Can Public Nuisance Law Protect Your Neighborhood from Big Banks?

This article considers how the law of public nuisance might be applied to protect neighborhoods from the destructive forces of the mortgage crisis. For more than thirty years I have been a close observer and a participant in community development at the neighborhood level in Cleveland, Ohio. I now supervise a law school clinical practice that provides legal counsel to an array of nonprofit community development corporations that, for more than thirty-five years, have been renewing housing and neighborhood sustainability in a city going through major social and economic change.