In this paper, I examine how the rights of owners, lenders and residents threaten the functioning of real markets in distressed urban neighborhoods, perpetuating the pall that vacant and abandoned houses cast over their future. Even a single abandoned house can present an example of how the...

This short essay was published by Shelterforce, the journal of affordable of housing and community development published by the National Housing Institute. It is largely taken from my law review article entitled 'We Shall Not Be Moved': Eminent Domain, Urban Redevelopment and the Socioeconomics...

For decades, America's older, undercrowded cities have struggled with neighborhoods beset by vacant houses that seemingly have no connection with a functioning real estate market. A nationwide foreclosure crisis has brought even greater attention to the need for inner-city communities to address...

No survey of urban neighborhood vacant property solutions can be complete without consideration of the approaches that involve wresting control of derelict properties away from their delinquent owners. Some of these methods can abate nuisances and return properties to productive use without...

Covenants and ground leases have been, and continue to be, used to create shared spaces that are fundamentally, and often invidiously, exclusive. Famously made a dead letter in the case of Shelley v. Kraemer, covenants banning resale to nonwhite households put the force of law behind the...

The foreclosure of property tax liens performs an essential economic function by reconnecting underutilized properties to the real estate market. To clear title in an efficient and just manner, local jurisdictions foreclosing on tax liens require clear, balanced procedures for the provision of...

Vacant Building Receivership is a building code enforcement tool that dispossesses and forecloses on owners of vacant buildings who are unwilling or unable to bring their derelict properties into basic conformity with basic building codes. This article examines vacant building receivership as a...

This review of the textbook, "Community Economic Development Law" (Aspen 2013), written by Susan Bennett, Brenda Bratton Blom, Louise Howells and Deborah Kenn, appeared in Vol. 22, No.1 issue of the Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Economic Development Law

This essay is based on my closing presentation at the Washburn Law Journal's 2015 symposium entitled “The Future of Housing -- Equity, Stability and Sustainability.” It explores how land banks and land trusts promote social goods, including socioeconomic integration, by connecting with and...

On May 20, 2010, Maryland’s governor, Martin O’Malley, signed the Affordable Housing Land Trust Act (AHLT Act) into law. Its enactment marked the culmination of six years of advocacy by the University of Baltimore Community Development Clinic and by the Maryland Asset Building and Community...