primary obstacle to equality of opportunity throughout the United States. There is no one definition of “workforce housing.” The leading definition of workforce housing is provided by the influential Urban Land Institute (ULI). The ULI defines workforce housing as housing that …

Discriminatory Dualism, Sarah L. Swan

Georgia Law Review

This Article identifies and theorizes a significant but
previously overlooked feature of structural
discrimination: it frequently develops into two seemingly
opposing, yet in fact mutually supportive practices. This
“discriminatory dualism” occurs in multiple contexts,
including policing, housing, and employment. In
policing, communities of color experience overpolicing
(i.e., the aggressive overenforcement of petty crime) at the
same time as they experience underpolicing (i.e., the
persistent failure to address violent crime). In housing,
redlining (i.e., the denial of credit to aspiring
homeowners based on race) combines with reverse
redlining (i.e., the over-offering of credit on exploitative
terms) to suppress minority homeownership. And …

The New "Essential": Rethinking Social Goods In The Age Of Covid-19, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

The Covid-19 crisis has laid bare the fragility of social insurance systems in the United States and the lack of income security and basic benefits for many workers and residents. The United States has long had weaker protections for workers compared to other liberal democracies racial and economic disparities among those most affected by these dislocations (analyses are hampered by a paucity of demographic data). Those who were socially and economically vulnerable before the pandemic (for example due to homelessness, immigration status, or incarceration) are likely to suffer the most harm. Changes in workplace conditions as a result of the …

Comments To Hud Re: Fr-6111-P-02, Hud’S Implementation Of The Fair Housing Act’S Disparate Impact Standard, Lauren E. Willis, Olatunde C.A. Johnson, Mark Niles, Rigel Christine Oliveri

Faculty Scholarship

In key places, HUD’s 2019 proposed "Implementation of the Fair Housing Act’s Disparate Impact Standard" is at odds with express provisions of the Fair Housing Act (FHA) and goes so far as to invent new defenses to liability for housing discrimination and to place the burden of pleading and proving the nonexistence of some of these defenses on plaintiffs. In addition, the proposed rule addresses itself to matters beyond the FHA; specifically, to evidentiary and procedural issues as they may arise in cases brought under the FHA in federal or state courts. HUD provides no reasoned justification for these changes …

Affh And The Challenge Of Reparations In The Administrative State, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

America’s summer of racial reckoning has led to increased attention on proposals to provide reparations to Black Americans.

Reparations discussions typically concern securing compensation for slavery. The racial harm caused by the administrative state is generally less of a focus, even though racial exclusions and discrimination in 20th-century administrative programs helped shape contemporary disparities in housing, wealth, and opportunity that endure today. A provision of federal housing law provides a window into the roots of racial harm enacted through administrative state programs, as well as the limits of administrative law as a tool for repairing this harm.

Condominium Government And The Right To Live In The City, Douglas C. Harris

All Faculty Publications

Condominium is an architecture of land ownership that produces separate, privately owned units within multi-unit developments. Condominium also constructs a form of private, democratic government, described as a fourth order of government, that acts beneath federal and provincial governments, and alongside municipal government, to govern owners and their property. This article considers a conflict between residential-unit owners and a commercial-unit owner within a condominium development in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Drawing from material produced in litigation, the article situates the dispute within its property and urban contexts to argue that condominium government requires attention, and not just for its impact on …

Hb 346 - Tenant Retaliation Protection, Joseph N. Guardino, Megan A. Kirk

Georgia State University Law Review

The Act prohibits landlords from taking retaliatory action when tenants exercise their rights or express habitability concerns. The Act provides for several authorized tenant actions that notify and hold landlords responsible for fixable property defects. If the landlord attempts to deprive the tenant of the use or enjoyment of the premises because the tenant expressed habitability concerns, the Act finds a prima facie case of retaliation. The Act specifically protects landlord action when a tenant damages property or is delinquent in rent. The Act provides for civil penalties against landlords who have retaliated under the statute.

Modern Waste Law, Bankruptcy, And Residential Mortgages, Jill M. Fraley

Cardozo Law Review

Around the time of the subprime mortgage collapse, lenders began in earnest to sue borrowers by adapting the traditional law of waste. Today, these claims continue to rise in frequency and to expand to more jurisdictions. Lender waste claims provide a "work around" for state mortgage laws that prohibit personal deficiency judgments after foreclosure and are potentially non-dischargeable in bankruptcy.

While a recent wave of scholarship has addressed the problems of how the bankruptcy system handles mortgages, scholars have not yet explored the use of waste actions by lenders and how waste judgments intersect with bankruptcy and foreclosure. Using new …

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 …

Perpetual Affordability Covenants: Can These Land Use Tools Solve The Affordable Housing Crisis?, Elizabeth Elia

Faculty Scholarship

Approximately 3.8 million privately-owned residential housing units in America today contain affordability covenants recorded in their chains of title. State and local agencies and the District of Columbia use these covenants to ensure that publicly-subsidized properties are actually used to provide affordable housing. With rents at all-time highs and stagnant wages, the affordable housing crisis has reached a fever pitch. House Democrats are proposing billions more in housing subsidy. To the extent those funds subsidize privately-owned housing development they, too, will be secured by affordability covenants. In response to this crisis, a new trend in high cost markets is to …