| |
1.
Teaching and service mission. The charter purpose of the Harrison Institute is to provide legal services that are essential for political and economic democracy. The housing and community development clinic works to empower low-income individual and community group clients, and in so doing, provide law students with a broad vision of what lawyers can and should be doing in low-income communities. We pursue these service and educational goals in the context of transactional projects in which we seek to give clients ownership or control of housing, businesses and social services.
Presently, the housing and community development clinic works principally in tenant acquisition and renovation of multifamily affordable housing. Since 1990, the Institute has represented over 50 tenant associations on behalf of over 7,000 tenants in the Washington metropolitan area. The Institute has helped clients purchase more than 1,000 housing units and convert them into cooperatives and other forms of resident ownership. In achieving these results, students have structured over $50 million in acquisition and rehabilitation financing. The funding has come through a combination of local, state, federal and private funding sources, including such complex transactions as low income housing tax credits and historic preservation tax credits. Clinic students also provide ongoing representation to housing cooperatives and nonprofit housing developers on organizational and operational matters.
2.
Role of community development lawyer. We take a very expansive view of the lawyering role. We believe that law alone is not sufficient to address the problems of poverty and powerlessness. Therefore, we teach students to recognize the existence of significant non-legal factors influencing community conditions and solutions, the need to identify and collaborate with other resources in communities and to take on tasks, when needed, that are not traditionally associated with lawyering. We teach students to think creatively about problem solving and not to limit themselves to traditional legal methods or techniques.
- Accountability to clients and collaborators. Our clients are primarily comprised of community groups, although we do represent several individual entrepreneurs. We typically represent tenant groups who are seeking to purchase their buildings or to negotiate with an owner for an element of managerial involvement in building operations. We are currently representing ten such organizations in various stages of tenant ownership. In this context, client accountability often involves organizing a board of directors, training that board in both corporate duties and the development process, and managing the potentially conflicting interests of residents with different levels of income and assets. A successful multifamily project usually includes multiple institutions and professional service providers, and it is the community lawyer’s role to help the group client select and then manage this development team. A sampling of public and private collaborators in this work includes:
– DC Housing Finance Agency
– DC Department of Housing and Community Development
– DC Housing Authority (public housing)
– Local Initiative Support Corporation
– Washington Area Community Investment Fund
– Community Development Corporations (CDCs)
– Unitarian Universalist Housing Development Corporation
– National Cooperative Bank
– Private lending institutions
– Nonprofit developers
– Community organizers
– Housing counselors
- Strategy and planning. The issues of strategy are addressed on two major levels. One involves the recognition that poverty is a function not only of the absence of means, but also the absence of power. Community development and community lawyering are strategic outcomes that evolve from that recognition. In creating a strategy to combat poverty, students are asked to consider such issues as empowerment, sustainability and collaboration.
As part of this role, students are asked to collaborate with clients to create strategies to achieve client ends. These ends, in turn, play a role in the implementation of a broader anti-poverty strategy. Students meet with clients, supervisors, peers and collaborators and consider theoretical writing on poverty, community and lawyering in their efforts to develop viable case strategies. They examine the interplay between these strategies and the theories of community development that we have examined, which leads to refinement of both theory and strategy.
- Skills. Most of our students’ learning involves organizational and transactional skills such as drafting and training to implement corporate bylaws, negotiating and drafting service contracts, negotiating and drafting real estate sale and conversion documents, and organizing and making presentations to clients, lenders and government agencies. Communication skills are geared to the lay audience, which must make life-changing decisions based on the information that our students provide. The lawyer’s role often involves development work such as preparing or managing others who prepare financing documents based on extensive information-gathering from residents. Students’ work with entrepreneurs involves many of the same skills, including an emphasis on presentation and training skills.
3. Seminar
curriculum. A multi-day orientation is held the week before classes begin in the fall. The orientation is scheduled only during the afternoons so that students can also participate in Early Interview Week. (The interview scheduling program used by the Office of Career Services will automatically schedule all of your interviews for the morning on the days you have orientation. See Clinic Enrollment Policy #6.) During the year, the clinic seminar meets once per week for three hours. The materials and discussions are designed to address theoretical questions about the nature of community and poverty and the role of the lawyer, doctrinal issues concerning areas in which we work (such as corporations, taxation, contracts, and finance), and skill areas such as interviewing, planning, negotiation, drafting and presenting. A sample of the topics we cover is as follows.
Fall semester
Community Development
Role of the Lawyer
- Styles of community lawyering
- Working with other disciplines
- Legal and political ethics
Real Estate Development
- Financial concepts
- Basic accounting
- Development process
- Players in development
- Sources of financing
- Maintaining affordability
- Pro formas and spreadsheets
Real Estate Transactions
- Elements of a sale transaction
- Real estate contracts and mortgages
- Real estate closing
Corporate structure
- Forms of organization
- Corporate documents
- Basic taxation
- Tax exemption
Simulation problem
(3 classes)
- Interviewing and Planning
- Basic interview theory and techniques
- Case planning
- Negotiation
- Negotiation theory and technique
- Contract Drafting
- Review of contract law
- Drafting techniques
- Drafting and reviewing contract
Community Lending
Entrepreneurship
Spring semester
Review of Fall and planning
for Spring
Land Use and Community
Development
- General land use regulation
- Historic Preservation
- Theory of competing “goods”
Power and Community Change
- Theories of empowerment
- Theories of development
Student Presentations
4. Clinic projects
and teams. In order to accomplish both education and legal service goals, the Institute expects students to work an average of at least 25 hours per week on all clinic activities. Students’ projects in the 2008-2009 housing clinic will most likely involve work in one or more of the following three principal areas: multifamily housing, economic development and microenterprise, and community institution building.
|
| |
12 unit building on the outskirts of Capitol Hill The tenants association in this building has purchased the building. The association is now planning the renovation of the property, choosing a form of ownership and seeking construction financing.
52 unit building in the Brightwood neighborhood. The tenants have purchased this building and hired a development consultant. They have decided to form a limited income cooperative and are currently working on the scope of renovations and the construction financing.
122 unit cluster of buildings in Southeast off Benning Road. The tenants have contracted to purchase their building and are in the process of obtaining acquisition financing. They are currently engaged in pre-development activities.
75 unit building off Rhode Island Avenue, Northeast. The tenants have contracted to purchase their building. They are obtaining a capital needs assessment to tell them what condition the building is in and what degree of rehabilitation is needed. They are preparing an application for acquisition financing.
10 unit building in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Northeast. The resident association has a contract to purchase the building. The residents are now considering the choice of form for their ownership of the property. The choices before them include condominiums and various forms of cooperatives. They are working on predevelopment activities and on obtaining acquisition financing.
26 units in two adjoining buildings in the Brightwood neighborhood. These buildings are in litigation (using pro bono outside counsel) with the owner claiming they did not receive their statutory opportunity to purchase the buildings when they were sold. We have been brought in to provide information on the development prospects for the residents, who intend to develop the property as one project should they get to purchase the buildings. Both sides say they want to settle the case and there is a good chance the tenants will be able to purchase the property. If they do, we will stay on as counsel for the development
|
