Housing Law and Policy

Millions of people face housing insecurity in the United States, and last year, the number of unhoused people in the United States surged by 12%. Stable housing is crucial to every index of well-being and flourishing—maintaining one’s health, employment, community ties, and pursuing education. Yet little about the U.S. housing system focuses on ensuring that people are able to procure or maintain housing, or that the housing they are able to find is habitable, affordable, or in the communities they call home. Why? 

This course seeks to explain how we have arrived at this status quo—soaring real estate prices and a chronic, ever-mounting housing crisis, rife with racial inequalities. It approaches this question by examining the legal practices and systems that structure it, beginning with their history, and examining their development to our current moment. 

As the dominant approach to housing in this country is the private market, a substantial part of the course focuses on the land market and real estate system, or the construction of private property and mortgage markets. Two central questions it seeks to address are the causes of rising costs and housing shortages. Its scope also includes the structure and evolution of public housing and the affordable housing industry, with attention to the roles of state, federal, and local governments in housing markets. In the course of covering these topics we will also examine exclusionary and inclusionary zoning; rent regulation; the scope and reach of fair housing laws and principles; constitutional housing issues, including the criminalization of homelessness; evictions, displacement, and remedies in law and advocacy.

The course examines histories and systems of national significance, but also incorporates many examples and case studies from California and Los Angeles. Guest speakers may include foreclosure and eviction defense attorneys, attorneys and advocates who work with homeless populations, and members of the LA Tenants’ Union. Grades will be based on group presentations, reflection papers, and a presentation.