A powerless neighborhood hearing board can sort compliant owners before formal court

Evidence

Where violations were not corrected within the time given the owner was requested to appear before a hearing board composed of representatives of the cooperating municipal agencies. The function of this Board was to determine why the notice had not been complied with. It had no legal status, no power and no funds. It met at night in the area of the project for the convenience of the people. If the Board felt a real effort was being made to comply with the notice or there were mitigating circumstances, additional time was given. If no good reason was advanced by the owner the case was orde ed scheduled for hearing in the Housing Court. Only owner occupants were brought before the Board. Those who owned properties in the area and lived elsewhere were taken into Housing Court upon failure to comply with a notice. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 272

Categorization

• XREF: Illustrates an informal, place-based dispute mechanism (meeting at night in the project area) — useful for the polyad’s institutional-roles and listening/observation thread. — connects to: Citizen complaints can trigger a court inquiry into a prosecutor’s fitness — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 18
• SEED: Angle: how extralegal, no-power bodies do the real triage work of regulation — an essay on ‘institutions that work by having no teeth’ and resident-owner versus absentee-owner discrimination.