I thank Vicki Been for substantial support in designing the study that is the subject of this paper and for insightful comments at all stages of the writing process. For very helpful feedback on prior drafts of this piece, I am grateful to Yun-chien Chang, Russell Engler, Renagh O’Leary, Cristina Rodrigues, Jessica Steinberg, Paul Tremblay, and the participants in the NYU Colloquium on the Law, Economics, and Politics of Urban Affairs, the Harvard Law School Clinical Scholar- ship Workshop, and the Works in Progress Session at the American Association of Law Schools Conference on Clinical Legal Education. I am indebted to Maxwell Austensen, Maria (Mili) Chapado, and Xingzhi Wang for performing the data analyses used in the study. I also thank Rob Collinson and Luis Herskovic for providing additional data sup- port, and Alisa Numansyah for heroically collecting and scanning over one thousand case files across all five boroughs of New York City. Scott Davis, Ethan Fitzgerald, Andrew Gerst, and Alex Wilson provided excellent research assistance. Finally, I thank the Office of Court Administration and the New York City Department of Housing Preserva- tion and Development for providing data used in the study.
January
2025