Land Use Prof Blog

CFPs for ASU's Sustainability Conference of American Legal Educators / 2018 Morrison Prize Contest

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2018 Morrison Prize Contest Call for Entries – Submit by December 9!

The Morrison Prize is a $10,000 award that is presented annually to the author(s) of the most impactful sustainability-related legal academic paper published in North America during the previous year. The prize winner(s) will present the winning paper in a plenary session at the fourth annual Sustainability Conference of American Legal Educators on May 11, 2018, which will be held at the Beus Center for Law and Society located on the ASU Downtown Phoenix campus.​ Eligibility Requirements: The Morrison Prize contest is open to full-time law professors who have published environmental sustainability-related papers in printed U.S. or Canadian legal academic journals during the contest period. The contest is not open to students.  All papers appearing in a qualifying journal's final 2016 issue or in an issue printed and circulated prior to November 15, 2017, fall within the contest period. Works-in-progress and papers that are not published in print form before the deadline are not eligible. Papers focused on topics in environmental law, water law, energy law, natural resources law, land use law, disaster law, climate change law, or agricultural law meet the subject matter requirements for eligibility. Judging Process and Criteria: The Morrison Prize seeks to recognize the paper published within the eligibility period that is likely to have the most significant positive long-term impact on the advancement of the environmental sustainability movement. All eligible papers entered into the prize contest will undergo independent review and scoring by a diverse group of full-time law professors who teach in environmental sustainability-related areas at four different accredited North American law schools.   The contest scoring system focuses primarily on a paper's quality and originality of analysis (20%) and potential for real-world impact on policy developments directly related to environmental sustainability goals (80%). ASU Law will announce the 2018 Morrison Prize winner in February. The winner must present the winning paper at the May 2018 Sustainability Conference of American Legal Educators to claim the cash prize. How to Enter: To enter, mail a cover letter and five (5) offprints of your qualifying paper to: Lauren Burkhart Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law Arizona State University 111 E. Taylor Street Phoenix, AZ 85004-4467 The deadline for submitting papers is December 9, 2017. Entries postmarked by the deadline will be accepted. Nominations of colleagues' or peers' articles are welcome but must include five (5) offprints.

Submit Now

Questions: Contact Lauren Burkhart Phone: (480) 965-2465 Web: law.asu.edu/SustainabilityLaw

Low Carbon Land Use: Paris, Pittsburgh, and the IPCC: A Series by John R. Nolon

 

Low Carbon Land Use: Paris, Pittsburgh, and the IPCC

Grassroots Mitigation of Climate Change

by John R. Nolon

Distinguished Professor of Law

Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University

Last year, we published a series of blogs that described the evolution of local zoning codes into a dynamic legal system for sustainable development.  The final post demonstrated the relevance of this system of law to climate change, noting its embrace by the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report in 2014 and the Accord achieved at the Paris Conference of the Parties in 2015.  Our new series explores how local governments, using power already delegated to them by their states, can mitigate climate change.   It will describe local legal authority to shape human settlements, show how that authority touches over two-thirds of the sources of carbon dioxide emissions, provide detailed examples of the techniques municipalities use to control the size and shape of settlements, present five strategic solutions, show how local problem solving is particularly effective, and demonstrate how local action can be used to reduce or capture emissions and help fulfill the Paris Accord to which many cities remain fully committed.

The effects of climate change manifest themselves at the local level, where people are killed or injured, property is destroyed, businesses are shuttered, ecosystems are fouled, and where our democratic system is most vibrant. Upon our discovery of the advent of local environmental law twenty years ago, we investigated why particular localities adopted these new laws.  Through interviews with local leaders, we found they were profoundly perturbed by drinking water pollution, species disappearance, riverbank erosion, wetlands damage, and the loss of historic viewsheds, to name a few. These influences motivated a grassroots solution to their problem: adopting and enforcing local environmental law. See In Praise of Parochialism: The Advent of Local Environmental Law.

We suggested that this perturbation effect should be used to target the investment of public resources to communities where on-the-ground damage is evident or imminent, knowing that local leaders will embrace sound solutions. Suggesting to state and federal agencies that they work from the ground up, however, is at odds with the norms of our decades-old environmental legal system, which works from the top down. We expect that federal agencies will establish standards, penalize violators, and clean up point-sources of pollution. That system has done its job effectively.  Nevertheless, grounding environmental action at the local level has numerous advantages of its own. 

It is there that citizen engagement can create lasting social change.  Perturbed citizens, if not immunized from the influence of big oil and big coal, are less likely to be captured by them. And, it is at the grassroots of our legal system that the power to control land use is found.  It is there that non-point source pollution, the biggest cause of water quality deterioration, can be addressed. It is there too that our legal system can reduce the demand for fossil fuels by creating energy efficient buildings and sustainable neighborhoods. Only there can solutions crafted at the federal and state level be adapted to local circumstances, which vary widely among the 40,000 municipalities in America.

The primary authority to determine what happens to our settled and undeveloped landscapes is in the hands of local officials who are elected or rejected by perturbed local voters. Regional and state agencies, taking advantage of these grassroots perturbations, can provide funding, technical assistance, data about regional and state-wide needs and, by so doing, create a linked system of strategies to address parochial needs and nest them in broader regional and state-wide contexts.  

Our positive experience with the grassroots perturbation effect is explained by studies in ecology, sociology, and urban planning.  Scholars who study the process of change, a field of sociology called the diffusion of innovation, observe how change happens in social systems and document the processes by which successful change occurs. Their focus is on connectivity.  They observe that outside change agents are most successful when they place new tools in the hands of respected local leaders. When those leaders adopt an innovative solution, others pay attention. As successful change occurs, the rest of the community catches on, a tipping point is reached, and the innovation becomes permanent. Successful change in these peer communities spread to nearby places confronting similar problems.  In the study of urban planning, researchers describe how local and regional planning networks can be created to link local responses to address common, transboundary problems.

Local stakeholders represent the components of the municipal complex adaptive system. See Champions of Change: Reinventing Democracy Through Land Law Reform. By being engaged in public processes, they can achieve consensus about how to respond to flooding, drought, mud slides, wildfires, sea level rise, and storm surges – effects associated with climate change.  In response to these on-the-ground perturbations, they are motivated to learn how to mitigate the forces of climate change by reducing vehicle miles travelled, creating energy efficient buildings, permitting and encouraging renewables and distributed energy generation facilities, and preserving natural systems that sequester carbon. As the local evidence of climate change becomes more and more evident, opinions often change as local leaders engage in solving the problems that threaten their environment and economy. They become committed to effective action and react aggressively to opportunity and threats.  The outpouring of support for state and local actions to manage climate change following the withdrawal of the U.S. of the Paris Climate Accord demonstrates that commitment. ­

Material from this series will appear in Low Carbon Land Use: Paris, Pittsburgh, and the IPCC, Arkansas Law Review.

Other posts in this series are available here:

Post 2:  Post-Paris Contagion

Post 3: Carbon Emissions: The Land Use Connection

Post 4:  Shaping Human Settlements

Post 5:  The Land Use Stabilization Wedge:  Buildings

Post 6:  The Land Use Stabilization Wedge:  Transportation

Post 7:  The Land Use Stabilization Wedge:  Sequestration

Post 8:  Distributed Energy

Post 9:  Community Power and Renewable Energy

Post 10:  Theoretical Underpinnings of the Paris Agreement and Corollary Benefits

Jonathan Rosenbloom on Contemporary Issues in Teaching Land Use: Question 5: How to Create a Practical Context for Learning?

While updating the recently released ninth edition to the casebook Land Use and Sustainable Development Law, the four co-authors engaged in numerous spirited discussions about teaching land use. We wanted to open this discussion to others to get their comments and thoughts as we continue to rethink the teaching of this important subject. Each month on this blog, we will introduce a new topic relevant to teaching land use. The topics will loosely follow our casebook chapters, and we are now up to Chapter 2. We'll explore each topic through four blog posts, one from each of us. We hope you find the discussion enriching, and encourage you to contribute to the conversation in the comments section below or off-line.  -- John Nolon, Patricia Salkin, Stephen Miller, & Jonathan Rosenbloom.]

Contemporary Issues in Teaching Land Use

Question 5:  How to Create a Practical Context for Learning?

by Jonathan Rosenbloom

 Chapter 3 starts with classic flexible zoning techniques, such as zoning amendments, special use permits, and variances, that help communities and individual lot owners address changes as they occur. As John and Stephen stated, attending a plan and zoning commission or a board of adjustment hearing and discussing the hearing before and after are valuable experiences in learning how these techniques are implemented.

As part of understanding the practical application of these techniques, it is equally important for students to question whether the techniques are adequately addressing the broad range of critical changes facing communities. Hurricanes Maria, Harvey, and Irma, wildfires in Colorado, Montana, Oregon, and Washington, and other disasters have shown that we are in a time of uncertain ecological change. Communities face a barrage of unknown challenges that may occur in different and, at times, divergent ways. California’s five-year drought, for example, ended with one of the wettest winter/spring periods on record, which was followed by catastrophic and on-going fires this fall. These events “are reminders that we live in an era of standardized disasters.” Amy Davidson Sorkin, In the Dark. In addition to ecological changes, students should be aware that communities face emerging social and social-ecological changes, such as autonomous vehicles and changes in e-commerce and housing like tiny houses, that will influence land use patterns.

Students should consider these challenges in light of classic flexible zoning techniques. Before attending a hearing, students can discuss whether the existing flexible zoning techniques are adequate to prepare communities for an uncertain future. This may include exploring the kinds of challenges confronting communities and how those challenges affect land use patterns. After the hearing, it may be helpful to explore whether those challenges were raised at the hearing and, if not, why. One likely answer is that the techniques were not designed and are not adequate to address major social-ecological or ecological changes. They are mostly focused on use, height, and bulk.

It is important to point out, however, that these techniques remain the primary methods of incorporating flexibility into many zoning codes. Further, that focus may be misplaced in today’s changing climate. This may lead to a discussion of long-range [resilience] planning (discussed in Chapter 2) and whether that kind of stagnant long-range planning is adequate given the rate of changes. Further, what, if anything, would be helpful to accommodate the types of changes we are seeing and can expect to see. This may be a good point to foreshadow some of the techniques in Chapter 4 (such as, development agreements) and introduce adaptive governance as a means to help identify and track changes and to make policy adjustments in a more nimble, deliberate fashion.

At Drake Law School, we will delve often into Des Moines new proposed zoning code (for the most recent version of the code at the time of this post). That code, which incorporates several post-Euclidean strategies, such as form-based zoning and sustainable development, does not mention autonomous vehicles, e-commerce, or fundamental ecological changes. Maybe it doesn’t need to, but I think it is important for students to realize that most zoning codes are stagnant pieces of legislation. Unless more aggressive means of understanding and tracking changes and altering policies based on those changes is incorporated throughout core parts of zoning laws, communities will continue to be ill-prepared for a rapidly changing future.

The ninth edition of Land Use and Sustainable Development Law, is now available for the 2017-18 academic year.  Feel free to contact any of the co-authors if you would like to discuss the book--or just teaching land use law in general.

Previous posts in the Contemporary Issues in Teaching Land Use series

Question 1: Teaching the Crossroads Where Nuisance & Zoning Meet [Rosenbloom | Nolon | Salkin | Miller]

Question 2:  Teaching the 1916 NYC Zoning Ordinance and the Standard State Zoning Enabling Act [Rosenbloom | Nolon | Salkin | Miller]

Question 3:  Teaching the Economics of Land Use Regulation and Ethics [ Salkin | Nolon | Miller | Rosenbloom]

Question 4:  Teaching about the Comprehensive Land Use Plan [Salkin | Nolon | Miller | Rosenbloom] 

Question 5:  How to Create a Practical Context for Learning? [Nolon | Miller | Rosenbloom | Salkin]

 

A framework for how land use decisionmaking misfires?

In a forthcoming article, Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule take a look at what they call "The Morality of Administrative Law."  They frame their article around eight ways Lon Fuller noted “that the attempt to create and maintain a system of legal rules may misfire.” These are:

(1) a failure to make rules in the first place, ensuring that all issues are decided on a case-by-case basis;
(2) a failure of transparency, in the sense that affected parties are not made aware of the rules with which they must comply;
(3) an abuse of retroactivity, in the sense that people cannot rely on current rules, and are under threat of change;
(4) a failure to make rules understandable;
(5) issuance of rules that contradict each other;
(6) rules that require people to do things that they lack the power to do;
(7) frequent changes in rules, so that people cannot orient their action in accordance with
them; and
(8) a mismatch between rules as announced and rules as administered.

It struck me that many of these concerns are also a useful framework for thinking about the way land use hearings often go awry.

Stephen R. Miller on Contemporary Issues in Teaching Land Use: Question 5: How to Create a Practical Context for Learning?

While updating the recently released ninth edition to the casebook Land Use and Sustainable Development Law, the four co-authors engaged in numerous spirited discussions about teaching land use. We wanted to open this discussion to others to get their comments and thoughts as we continue to rethink the teaching of this important subject. Each month on this blog, we will introduce a new topic relevant to teaching land use. The topics will loosely follow our casebook chapters, and we are now up to Chapter 2. We'll explore each topic through four blog posts, one from each of us. We hope you find the discussion enriching, and encourage you to contribute to the conversation in the comments section below or off-line.  -- John Nolon, Patricia Salkin, Stephen Miller, & Jonathan Rosenbloom.]

Contemporary Issues in Teaching Land Use

Question 5:  How to Create a Practical Context for Learning?

by Stephen R. Miller

 

It is a little daunting following John Nolon in discussing the practical context for teaching land use law because he, along with Patty Salkin (who will finish up this round of essays), are really synonymous with this topic and have done so much to guide my generation in practical learning over the years.  Here, though, are some thoughts about what I think I do right, and where I am still seeking to do better, on this important topic.

When we started writing this latest edition of the casebook, one of the major discussions we had was how to teach both the basics of zoning, while also recognizing that most major development plays by different rules, such as a planned unit development or a development agreement.  The end result is that Chapter 3 largely addresses the basics, while Chapter 4 is largely re-envisioned to address subdivisions, PUDs, DAs, and all of the tools now sometimes referred to as the "contract reformation in land use."

To create a practical context for learning in these chapters, I have students attend a hearing of the Boise planning and zoning commission, which conveniently is located just two blocks from the law school.  I choose the hearing date for students based upon its agenda.  I also tell the students which agenda items I want them to follow and have them read the packet in advance.  I typically pick a conditional use permit, which assists with Chapter 3, and a planned unit development, which assists with Chapter 4.  Because Boise is booming, almost every commission hearing has both of these permits on the agenda, but I realize that may not be true in some other jurisdictions.  I also ask students to write a one page single-spaced response paper.  I tell them they don't have to focus on the law in the paper; instead, they can write about the effectiveness of the community speakers, the nature of the process, what they thought about the role of the city attorney, the tone of the commission, how they would have voted, and so on.  I find that this works pretty well for the basic pedagogical purposes of Chapters 3 and 4. 

I do, however, have several issues that I continue to wrestle with as I try to think about a stronger practical component to this course.  First, a major problem I have is how to teach good land use process if local practice falls below that standard to which you want students to aspire.  This is a major problem in Idaho.  In Idaho, city attorneys start as criminal lawyers and then, if they are lucky, about a decade later, they are promoted to the civil side.  That means that most of the city attorneys in Boise, much less the rest of the state, have very little exposure or knowledge of the procedural aspects of land use law.  As I wrote in another post over the summer, this can lead to some highly unusual proceedings, such as a recent case where the planning department rationalized its actions on appeal according to criminal law, rather than the applicable administrative law, standards.  How do you explain that to students?  What I say to students is that, if you are representing a developer or a community group, you should recognize the failure of process as an opportunity for appeal and litigation.  If students end up working for the city, I tell them they should make a point to try to improve these procedural matters.  Nonetheless, the difference between the ideals I teach in class and the realities of what happens in a boom-town like Boise--and, I suspect, in many other boom-towns of the Mountain West and South--is something that I still reckon with when I teach this class.

A related concern, which is a much broader dilemma that I wrestle with, deals with how to teach in the context of a mismatch between rapid growth of urban areas and the region's expertise to handle growth.  The Mountain West and the South continue to be the two fastest growing regions in the country, but they are also the two regions, I would argue, where there is less emphasis on effective land use controls.  This mismatch between growth and expertise in managing it, I believe, is a worldwide phenomenon.  As the IPCC's latest report noted, in the climate change context, “[o]vercoming the lack of political will, restricted technical capacities, and ineffective institutions for regulating or planning land use will be central to attaining low-carbon development at a city-scale.”  2014 IPCC Mitigation Report §12.6.  If I did not live in Boise, which is almost always on the list of the 20 fastest growing metro regions by percentage, I would probably have passed this sentence by without notice.  But living where I do, it expressed a great concern I have about the future of land use law, as well as how we train future land use lawyers.  Every day, I see tremendous growth in this region, and yet, I know that whether Boise addresses its growth in a meaningful way is determined by political will, technical capacity, and effective institutions.  Like most fast growth regions in the U.S. and the world, Boise struggles with all three.  I would like to believe that my class could be the beginning of addressing all three of those deficiencies.  That is a daunting lift, but a broader aspect of the practical learning that I hope to incorporate better into my classroom in future years.  

The ninth edition of Land Use and Sustainable Development Law, is now available for the 2017-18 academic year.  Feel free to contact any of the co-authors if you would like to discuss the book--or just teaching land use law in general.

Previous posts in the Contemporary Issues in Teaching Land Use series

Question 1: Teaching the Crossroads Where Nuisance & Zoning Meet [Rosenbloom | Nolon | Salkin | Miller]

Question 2:  Teaching the 1916 NYC Zoning Ordinance and the Standard State Zoning Enabling Act [Rosenbloom | Nolon | Salkin | Miller]

Question 3:  Teaching the Economics of Land Use Regulation and Ethics [ Salkin | Nolon | Miller | Rosenbloom]

Question 4:  Teaching about the Comprehensive Land Use Plan [Salkin | Nolon | Miller | Rosenbloom] 

Question 5:  How to Create a Practical Context for Learning? [Nolon | Miller | Rosenbloom | Salkin]

CFP: Law, Planning and Wildfire in the Wildland-Urban Interface: The Future of Government and Governance of Disaster in the West

Call for Presentations and Papers

Law, Planning and Wildfire in the Wildland-Urban Interface:

The Future of Government and Governance of Disaster in the West

Symposium Date:  Friday, October 19, 2018

Proposal Deadline:  January 1, 2018

Location:  Boise, Idaho

The Idaho Law Review invites proposals for presentations and papers for its symposium, “Law, Planning and Wildfire in the Wildland-Urban Interface:  The Future of Government and Governance of Disaster in the West.” 

In 1995, fire suppression made up 16 percent of the U.S. Forest Service’s annual appropriated budget; in 2015, wildfire consumed more than 50 percent of the agency’s budget. 

As suppression costs mount, attention is increasingly focused on development patterns that place more people in wildfire’s way, often resulting in higher losses of life, greater property value damage, and higher suppression costs.  This is especially true at the urban fringe, often referred to as the “Wildland-Urban Interface,” or WUI.  Six of the 10 most expensive fires in the past 100 years were WUI fires, despite the fact that WUI fires account for just a small fraction of overall fires fought in any given year.  According to one widely used WUI definition, only 14 percent of the WUI is developed. If current development patterns continue, development in the WUI will almost certainly grow substantially, resulting in even further increases in wildfire protection costs. With the West perennially ranking as a fast-growth region, WUI development is certain to grow over time. 

Some questions conference participants may address include the following:

• How should the West plan for, and govern for, wildfire in the WUI?
• What legal and policy tools are needed to plan for wildfire in the WUI?
• How should wildfire be implemented into the planning process?
• What is the role of government in planning for WUI wildfires?
• What is the role of markets, non-governmental entities, such as HOAs, and insurance in planning for WUI wildfires?
• How should the secondary effects of wildfire—often aesthetic, flooding, and landslides—be worked into WUI development planning?

We invite discussion of other topics related to WUI wildfire governance and planning, as well.

The conference invites a wide variety of potential contributions from those in federal and state agencies; local governments; planning professionals and academics; as well as legal professionals and academics working on the topic of wildfire in the WUI.  We seek a national representation of panelists, though the conversation will largely focus on western WUI wildfire planning.

We are accepting proposals for presentations with papers and also presentations without papers.

Papers for the symposium will be published in the Idaho Law Review’s peer-reviewed Natural Resources and Environmental Law edition.  To facilitate peer review, first drafts must be submitted no later than August 1, 2018.  Final drafts will be due December 1, 2018.  Publication will occur in Spring, 2019.  Symposium edition articles are typically 3,000 – 6,000 words in length, but may be up to 10,000 words in length.  For those familiar with writing for legal publications, student editors will provide assistance with citations. 

Please submit proposals no later than January 1, 2018 to Prof. Stephen R. Miller at [email protected].

Reasonable travel expenses of presenters will be reimbursed.

Current sponsors of the symposium include:  the Idaho Law Review; the University of Idaho College of Law; the University of Idaho Bioregional Planning + Community Design; and the Boise State University School of Public Service.

Funding for the symposium includes a grant from the U.S. Forest Service and the Idaho Department of Lands.

John R. Nolon on Contemporary Issues in Teaching Land Use: Question 5: How to Create a Practical Context for Learning?

While updating the recently released ninth edition to the casebook Land Use and Sustainable Development Law, the four co-authors engaged in numerous spirited discussions about teaching land use. We wanted to open this discussion to others to get their comments and thoughts as we continue to rethink the teaching of this important subject. Each month on this blog, we will introduce a new topic relevant to teaching land use. The topics will loosely follow our casebook chapters, and we are now up to Chapter 2. We'll explore each topic through four blog posts, one from each of us. We hope you find the discussion enriching, and encourage you to contribute to the conversation in the comments section below or off-line.  -- John Nolon, Patricia Salkin, Stephen Miller, & Jonathan Rosenbloom.]

Contemporary Issues in Teaching Land Use

Question 5:  How to Create a Practical Context for Learning?

by John R. Nolon

One problem that Chapter 3, The Basics of Zoning, presents is how to create a practical context for the students so they can understand the real life application of amending zoning, securing variances, handling nonconforming uses, and the pop-up novel land uses permitted by accessory use and home occupation provisions of zoning ordinances.  It helps for students to have and review an actual zoning ordinance and use it to find the sections that pertain to these basic techniques, which are the lifeblood of land use practice. Some of us use a single prototype and others encourage students to find one from a community they know or have an interest in. The cases in this chapter make it clear that this is a study of local law and that the language contained in specific codes is critical.  Learning to read what the local law says exactly is a critical skill that can be taught by tracking the student's code as they read and brief each of the cases in the chapter.

Another terrific approach is to require students to attend, and write a report on, a local zoning or planning board meeting.  They inevitably come back with observations about a variance proceeding, or a matter that involved a nonconforming use or home occupation.  This puts the material in the chapter into a real life context that is essential to learning the basics. 

The chapter also provides an opportunity to explore the similarities and differences between state laws and local practice in different states.  Consider the Larsen v. Pittsburgh Zoning Board of Adjustment as compared to Sasso v. Osgood involving the Town of Henderson in New York.  The common DNA of variances across boundaries is obvious, but so too are the local differences: the nuances that practitioners must grasp to carry their burden of proof, if they have one, to meet state statutory standards, or to get the evidence on the record needed to support the board's decision in court if challenged.

The Toys "R" Us v. Silva case is loaded with entertainment value as well as real learning.  It involves the complex administrative machinery of the New York City Zoning Resolution and the minions and agencies involved in its administration.  What can be more exciting that a dispute between residents of brownstones on 80th street and a large retailer fronting on Third Avenue?  The case involves a five-month-long public hearing, piles of evidence including warehouse logs, an upper east side site visit, the Board of Standards and Appeals, a reference to the City's Charter, a coalition of neighborhood associations dubbed "Neighbors-R-Us," opinions and operations of the DOB (Department of Buildings), shenanigans involving Chase Manhattan Bank, and, of course, the lesson that the words found in the local law, once again, matter.

 

The ninth edition of Land Use and Sustainable Development Law, is now available for the 2017-18 academic year.  Feel free to contact any of the co-authors if you would like to discuss the book--or just teaching land use law in general.

Previous posts in the Contemporary Issues in Teaching Land Use series

Question 1: Teaching the Crossroads Where Nuisance & Zoning Meet [Rosenbloom | Nolon | Salkin | Miller]

Question 2:  Teaching the 1916 NYC Zoning Ordinance and the Standard State Zoning Enabling Act [Rosenbloom | Nolon | Salkin | Miller]

Question 3:  Teaching the Economics of Land Use Regulation and Ethics [ Salkin | Nolon | Miller | Rosenbloom]

Question 4:  Teaching about the Comprehensive Land Use Plan [Salkin | Nolon | Miller | Rosenbloom] 

Question 5:  How to Create a Practical Context for Learning? [Nolon | Miller | Rosenbloom | Salkin]

CFP: ABA Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law: Managing the Tensions and Conflicts Among Affordable Housing, Community Development and Fair Housing Law

 

ABA Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law

Call for Papers

Managing the Tensions and Conflicts Among Affordable Housing, Community Development and Fair Housing Law

The Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law (the Journal) is the nation’s only law journal dedicated to affordable housing and community development law.  The Journal educates readers and provides a forum for discussion and resolution of problems in these fields by publishing articles from distinguished law professors, policy advocates and practitioners.

For its next issue the Journal invites articles and essays on the theme Managing the Tensions and Conflicts Among Affordable Housing, Community Development and Fair Housing Law

April 2018 will mark the 50^th anniversary of the passage of Title VIII of the 1968 Civil Rights Act, the federal Fair Housing Act. Doubtless, there will be numerous publications celebrating it and evaluating its effectiveness.  This issue of the Journal will focus on another equally significant dimension worthy of reflection. Title VIII was enacted to address both governmental and private actions that discriminate or that promote segregation either intentionally or by neutral rules.  Historians have documented a long history of governmental discrimination that promoted racial segregation by excluding people of color and others from communities of prosperity and opportunity as well as intentional practices of neglect and disinvestment that contained people of color and others protected by civil rights laws.

Given this legacy, there are numerous important and recurring tensions between fair housing law, the development of affordable housing, and community development that arise out of efforts to pursue Title VIII’s worthy objectives. Some examples of fair housing rules and policies that have caused complications include: (1) siting practices that are affected by the duty to affirmatively further fair housing and site and neighborhood standards; (2) the right of persons with disabilities to live in integrated, community-based settings where they can also receive long-term supportive services that address their individual needs; (3) the obligation to carry out affirmative fair housing marketing while also implementing admission and selection practices to create specialized housing for families with needs that often impair the ability to gain access to housing; (4) the responsibility to effectuate architectural access in a regulatory environment with complex building codes implemented by regulators and builders in inconsistent ways; and, (5) the importance of promoting equal access to housing by immigrants through language assistance policies in a political atmosphere where immigration itself is a contentious topic. 

Often these tensions are expressed as an either-or proposition.  Developers, sponsors, government officials and others are concerned about regulatory imperatives that are confusing or contradictory, interfere with their mission, cause inefficiencies, encourage unnecessary legal fees and litigation, create distortions in the developments and programs that lead to limits on the number of affordable units, or that undermine projects altogether. Fair housing advocates argue that some affordable development activities perpetuate or exacerbate conditions of segregation and containment affecting people of color and people with disabilities, and that in the absence of regulation and vigorous enforcement, bias, prejudice and exclusion will continue to plague the nation’s housing and finance systems.  Some community advocates question fair housing goals that disfavor investment in low-income communities and communities of color, as well as when application of Title VIII appears to impede efforts to resist gentrification and community displacement. Advocates for special needs populations do not all agree whether integration into the larger community or formation of special communities are more advantageous.

The Journal seeks articles that will explain and analyze these types of issues and suggest strategies (including legal and policy recommendations) to deal with them. The focus is not on those trying to evade fair housing requirements but on the complexities of complying with legal rules by people of good will who support fair housing goals. Articles can either focus on a particular rule or policy (e.g. site and neighborhood standards) or address a broader theme (e.g. how the tensions affect the location of housing or how they exemplify issues of identity and difference).

The Journal welcomes essays (typically 2,500–6,200 words) or articles (typically 7,000-10,000 words) on the theme. 

Interested authors should send an abstract describing their proposals to the Journal’s Editor-in-Chief, Tim Iglesias, at [email protected] by November 20, 2017. Submissions of final articles and essays are due by January 3, 2018. The Journal also accepts submissions on a rolling basis. Please do not hesitate to contact the Editor with any questions.