Suchergebnisse

Notwithstanding the enactment of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, accomplishing racially-integrated housing across the United States remains an unattained goal. The costs associated with this failure are innumerable. Black Americans have endured harms in many areas, including health, education, wealth, and employment. More broadly, the nation has incurred considerable socioeconomic and political costs. In the interdisciplinary book, Moving Toward Integration, authors Richard Sander, Yana Kucheva, and Jonathan Zasloff analyze why the promise of racially-integrated housing remains unfulfilled and identify noteworthy strategies for changing course. Engaging with their arguments, this article highlights several structural impediments to altering racial housing patterns. Banks, cities, government agencies, and courts have been major contributors to the problem. Nonetheless, they have the power to ameliorate some of the lingering damage and to prevent future harms. Referencing several examples involving the Fair Housing Act, disparate impact theory, and the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, this work elucidates how lending and government entities have sometimes operated to compromise desegregation and integration efforts, rather than to facilitate them. Understanding the counterproductive moves of these influential actors is essential to assessing proposals for change.

A new public-private law paradigm is developing with respect to the relationship of the state to private contracts. The paradigm melds private law concepts like unconscionability, good faith, and fair dealing with the public human rights principles of dignity and vulnerability. I trace this paradigm shift in the context of the housing law of Spain, where several rich cultural and legal resources have inspired a new sensibility with regard to residential mortgage loan contracts, rental agreements, and the overall duties and obligations of governments to address the citizenry's housing needs. Although this reorientation reflects decisions from the European Court of Justice and from the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, it is equally driven by an organic transformation in our understanding of housing markets and redistributive justice. Rather than receive the new paradigm with myopic trepidation, observers should herald it as the beginning of a much-needed dialogue between the public, human rights discourse, private business interests, and economic markets.