The University of Chicago The Law School

Join LSA, BLSA, and Law of the Land for a lunch discussion and Q & A with WBEZ's Natalie Moore, in conversation with Professor Randolph Stone of the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Clinic at the Law School.

Natalie Moore is WBEZ’s South Side Reporter, covering issues of segregation and inequality in Chicago. In this capacity, she has written extensively on topics such as affordable housing, mixed-income communities, and economic development in the city. Named Best Journalist in 2017 by the Chicago Reader and a Casey Medal recipient, her writing has appeared in the BBC, New York Times, NPR’s Morning Edition, and the Chicago Sun-Times, where she also writes a monthly column. In addition to receiving various accolades for her work, Ms. Moore is the author of The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation, which won the 2016 Chicago Review of Books award for nonfiction.

Please click here to RSVP.

The Kreisman Initiative for Housing Law and Policy invites students to tour the Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH) developments in the West Woodlawn neighborhood. Grove Parc Plaza was a 504-unit Section 8 housing redevelopment project located on a 12-acre site centered at 61st and Cottage Grove, four blocks southwest of the Law School. POAH has replaced Grove Parc Plaza with new housing on South Cottage Grove Avenue (The Jackson, The Grant, The Burnham and Trianon Lofts) and in the surrounding neighborhood.

Following the tour, the group will meet at the Town Hall Room of the Woodlawn Resource Center (6144 S. Cottage Grove Avenue).  We will have lunch and a panel discussing the intersection of the Grove Parc Plaza redevelopment with larger community revitalization initiatives, including The University of Chicago’s development plans.

Lunch will be provided.

PANELISTS:

Janet Smith, Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago and Co-Director of the Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement

Susana Vasquez, Associate Vice President, Office of Civic Engagement, University of Chicago

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

POAH, Grove Parc Plaza/Woodlawn Park Overview: http://www.poahchicago.org/woodlawn/about-woodlawn

CBS Chicago, "City Receives $30.5 Million Grant to Revitalize Woodlawn Neighborhood": http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/08/31/city-receives-30-5-million-grant-to-revitalize-woodlawn-neighborhood/

SCHEDULE

The Black Law Students Association Presents:

Effects of Mass Incarceration on Public Housing

Featuring Professor Lahny Rose Silva

Associate Professor of Law at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law

Monday, January 22, 2018

12:15 in Room D

Buano Pasta will be served. 

In the wake of the Great Depression, the Federal government created new institutions, including the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), to stabilize housing markets. As part of that effort, the HOLC created residential security maps for over 200 cities to grade the riskiness of lending to neighborhoods. Hartley and his co-authors trace the effects of these maps over the course of the 20th and into the early 21st century, focusing on the difference in outcomes (segregation, home ownership, house values, and credit scores) between residents living on a lower-graded side versus a higher-graded side of an HOLC boundary. 

Panelist:  Daniel Hartley, Chicago Federal Reserve

Lunch will be provided.

Segregation, Opportunity and Affordable Housing.  Deciding where affordable housing gets built - or doesn't get built - has implications for segregation, concentrated poverty, and economic opportunity. This panel discussion will focus on the siting of affordable housing through the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, the dominant affordable housing program in the U.S. and the subject of the Supreme Court’s Inclusive Communities decision in 2015 recognizing a disparate impact claim under the Fair Housing Act. 

Panelists:

Katherine O'Regan, New York University Wagner School of Public Service

Daniel Hemel, University of Chicago Law

Jeff Leslie, University of Chicago Law

Lunch will be provided.

In Bank of America v. City of Miami (2017), the Supreme Court held that cities blighted by
rashes of foreclosures produced by discriminatory lending had standing to sue lenders
based on falling property tax revenues and rising service burdens. But the Court held that
the city could only prevail if it met a tougher proximate cause standard than the one the
court below had applied. Panelists will include Supreme Court litigator Deepak Gupta, who
wrote an amicus brief in the case on behalf of associations of state and local governments
and officials, and Professor Lee Fennell (University of Chicago Law School). The panel will
address how the causation issues presented by the case interact with the goals of the Fair
Housing Act, and what the decision means for the future of cities’ efforts to combat mortgage
discrimination.

Lunch will be provided.