MOMENTUM
Real Estate Law Clinic Represents Nonprofit Housing Developer
D
uring the 2013-2014 academic year, students in the Real Estate Law Clinic represented nonprofit housing developer Step Up on Second, Inc., in the development of an affordable housing complex in Santa Monica, California. The clinic assisted Step Up, which provides permanent supportive housing to adults affected by mental illness, with the purchase of a parcel of land for the development, construction financing, permanent financing and title due diligence, among other processes. The students were recently invited to see the fruits of their labor at a groundbreaking ceremony for Step Up’s Santa Monica development. The year-long clinical course, founded in 2012 with support from the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate, offers students practical, hands-on training and experience working on ongoing real estate transactions involving the development of affordable housing. Through classroom instruction, as well
Clinic students at the groundbreaking ceremony
as clinical work representing nonprofit organizations at various stages in the process of developing affordable housing, students acquire skills required by a modern transactional real estate practice. The clinic is taught by UCLA Law Adjunct Professor Lance Bocarsly, founding partner at Bocarsly Emden Cowan Esmail & Arndt LLP.
CRS Program Sponsors Community Hearing on Challenges Facing Girls of Color In July, UCLA School of Law’s Critical Race Studies (CRS) Program and the African American Policy Forum held a community hearing at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, to raise public awareness of the vast challenges facing girls of color and to address their experiences with poverty and
imprisonment in Los Angeles County. Nearly 200 people attended the hearing, which was facilitated by a panel that included researchers, elected officials, advocates and community organizers. Professors Kimberlé Crenshaw and Jyoti Nanda, as well as alumna Priscilla Ocen ’07, assistant professor of law at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, participated on the panel. The panelists heard the personal stories of approximately a dozen girls and women of color who shared their experiences growing up in Los Angeles in poor, disenfranchised neighborhoods. The topics discussed included school discipline policies, foster care challenges, human trafficking issues and general gender-specific issues (e.g., teenage pregnancy) that funnel girls into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. With the recent call to include girls of color in President Obama’s national racial justice program, the hearing was a first step in identifying systemic solutions to the specific challenges facing girls of color locally.
Priscilla Ocen and Professors Kimberlé Crenshaw and Jyoti Nanda
UCLA LAW MAGAZINE
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