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For this issue's Committee Central, affordable housing experts Judy Weber, CPM[R]; Gwen Volk, CPM[R], NAHP-e[R], RAM[R], FHC[R], CPO[R], SHCM[R], HCCP[R]; and Eileen Wirth, CPM[R], HCCP[R], SHCM[R], NAHP-e[R], share what it [...]

INTRODUCTION I. THE CURRENT DEBATE ABOUT POVERTY AND CHILD NEGLECT A. CRITICS OF THE STATUS QUO: THE LEGAL SYSTEM INTERVENES IN FAMILIES BECAUSE OF THEIR POVERTY, WHICH THE SYSTEM CONFUSES [...], Family courts and child protective services ("CPS") agencies surveil, regulate, and separate hundreds of thousands of families for neglect annually. These families are overwhelmingly poor, and the history of this legal system reveals an expectation, if not an intention, to intervene in poor families. This raises the question whether family courts and CPS agencies are "confusing poverty and neglect" or if they intervene for more than "just poverty," as a raging debate in the field is framed. The law fails to help resolve this debate. Instead of distinguishing poverty from neglect, or providing nuanced examinations of what social science has long shown to be a complex relationship between poverty and neglect, the law assumes away the problem. The law asserts that neglect and poverty are distinct, so the legal system's decision to label parental behavior as neglectful frames the case as about some parental fault or pathology and not about poverty. Consistent with that frame, the law has separated anti-poverty financial supports from interventions available in neglect cases, so neglect interventions largely avoid providing such supports, even though much empirical evidence shows they can reduce family court and CPS system involvement. Moreover, family court and CPS agency intervention can trigger a variety of steps which make poor parents poorer, undermining their ability to reunify with their children. This Article identifies a range of changes which would improve the legal system's ability to distinguish poverty from neglect, by both eradicating longstanding legal rules which confuse poverty and neglect, and establishing more radical rules that would reverse the historical division between neglect cases and anti-poverty financial supports. These proposals recognize how deeply intertwined poverty and neglect are currently, and the absence of any easy test to determine which families could stay safely together if they were not poor and which could not. Absent such a test, the best solution is to provide families the income or the supports that would replicate the experience of families who are not poor.

Byline: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, together with the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority (WHEDA), announced Tuesday the final 2025-2026 Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP). The QAP [...]

With the mercury hitting 35°C this summer, many Viennese have headed for rooftop pools. At Aspern Seestadt, one of Europe's largest housing projects, they can plunge into an artificial lake [...]

Table of Contents Introduction 256 I. The Affordable Housing Crisis and the Need for Informal 259 Housing II. Building Codes' Impacts on the Affordable Housing Crisis 262 III. Private Solutions [...], The affordable housing crisis and the lack of housing for low-income individuals is a significant problem in major metropolitan areas in the United States and specifically in California. This article introduces the affordable housing crisis, how building codes impact the affordable housing crisis, and how private citizens are responding to the crisis with private solutions in the form of "illegal housing." Illegal housing is housing that is built in violation of state and local building and safety codes and includes any informal housing such as illegally converted garage apartments, warehouses, accessory dwelling units, or tiny houses. This article argues that state and local governments should relax building and zoning codes to allow for some informal housing. This would encourage government oversight of currently existing illegal housing, allowing the government to ensure the proper health and safety of these alternate housing situations, while simultaneously ameliorating the housing crisis by allowing for informal housing solutions.

Iowa recently passed a law banning local governments from providing basic income programs. But one providing $500 a month to low-income residents says it will continue using private funds. Most [...]

Byline: Brian Johnson A far-ranging bill related to transportation spending, housing and labor has cleared the House floor, despite pushback from critics who say worker protection language in the bill [...]

Byline: Wesley Muller, The Louisiana Illuminator Photo caption: Rows of solar modules generate electricity at UL-Lafayette's Photovoltaic Applied Research and Testing (PART) Lab Aug. 9, 2021. Photo courtesy Wes Muller/La. [...]

Byline: Kevin Oklobzija A nearly $36 million renovation project is planned for an affordable housing community that straddles the border of the town of Irondequoit and the city of Rochester. [...]

ABSTRACT Amending the federal Fair Housing Act ("FHA") to ban "source-of-income" discrimination has been discussed for over twenty years. During this time, a growing number of states and localities (including [...]