Housing Law Commons^™

The Fair Housing Act After Fifty Years: Opening Remarks, Julián Castro

Cardozo Law Review

Fifty years ago, on this day in late March, the United States was about to go through one of the darkest stretches in modern American history. At the end of March 1968, President Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not run for reelection. Just a few days later, of course, on April 4th, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. A couple of months after that, on June 6th, Robert Kennedy died as he campaigned for President of the United States. Cities across our country were in a state of total unrest. It was, as many have described it, a year …

Promises Still To Keep: The Fair Housing Act Fifty Years Later, Paula A. Franzese, Stephanie J. Beach

Cardozo Law Review

This Article considers how the Act's aims have been impeded by drastic declines in the quantity and quality of available subsidized housing, the practice of tenant blacklisting, and exclusionary zoning. Those and other barriers exist as the need for affordable housing rises, with one in three Americans struggling to get by.' Reclaiming the Act's promise depends on the coalescing of diverse and varied alliances around the unifying premise that decent housing is a human right. We can and must arrive at a collective will to assure that no one is denied a safe place to call home and all are …

A Flood-Not A Ripple-Of Harm: Proximate Cause Under The Fair Housing Act, Justin P. Steil, Daniel Traficonte

Cardozo Law Review

Over the past decade, several city governments across the country have filed suits against banks pursuant to the Fair Housing Act seeking redress for municipal damages caused by the banks' discriminatory lending practices. Following the ruling in Bank of America Corp. v. City of Miami, lower courts are now confronting the question of where to "draw the line" of proximate causation under the Fair Housing Act, and specifically whether the harms experienced by cities as a result of banks' discriminatory lending meet the requirements of proximate causation. In suggesting a direction for lower courts, the Court in City of …

Cities, Fair Housing, And Gentrification: A Proposal In Progressive Federalism, David D. Troutt

Cardozo Law Review

This Essay divides in two Parts. In Part I, I will situate the three fair housing interests in the familiar AFFH planning environment, offering arguments to shape context. The harder task is implementation. What constitutes the specific laws and policies that indicate a city's commitment to fair housing? In Part II, I will draw upon some of the work that the center I direct at Rutgers Law School (the Center on Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity) has done in Newark, New Jersey, a working-class city experiencing an affordable housing crisis amid increasing economic development activity in the middle of one …

"Social Engineering": Notes On The Law And Political Economy Of Integration, Olatunde C. A. Johnson

Cardozo Law Review

This Article shifts the question of how to achieve integration away from the technocratic questions of planning and policy devices, however important, to the equally important questions of political economyhow to move a legal and political infrastructure that is engineered for segregation towards integration. No doubt this question is not fully answerable in a short Article and perhaps at all. Yet, it might be possible to gather some of what is already known about the dynamics of social change towards integration, build on that knowledge, and find openings in current law, politics, and social movements for charting a future course …

Eminent Domain In New York City, Aiden Hannon

Fordham Undergraduate Law Review

On the first of February, 2008, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the condemnation and subsequent development of several Brooklyn properties in Vanderbilt Yards that were obstructing the construction of a new stadium for the New Jersey Nets. The rationale behind the decision in Goldstein v. Pataki derives from the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, which holds that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use without just compensation.” The new construction project would bring a National Basketball Association franchise to Brooklyn, theoretically raising the tax revenue and creating more jobs, alongside sixteen high-rise apartments …

Married On Sunday, Evicted On Monday: Interpreting The Fair Housing Act's Prohibition Of Discrimination "Because Of Sex" To Include Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity, Joseph J. Railey

Buffalo Public Interest Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Properties Of Integration: Mixed-Income Housing As Discrimination Management, Audrey Mcfarlane

All Faculty Scholarship

Mixed-income housing is an increasingly popular approach to providing affordable housing. The technique largely went unnoticed until developers of mixed-income housing constructed buildings containing separate entrances for rich and poor residents. The ensuing “poor door” controversy illustrated that mixed-income housing, as both a method of affordable housing production and an integration strategy, is in unacknowledged tension with itself. This Article argues that, mixedincome housing is implemented as a surreptitious form of racial and economic integration that accommodates and replicates prevailing race and class assumptions detrimental to the needs and interests of low to moderate-income individuals in need of housing. The …

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

Penn State Law Review (2003 - Present)

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 …

Proving The Point: Connections Between Legal And Mathematical Reasoning, Maria Termini

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

State And Local Laws Banning Source-Of-Income Discrimination, Robert G. Schwemm

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Most states and many localities have civil rights laws that are substantially equivalent to the federal Fair Housing Act ("FHA"),' which means they at least ban discrimination based on the seven factors outlawed by the FHA (i.e., race, color, religion, national origin, sex, familial status, and disability). Many of these state and local laws also include other protected classes, such as age, marital status, sexual orientation, and source of income.

This Article reviews state and local efforts to outlaw source-of-income discrimination.4 (For its part, Congress currently has multiple bills before it that would add such a prohibition to the FHA.) …

Arlington Heights Won In The Supreme Court But The Fair Housing Act's Goal Of Promoting Racial Integration Saved The Low-Income Housing, Henry Rose

Faculty Publications & Other Works

In the early 1970’s, a developer sought a zoning change to a parcel of land in Arlington Heights, Illinois that would allow for the construction of government-subsidized low income housing. Arlington Heights denied the zoning change and the developer and several potential residents of the housing sued Arlington Heights arguing that this denial violated both equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and the federal Fair Housing Act (FHA). In Vil. Of Arlington Heights v. Metro. Housing Dev., 429 U.S. 252 (1977), the case reached the United States Supreme Court on the equal protection issue and …

Invisible Among Us: The Epidemic Of Homeless Teen Parents, Michelle Basham

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Administering Housing Law As Health Care: Attorneys As Healthcare Providers, Frank Griffin

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

St. Louis Vacancy Collaborative: 2019-2021 Work Plan, Dana M. Malkus

All Faculty Scholarship

Our City has a serious vacant property challenge. To effectively address vacancy, we must understand and respond to the factors that cause and perpetuate it. Much of the story of vacancy in our city, like other cities, includes a legacy of racism, disinvestment, and disengagement that has led to a breakdown in trust. We know that vacancy can result from incomplete foreclosure, bankruptcy, prolonged probate or lack of proper probate, investors with little incentive to care, judgment proof owners, bank ownership, lack of resources to repair or redevelop, lack of value, the foreclosure crisis, sprawl and weak markets.¹ In …

Building Bridges: Examining Race And Privilege In Community Economic Development: Introductory Overview, Priya Baskaran, Renee Hatcher, Lynnise E. Pantin

Faculty Scholarship

The country has been in economic recovery since the Great Recession in 2007. Home prices have since stabilized after the mortgage and foreclosure crisis that followed the Recession. In late 2017, the federal government passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, leading to a surge in corporate earnings. As of the time of this writing, major stock indicators are at all-time highs, and interest rates are low. But corporate indicators and interest rates do not paint the entire picture. Most of the economic recovery is in affluent, predominately white parts of the country, while distressed areas inhabited by people of …

Make New York Affordable Again, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Suggests a package of zoning reforms to hold down New York City housing costs, and responds to counterarguments.

The Least Restrictive Environment For Providing Education, Treatment, And Community Services For Persons With Disabilities: Rethinking The Concept, Donald H. Stone

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Building By Right: Social Equity Implications Of Transitioning To Form-Based Code, Daniela A. Tagtachian, Natalie N. Barefoot, Adrienne L. Harreveld

Articles

No abstract provided.

A Homestead Act For The 21st Century, Mehrsa Baradaran

Scholarly Works

The goal of the 21st century Homestead Act is to counteract the longstanding legacy of racially discriminatory housing policies by revitalizing distressed communities through public investment. The basic structure of the program is a wholesale transfer of land to residents who meet certain criteria. Accompanied by a holistic plan at the city level to revitalize the community through public investments in infrastructure and jobs, this proposal would benefit people who live in select small and medium-sized cities that are experiencing high vacancies.