The clinic's faculty and students use legal tools at their disposal to link funding sources and private and public agencies. As a result of their efforts, which are primarily oriented to learning and teaching law, at least 1,000 housing units exist today in the community that otherwise would not have been available. And more are in the planning stages.
Clinic students learn the legal techniques and strategies involved from start to finish.
Courses include tax and real estate finance law, state and local government law, land use regulation, and poverty and labor law. Students also are required to write a paper, which may be presented at seminars or clinics and often are published in the American Bar Association's Journal of Affordable Housing and Community Development, housed at the UB Law School. He predicted the need for decent, affordable housing will grow faster in the next decade as baby boomers get older and are unable to keep and live in their own homes. More people with disabilities now are encouraged to be active members of society and either live independently or in group settings and will need more options for low-cost decent housing, too.