Housing Law Commons^™

Class Warfare: The Disappearance Of Low-Income Litigants From The Civil Docket, Myriam Gilles

Articles

In recent years, much attention has been paid to the startling disparities in income and wealth in contemporary U.S. society. The enormous concentration of economic power in the top 1% is the culmination of decades of significant income and wealth gains for the top, combined with stagnant or decreasing growth for the majority - a trend that continues apace. But nowhere is the gap more glaring than in the civil docket, where class actions brought by or on behalf of low-income consumers and employees are on the verge of disappearing.

To be sure, the decline in class actions is only …

The Living Constitution And The Second Amendment: Poor History, False Originalism, And A Very Confused Court, Paul Finkelman

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sexual Minority Stigma And System Justification Theory: How Changing The Status Quo Impacts Marriage And Housing Equality, Jordan A. Blenner

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Sexual minorities (i.e. lesbians and gay men) experience systemic discrimination throughout the United States. Prior to the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), in many states, same-sex couples could not marry and sexual minorities were not protected from sexual orientation housing discrimination (Human Rights Campaign, 2015). The current, two-experiment study applied Jost and Banaji’s (1994) System Justification Theory to marriage and housing discrimination. When sexual minorities question dissimilar treatment, thereby threatening the status quo, members of the heterosexual majority rationalize sexual minority discrimination to maintain their dominant status (Alexander, 2001; Brescoll, Uhlmann, & Newman, 2013; Citizens for Equal …

Paradoxes, Parallels And Fictions: The Case For Landlord Tort Liability Under The Revised Uniform Residential Landlord-Tenant Act, Shelby D. Green

Hamline Law Review

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Zoning As Taxidermy: Neighborhood Conservation Districts And The Regulation Of Aesthetics, Anika S. Lemar

Indiana Law Journal

Over the last thirty years, municipalities across the country have embraced neighborhood conservation districts, regulations that impose design standards at the neighborhood level. Despite their adoption in thirty-five states, in municipalities from Boise to Cambridge, neighborhood conservation districts have evaded critical analysis by legal scholars. By regulating features such as architectural style, roof angle, and maximum eave overhang, conservation districts purport to protect “neighborhood character” or “cultural stability.” Implicit in these regulations is the unsupported assumption that the essential feature of a neighborhood’s character is its architectural design at a single point in time. The unfortunate result is zoning as …

Rent Certainty Is Not Rent Control, Tom Dunne

Reports

The housing crisis and the debate about rent control should result in a beneficial change to the regulation of the sector but the opportunity could be lost for want of clarity of thinking about the nature of rent certainty and the distinction between it and rent control. At present rent is regulated by the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 (RTA 2004) which provides that rent can only change once a year and cannot be more than the market rent. Many argue a greater degree of rent certainty is required and that rent should not be allowed to increase by more than …

Occupying The Constitutional Right To Housing, Lisa T. Alexander

Faculty Scholarship

The United States does not recognize a formal legal right to housing. Yet, the right to housing is alive in America. Using qualitative interviews and case studies, this Article is the first to argue that recent American housing rights movements, such as the Occupy Movements, Take Back the Land movements, and Home Defenders’ League, give legal meaning to an American constitutional right to housing. These social movements represent the right to housing in American law when they occupy and retain vacant and real estate–owned homes, defend home owners and renters from illegal evictions and foreclosures, encourage municipalities to use eminent …

A National Landlord-Tenant Relations Act: A Legislative Proposal For The 1970'S, D. Richard Froelke

Akron Law Review

While education and employment are significant aspects of poverty law in this country, the focus of this paper is on housing in general and the recent development of tenant unions in particular. Specifically, the author proposes as a phase of a nationally developed program of housing for the 1970's the enactment of a federal National Landlord-Tenant Relations Act. Several thorough and thoughtful articles have recently been written' in which the vehicle of tenant unionization has been discussed and analyzed. Part II will briefly set forth the historical background of the tenant union concept. Part III will examine the case for …

Construction Mortgage Financing In Ohio, Malcom B. Ramey, Robert A. Jefferies Jr.

Akron Law Review

This article consists of a review and analysis of the Yarborough decision and the open-end mortgage statute and an assessment of their probable impact upon current construction loan lending procedures. In addition, the authors offer various observations regarding the form in which disbursing agreements and construction mortgage deeds should be drafted. The structure of the article may be briefly described as follows: First, attention will be given to the three methods by which a mortgagee can preserve the priority of its mortgage lien over liens of mechanics men which attach to the mortgaged premises after the recording of the mortgage …

Priority Of Liens Between Construction Mortgagee And Mechanic's Lienors; Wayne Building & Loan Of Wooster V. Yarborough, Allan S. Hoffman

Akron Law Review

Ohio follows the generally accepted rule that where there is a mortgage securing future advances such advances create liens only as they are actually made, unless the mortgagee is obligated to make the advances. In the latter case the mortgagee's lien will date from the time of its recording. In addition to this nonstatutory method by which a mortgagee can obtain lien priority, there is a statutory method by which he can do so, namely the procedure provided by § 1311.14 of Ohio Rev. Code. This statute is not new, having been enacted in 1915. However, in 1919 the Ohio …

The Mobile Home And The Law, Marvin M. Moore

Akron Law Review

In the past decade, house trailers have dramatically increased their share of the housing market in the United States….The manner in which mobile homes are dealt with under our zoning laws is therefore a matter of some importance. Surprisingly, comparatively little has been written regarding the zoning of mobile homes and trailer parks. The purpose of this article is to lessen this deficiency. The writer proposes to examine the subject by considering the following aspects of mobile home regulation: the need for mobile homes or a similar type of housing; the objectionable features of house trailers and trailer parks; the …

Symposium: Legal Issues And Urbanization In Developing Countries-Foreward, Georgia Journal Of International And Comparative Law

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Banks, Break-Ins, And Bad Actors In Mortgage Foreclosure, Christopher K. Odinet

Faculty Scholarship

During the housing crisis banks were confronted with a previously unknown number mortgage foreclosures, and even as the height of the crisis has passed lenders are still dealing with a tremendous backlog. Overtime lenders have increasingly engaged third party contractors to assist them in managing these assets. These property management companies — with supposed expertise in the management and preservation of real estate — have taken charge of a large swathe of distressed properties in order to ensure that, during the post-default and pre-foreclosure phases, the property is being adequately preserved and maintained. But in mid-2013 a flurry of articles …

Apartments And Houses: The Warranty Of Habitability, Walter H.E. Jaeger

Akron Law Review

“The trend towards greater consumer protection so evident in the products liability field is clearly discernible in the sale of new homes by the builder-vendor, and in the leasing of apartments by landlords. Some of the fundamental concepts of real property law, especially those which make no sense in modern society, have been, or are being, overruled and superseded by more enlightened and public policy-minded decisions of both the federal and state courts. It seems safe to predict that the warranty of habitability which governs the sale of new homes by the builder-vendor, adopted by a substantial majority of jurisdictions, …

Using Microcomputers And P/G% To Predict Court Cases, Stuart S. Nagel

Akron Law Review

The purpose of this article is to analyze a microcomputer program that can process a set of (1) prior cases, (2) predictive criteria for distinguishing among the cases, and (3) the relations between each prior case and each criterion in order to arrive at an accurate decision rule. Such a rule will enable all the prior cases to be predicted without inconsistencies, and thereby maximize the likelihood of accurately predicting future cases. To illustrate the program, this article uses five substantive fields, including the predicting of cases dealing with religion in the public schools, legislative redistricting, housing discrimination, international law, …

Making And Meeting The Prima Facie Case Under The Fair Housing Act, Frederic S. Schwartz

Akron Law Review

This article will deal almost exclusively with cases in the Individual Discrimination category.

Analysis of the housing discrimination cases requires that the fundamental substantive issue and the fundamental procedural issue be carefully distinguished. The substantive issue is simply whether the Act has been violated. That issue will be ultimately decided by the jury (or the judge in a trial to the court). The fundamental procedural issue with which we shall be concerned is whether the plaintiff has established his "prima facie case."

Part II of this paper will deal with the substantive issue and Part III with the procedural one. …

Standing On Shaky Ground: Standing Under The Fair Housing Act, Dash T. Douglas

Akron Law Review

Part II of this Article reviews the general principles of standing and its development under the FHA. Part III explores the two forms of standing successfully employed by testers – direct injury and neighborhood standing. Additionally, Part III focuses on the Supreme Court’s conclusion in Havens Realty v. Coleman that the “any person” language in § 3604(d) of the FHA provides standing to testers, and discusses how this holding has been interpreted by circuit courts in terms of its applicability to other provisions of the FHA. Finally, Part IV examines the requirements for organizations to achieve standing. Part IV also …

Access Denied: The Tale Of Two Tenants And Building Amenities, Lauren C. Wittlin

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Common Law Petition For Writ Of Certiorari, Beasley V. Chicago Commission On Human Relations & Betts Realty (Cook County 2015), J. Damian Ortiz, John Marshall Fair Housing Legal Clinic

Court Documents and Proposed Legislation

No abstract provided.

Bankruptcy Weapons To Terminate A Zombie Mortgage, Andrea Boyack, Robert Berger

Faculty Publications

Bankruptcy’s strongest public policy is the possibility of a fresh start for a borrower – a way for a debtor to free himself from the burdens of pre-petition obligations and re-commence his or her financial life. A debtor can surrender property burdened by a lien to the lien-holder and thereby release him or herself from ongoing obligations under the loan. This is true even in cases where the collateral’s value is less than the secured loan – for in bankruptcy, a lender’s secured claim is limited to the value of its lien. In chapter 13, a debtor who elects to …