Housing Law Commons^™

Community Economic Development Clinic, Legal Clinic Program

Clinical Programs Brochures

The Community Economic Development Clinic is an in-house small business transactional clinic designed to provide students with a broad study of the growing area of community economic development law. Services include legal business, policy and regulatory considerations that underlie efforts to enhance the economic viability of low-income communities through the development of entrepreneurship and affordable housing.

Assistance may be provided to groups that promote community and economic development in the following areas: community preservation, development and empowerment; drug prevention; homelessness; literacy; micro-enterprise development; social welfare; youth and teen development entrepreneurship; and creating and maintaining low-income and affordable housing.

Counting Casualties In Communities Hit Hardest By The Foreclosure Crisis, Matthew Rossman

Faculty Publications

Recent statistics suggest that the U.S. housing market has largely recovered from the Foreclosure Crisis. A closer look reveals that the country is composed not of one market, but of thousands of smaller, local housing markets that have experienced dramatically uneven levels of recovery. Repeated waves of home mortgage foreclosures inundated certain communities (the “Hardest Hit Communities”), causing their housing markets to break rather than bend and resulting in what amounts to a permanent transition to a lower value plateau. Homeowners in these predominantly low and middle income and/or minority communities who endured the Foreclosure Crisis lost significant equity in …

How Can The Government Sustain People's Privacy Interests As The Real Estate Industry Adopts And Applies A Fully Electronic System? 32 J. Marshall J. Info. Tech. & Privacy L. 321 (2016), Drago Putica

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

No abstract provided.

Varying The Variance: How New York City Can Solve Its Housing Crisis And Optimize Land Use To Serve The Public Interest, Nathan T. Boone

Brooklyn Law Review

As Millennials repopulate American cities and seek jobs in creative industries, housing affordability has risen to the forefront of urban policy battles. Major conflicts exist between homeowners, renters, municipal governments, and growing industries regarding the proper way to grapple with an influx of new capital, both financial and human. New York City is a prime example of this problem. Housing cost increases have exceeded income increases, leaving a large percentage of New Yorkers “rent burdened.” This note seeks to examine a likely cause of the present problem: zoning and variance systems that limit the ability of private land owners to …

Building Community, Still Thirsty For Justice: Supporting Community Development Efforts In Baltimore, Renee Hatcher, Jaime Alison Lee

All Faculty Scholarship

Baltimore is a city of many challenges, but it possesses true communitybased strength. The city’s residents and community organizations are its greatest assets. This article highlights some of the community’s work and how the Community Development Clinic at the University of Baltimore School of Law (CDC) supports this work through its experiential learning curriculum.

The challenges facing Baltimore’s communities (systemic disinvestment, structural racism, vacant buildings, unemployment, and the criminalization of poverty, to name a few) existed long before the national media coverage and uprising surrounding the death of Freddie Gray, an unarmed Black man who suffered a fatal spinal injury …

Dealing With Illegal Housing: What Can New York City Learn From Shenzhen?, Shitong Qiao

Faculty Scholarship

In New York City, owners violated zoning regulations and opened up their basements, garages, and other floors to rent to people (particularly low-income immigrants) priced out of the formal market. The more than 100,000 illegal dwelling units in New York City (NYC) were referred to as “granny units,” “illegal twos or threes,” or “accessory units.” Due to the safety and habitability considerations of “alter[ing] or modif[ying] of an existing building to create an additional housing unit without first obtaining approval from the New York City Department of Buildings (DOB),” the City government devoted a lot of resources to detecting and …

The Nature Of Equality: Promoting Environmental Justice In Kentucky Via The Fair Housing Act, Nicole Zub

Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agriculture, & Natural Resources Law

No abstract provided.

Cash Is King: How Market-Based Strategies Have Corrupted Classrooms And Criminal Courts In Post-Katrina New Orleans, 39 Seattle U. L. Rev. 1199 (2016), Olympia Duhart, Hugh Mundy

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

On many accounts, it is a tale of two cities. The headlines and marketing machines tout to the world that “The Big Easy is Back.” But beyond the celebrations and parades, the story for poor Katrina survivors is very different. While many residents and businesses are enjoying a resurgence a decade after Katrina stormed through, others in post-Katrina New Orleans have a different experience. More than ten years after Hurricane Katrina, the city still struggles with systemic failures. These problem areas include housing, health care, mental health treatment, employment, education, and the criminal justice system. All of these challenges are …

Proving Disparate Impact In Fair Housing Cases After Inclusive Communities, Robert G. Schwemm, Calvin Bradford

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Disparate-impact claims under the federal Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) are now a well-established part of housing discrimination law, having been recognized for decades by the lower courts and recently endorsed by the Supreme Court in Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. The Court in Inclusive Communities saw the impact theory as a way of bolstering the FHA’s “role in moving the Nation toward a more integrated society,” but it also set forth certain “cautionary standards” to guard against “abusive” impact claims. Under these standards, which are similar to those adopted in a 2013 HUD …

Providing Copyright Protection To Real Estate Listings: Protecting Brokers, Sellers, And Consumers, 15 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 318 (2016), Kathryn Robinson

UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law

In a technology-driven age, the Internet has changed how prospective homebuyers search for their new home. For many, a search on Google is the first step before hiring a broker or getting prequalified for a mortgage. Although the Internet is a powerful tool widely utilized by many, there has been a growing concern for managing and protecting the integrity of real estate listings. Data scraping of listing data has become problematic for the real estate industry; as a result, this has caused irreparable harm to everyone. This comment highlights the benefits of awarding copyright protection to all contents of the …

Two Arguments Against Home-Sharing, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Two major arguments against Airbnb and similar home-sharing websites are that they (1) raise housing costs by reducing the supply of housing for long-term rental and (2) adversely affect neighbors of homes being used for home-sharing. This article critiques those arguments.

The Roots Of Expensive Zoning, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Review of Zoning Rules, by William Fischel.

Integrate And Reactivate The 1968 Fair Housing Mandate, Courtney L. Anderson

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Public Access Vs. Private Property: The Struggle Of Coastal Landowners To Keep The Public Off Their Land, James D. Donahue

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

Underwriting Sustainable Homeownership: The Federal Housing Administration And The Low Down Payment Loan, David Reiss

Georgia Law Review

The United States Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has been a versatile tool of government since it was created during the Great Depression. The FHA was created in large part to inject liquidity into a moribund mortgage market. It succeeded wonderfully, with rapid growth during the late 1930s. The federal government repositioned it a number of times over the following decades to achieve a variety of additional social goals. These goals included supporting civilian mobilization during World War II; helping veterans returning from that war; stabilizing urban housing markets during the 1960s; and expanding minority homeownership rates during the 1990s. It …

Commentary On Evan Mckenzie, The Relationship Between The Rise Of Private Communities And Increasing Socioeconomic Stratification, Gerald Korngold

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Land Use Consultations Advancing Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Ripe For Clinical Trials, Michael N. Widener

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

This paper proposes educating law students in the processes of therapeutic justice through service as a neutral in land use controversies, and in the process, improving law student dispute resolution skills and enabling them to promote therapeutic outcomes.

Sharing And The City, Michele Finck, Sofia Ranchordas

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The sharing of public infrastructure, the exchange of small services, and the traditional "cup of sugar borrowed from the neighbor" are practices intrinsic to most urban agglomerations. In the digital age, these sharing initiatives are facilitated by online platforms such as Feastly, Peerby, and HomeExchange. These platforms allow city residents to share the idle capacity of some of their assets (e.g., clothing, tools, or a spare bedroom) with other residents living in close proximity to them, or with tourists looking for accommodation. While these practices can be justified by efficiency and sustainability concerns, some of them appear to be in …

It Takes A Village: Using Seniors To Help Divorcing Families, Forrest S. Mosten, Lara Traum

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

The wisdom of an underappreciated elderly population can offer invaluable assistance to underserved pro-se litigants facing family conflict. This Article will uncover the confluent needs of the family court system and the growing elderly population in the United States. Section II of this Article will explain the struggles of the family court system, outline the historic role of the elderly in addressing family conflict, propose the creation of an Elder Volunteer Corps to address these communal needs, and discuss the benefits of creating such a corps. Section III will suggest logistical approaches to forming an Elder Volunteer Corps, focusing on …

Collective Bargaining In Rent Stabilized Buildings: How New York City's Rent Regulated Market Can Benefit From The Fundamentals Of Labor Law, Stephanie Gorin

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

There is an evident imbalance of power between the two parties, which is often exasperated by the costs, timing and intimidation of Housing Court. This Note will seek to explore how a "tenant group" should be formed. Although many tenants living in rent-regulated buildings are surrounded by fellow tenants in similar circumstances, many other rent regulated tenants are the sole tenant remaining in their building, still under the auspices of rent regulation. This Note will further seek to explore how sole rent regulated tenants can form and join tenant groups. Next, it proposes a system in which mediation, and, if …