Work of Community and Economic Development Law Clinic to Remove Racist Housing Covenants featured in Washington Post
Oct. 23, 2020
The work of American University Washington College of Law’s Community and Economic Development Law Clinic and its co-director, Professor Susan Bennett, is featured in a recent Washington Post article on efforts to remove racist housing covenants for local residents.
Across the country, lawmakers and homeowners are dealing with a legacy of these covenants and clearing them from property records. On Oct. 1, a new Maryland law was put into effect to streamline the process, allowing homeowners to go to court to have them removed for free.
Bennett and student-attorneys in the Clinic are working with residents of the Silver Spring, Maryland community Woodmoor to remove such racist housing covenants from property records deed by deed.
In the article, Bennett compared removing these covenants to the removal of Confederate statues.
“Nobody wants to be a party to this anymore — particularly now,” she said. “The motivation behind it is to explore, to educate…to make it clear that this was unacceptable and the fallout over decades from Whites-only property regimes was unacceptable.”
Read the Washington Post article
Bennett holds expertise in community economic development, nonprofit organizations, poverty law, civil legal services for poor people, public interest law, and federal housing law and programs. Through the Community and Economic Development Law Clinic, students provide transactional representation to non–profit organizations, small businesses, and affordable housing cooperatives in under-served neighborhoods in D.C. and the metro area.
Bennett’s other leadership roles in the field of community development law have included positions on the Advisory Board of the D.C. Bar’s Community Economic Development Project, the DC Bar’s Pro Bono Committee, and with the Legal Educators’ Division of the ABA Forum on Affordable Housing and Community Development Law. She is a member of the Advisory Board for the DC Interpreter Bank, and the board of directors of the D.C. Reduced Fee Lawyer and Mediator Referral Service.
Read more:
AUWCL Congratulates Professor Susan Bennett, Recipient of AU's Outstanding Engagement Award