Community in Property: Lessons from Tiny Homes Villages
COMMUNITY IN PROPERTY: LESSONS FROM TINY HOMES VILLAGES Lisa T. Alexander* The evolving role of community in property law remains undertheorized. While legal scholars have analyzed the commons, common interest communities, and aspects of the sharing economy, the recent rise of intentional co-housing communities remains relatively understudied. This Article provides a case study of tiny homes villages for the homeless and unhoused, as examples of communities that highlight the growing importance of flexibility and community in contemporary property law. These communities develop new housing tenures and property relationships that challenge the predominance of individualized, exclusionary, long-term, fee simple-ownership in contemporary property law. The villages, therefore, demonstrate property theories that challenge the hegemony of ownership in property law, such as progressive property theory, property as personhood theory, access versus ownership theories, stewardship, and urban commons theories in action. The property forms and relationships these villages create not only ameliorate homelessness, but also illustrate how communal relationships can provide more stability than ownership during times of uncertainty. Due to increasing natural disasters and other unpredictable phenomena, municipalities may find these property forms adaptable and, therefore, useful in mitigating increasing housing insecurity and instability. This case study also provides examples of successful stakeholder collaboration between groups that often conflict in urban redevelopment. These insights reveal a new role for community in property law, and are instructive for American governance and property law and theory. *Copyright © 2019 by Lisa T. Alexander, Professor of Law, Texas A&M University School of Law, with Joint Appointment in Texas A&M University’s Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning.
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