Housing Law Commons^™

Protecting The Right To Choose: Regulating Conscience Clauses In The Face Of Moral Obligation, Huseina Sulaimanee

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

The Last Plank: Rethinking Public And Private Power To Advance Fair Housing, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

The persistence of housing discrimination more than forty years after the passage of the federal Fair Housing Act (FHA) of 1968 is among the most intractable civil rights puzzle. For the most part, this puzzle is not doctrinal: the Supreme Court has interpreted the FHA only a handful of times over the last two decades – a marked contrast to frequent doctrinal contestations over the statutory scope and constitutionality of federal laws governing employment discrimination and voting rights. Instead, the central puzzle is the inefficacy of the FHA's enforcement regime given that, in formal terms, the regime is the strongest …

Expanding The Role Of North Carolina State Courts In Resolving Public Housing Disputes, Nooree Lee

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.

Receiverships In The Prison Litigation Context: Factors Necessary For An Effective Judicial Remedy Of Last Resort, Liat Weingart

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

This note examines the effectiveness of judicial receiverships as a last-resort remedy in institutional reform litigation, particularly in the context of prison systems. It argues that the success of receiverships depends on the court's ability to supervise effectively and ensure the receiver's independence from political influence. The analysis highlights that appointing executive agents as receivers often leads to conflicts of interest, undermining the remedy's effectiveness, and emphasizes the need for robust supervisory structures, such as Special Masters, to ensure accountability and alignment with court objectives.

Armed And Dangerous: The Crime Of Mortgage Fraud And What Congress Must Do To Stop It, Gabriel Zitrin

Legislation and Policy Brief

Instead, it will simply argue that while the relevant monetary policymakers continue far too slowly in the pursuit of mortgage securities reform, lawmakers whose purview includes the housing sector should use this opportunity to pursue a two-part strategy of aggressively combating fraud in the terms and sales of individual mortgages and taking bold measures to ensure that not simply embattled mortgage-holders but the victims of fraudulent lending behavior can achieve financial sustainability, even as they keep ownership of their homes.

Discretionary Pricing, Mortgage Discrimination, And The Fair Housing Act, Robert G. Schwemm, Jeffrey L. Taren

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

For generations, mortgage lending has always been the gateway to the American dream of homeownership, and, historically, has also been characterized by widespread discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities and their communities. Mortgage discrimination in the modem era has often been accomplished through a technique known as discretionary pricing, in which lenders allow their loan officers and brokers to increase borrowers' costs from an objectively determined base rate. In the past decade alone, discretionary pricing has cost minority homeowners billions of dollars in extra payments, which, in tum, has led these minorities to suffer higher foreclosure rates than whites and …

Putting The Brakes On Private Transfer Fee Covenants, R. Wilson Freyermuth

Faculty Publications

This article will discuss private transfer fee covenants, using one popular model as an example. After explaining how a private transfer fee covenant operates, the article will review the background legal principles relevant to its enforceability As this article will argue, sound policy does not justify the enforcement of private transfer fee covenants. The article concludes with a discussion of recent state legislative efforts to invalidate private transfer fee covenants and highlights a new model statute that, if adopted, would declare such covenants void as contrary to public policy.

Citizen Police: Using The Qui Tam Provision Of The False Claims Act To Promote Racial And Economic Integration In Housing, Jan P. Mensz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Economic and racial integration in housing remains elusive more than forty years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act. Recalcitrant municipal governments and exclusionary zoning ordinances have played a large role in maintaining and exacerbating segregated housing patterns. After discussing some of the persistent causes of segregated housing patterns, this Note presents a novel approach to enforcing the Fair Housing Act and the "affirmatively furthering fair housing" requirement on recipients of federal housing grants. This Note presents a citizen suit that emerged from the Southern District of New York in Anti-Discrimination Center v. Westchester County, where a private …

A Case Study On Contracted Seasonal Workers And Farm Labor Contractors In The Stockton Area, Cristal Verduzco

Agribusiness

This study was conducted to define the current situation between contracted seasonal workers and farm labor contractors in the Stockton area. Specifically, this study focuses on the perception workers have of farm labor contracted employment. It also addresses the perception farm labor contractors have on the contracting business.

To gather the information needed to compare perceptions, interviews with twelve contracted seasonal workers and two farm labor contractors were conducted in Stockton. The analysis process consists of a detailed account of the problems workers and farm labor contractors encounter in the farm labor contracting business.

The results of these interviews concluded …

Above All Else Stop Digging: Local Government Law As A (Partial) Cause Of (And Solution To) The Current Housing Crisis, Darien Shanske

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

So many things have gone wrong with our housing market that it is hard to know where to start. One simple diagnosis is that we invested too much in houses that were not worth as much as we thought. Looked at in this way, it is relatively easy to see how innovations like interest-only loans contributed to an over-valuation of housing. Certain actions of the federal government were and are also clearly problematic, such as the longstanding tax breaks for home ownership.

This Article looks at state and local government law, and particularly at financing mechanisms created by state law …

Please Check One--Male Or Female?: Confronting Gender Identity Discrimination In Collegiate Residential Life, Katherine A. Womack

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Equal Protection And Aesthetic Zoning: A Possible Crack And A Preemptive Repair, Louis G. Tassinary, Dawn E. Jourdan, Russ Parsons

UF Law Faculty Publications

In Village of Willowbrook v. Olech, the property owner alleged "the Village intentionally demanded a 33-foot easement as a condition of connecting her property to the municipal water supply where the Village required only a 15-foot easement from other similarly situated property owners." The complaint further described the village's demand as "irrational and wholly arbitrary." According to the Seventh Circuit, the property owner could allege an equal protection violation by asserting the state's action was motivated solely by a "spiteful effort to 'get' him for reasons wholly unrelated to any legitimate state objective." On appeal, the Supreme Court agreed, …

The Role Of The Exhaustion And Ripeness Doctrines In Reasonable Accomodation Denial Suits Under The Fair Housing Amendments Act, Matt Hall

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Section 8, Source Of Income Discrimination, And Federal Preemption: Setting The Record Straight, Jenna Bernstein

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Home Is Where The Hatred Is: A Proposal For A Federal Housing Administration Truth And Reconciliation Commission, Brian Gilmore

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Problems In Mortgage Servicing From Modification To Foreclosure: Hearing Before The S. Comm. On Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs, 111th Cong., Nov. 16, 2010 (Statement Of Associate Professor Adam J. Levitin, Geo. U. L. Center), Adam J. Levitin

Testimony Before Congress

The mortgage foreclosure process is beset by a variety of problems. These range from procedural defects (including, but not limited to robosigning) to outright counterfeiting of documents to questions about the validity of private-label mortgage securitizations that could mean that these mortgage-backed securities are not actually backed by any mortgages whatsoever. While the extent of these problems is unknown at present, the evidence is mounting that it is not limited to one-off cases, but that there may be pervasive defects throughout the foreclosure and securitization processes.

The problems in the mortgage market are highly technical, but they are extremely serious. …

Robo-Signing, Chain Of Title, Loss Mitigation, And Other Issues In Mortgage Servicing: Hearing Before The Subcomm. On Hous. And Cmty. Opportunity Of The H. Fin. Serv. Comm., 111th Cong., Nov. 18, 2010 (Statement Of Associate Professor Adam J. Levitin, Geo. U. L. Center), Adam J. Levitin

Testimony Before Congress

The US is now in its forth year of a mortgage crisis in which over 3 million families have lost their homes and another 2.5 million are currently scheduled to lose theirs. Repeated government loan modification or refinancing initiatives have failed miserably. To this sad state of affairs, there now come a variety of additional problems: faulty foreclosures due to irregularities ranging from procedural defects (including, but not limited to robosigning) to outright counterfeiting of documents; predatory servicing practices that precipitate borrower defaults and then overcharge for foreclosure services that are ultimately paid for by investors; and questions about the …

Complaint, Nikolich Et Al V. The Village Of Arlington Heights Illinois, 870 F.Supp.2d 556, Docket No. 1:10-Cv-07395 (Northern District Of Illinois 2012), Allison Bethel, John Marshall Law School Fair Housing Legal Clinic

Court Documents and Proposed Legislation

No abstract provided.

Transparency In Lending In The United States And The United Kingdom: Which Business Model Does It Best, Mara Hart

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The recent downturn of the global economy, spurred in large part by an unparalleled housing crisis and credit crunch in the United States and abroad, cannot be practicably understood or explained by an examination of isolated factors. Although the impact of the economic downturn has been felt globally, many blame the meltdown of the U.S. subprime mortgage market for their individual country's woes. Therefore, the mortgage regulatory scheme in the United States, in terms of lending practices and housing policies, is an important place to begin an inquiry into the origins of the global crisis. In order to better understand …

Bringing Human Rights Home: The Dc Right To Housing Campaign, Meetali Jain

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.