By Professor Andrea McArdle I. Introduction Under the mayoral administration of Bill de Blasio, New York City has embarked on an ambitious affordable housing initiative mandating that real estate developers include below-market-rate units in rezoned areas of the city. Although approved by the New York City Council, the policy faces continuing community opposition, the expiration of a state tax subsidy law that would have attracted developers to participate in the plan, and likely complications as a result of a lawsuit filed last year challenging a community preference provision the City enforces with its affordable housing projects. This series of developments…
Author: SiteCare Support
By Jamila Jefferson-Jones* Introduction The modern sharing economy[1] is a diverse marketplace made up of various types of organizations and structures, including shared housing.[2] What ties these various components together is that they “generally facilitate community ownership, localized production, sharing, cooperation, [and] small scale enterprise.”[3] The housing segment of the sharing economy is also a part of what has been termed the “experience economy.”[4] Within the experience economy, “the crucial role of experiences [is] understood as (positive) emotions, values and identities in value creation.”[5] Thus, in theory, the housing segment of the sharing economy combines both the community and trust elements…
By Kate Ross Last month, Canadian radio celebrity Jian Ghomeshi was acquitted of rape and assault, after three women who came forward faced antagonistic cross-examination on their memory lapses, delays in reporting the abuse, and failure to mention subsequent interactions with Ghomeshi.[1] The complainants offered evidence that these gaps were irrelevant to the assaults or symptomatic of emotional confusion and trauma that often accompany experiences of sexual assault, but the judge found them fatal to the complainants’ credibility nevertheless.
The following post is a winning submission for the 2016 Jason Libou Online Writing Competition. Competitors were prompted to write a blog post on a topic of their choice relating to urban law and policy. By Immanuel Kim The College Board implemented a new version of the Standardized Admissions Test early this year, purportedly to even the playing field for students across various socioeconomic statuses. The test now focuses more on material that a typical high school student learns in school. In other words, it is another means of testing student progress under the Common Core, an educational standard followed and adopted by most…
By Claire Glass In its 2012 ruling in Miller v. Alabama, the Supreme Court of the United States found mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles violate the 8th Amendment, unfairly subjecting juveniles to the same sentences as their adult counterparts without giving judges an opportunity to consider the defendant’s age and individual circumstances as mitigating factors. The landmark decision left unanswered, however, whether it would apply to the 2,500 some incarcerated people around the country already serving these unconstitutional sentences, and if so, what process should be employed for re-sentencing.
By Herbert Rosen After Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia’s passing, much has been and will continue to be written about his landmark opinions, originalist/textualist methods of interpretation, and his words which inspired some and angered others. However, Scalia should also be recognized for his significant contributions to land use law.
By Claire Glass In 2009, New York State banned the longstanding practice of shackling of pregnant incarcerated women during childbirth, but a 2015 report by the Correctional Association (CA), a non-profit with authority to enter and inspect the state’s correctional facilities, reveals that New York State and county institutions routinely break this law. The vast majority of women interviewed reported being shackled at varying stages of pregnancy, some through labor and delivery.
By Vinh Hua While policies that promote bicycle usage in urban environments are becoming more common, they remain a divisive issue among urban planners and city managers. Support for such policies is evidenced by the creation of bike lanes to the usage of bike-share programs like Citi Bike, while the governmental support or ambivalence to these programs is also the subject of both discussion and litigation.
By Vinh Hua San Francisco is currently the site of a number of major battles over gentrification, as residents, developers, tech companies, tech professionals, and landlords fight for their interests in both the court of law and public opinion. San Francisco has become the most expensive city to live in the United States, even beating out Manhattan. The city has skyrocketing rents, as the growth of the tech-sector creates a burgeoning population of well-paid tech-sector employees. These professionals have driven demand for rental units through the roof, with rental prices soon following. A perfect storm of limited housing stock, market pressures,…
By Claire Glass On September 30, activists gathered for a town hall and to launch SIFNYC, a coalition of criminal justice and drug policy advocates campaigning to bring Safe Injection Facilities(SIFs) to New York City. SIFs in Europe, Canada, and Australia already provide clean needles, health services, and a police-free place to use intravenous drugs to users who would otherwise be forced to use in public where rates of overdose and contraction of infectious disease dramatically increase. Along with immediate safety improvements, SIFs offer access to clinical professionals and recovery services but, importantly, don’t mandate recovery efforts in exchange for use of…