Property and Values offers a fresh look at property rights issues, bringing together scholars, attorneys, government officials, community development practitioners, and environmental advocates to consider new and more socially equitable forms of ownership. Based on a Harvard Law School conference organized by the Equity Trust, Inc., in cooperation with the American Bar Association's Commission on Homelessness and Poverty, the book:

explains ownership as an evolving concept, determined by social processes and changing social relations

challenges conventional public-private ownership categories

surveys recent studies on the implications of public policy on property values

offers examples from other cultures of ownership realities unfamiliar or forgotten in the United States

compares experiments in ownership/equity allocation affecting social welfare and environmental conservation

The book synthesizes much innovative thinking on ownership in land and housing, and signals how that thinking might be used across America. Contributors – including David Abromowitz, Darby Bradley, Teresa Duclos, Sally Fairfax, Margaret Grossman, C. Ford Runge, William Singer and others – call for balance between property rights and responsibilities, between private and public rights in property, and between individual and societal interests in land.

Property and Values is a thought-provoking contribution to the literature on property for planners, lawyers, government officials, resource economists, environmental managers, and social scientists as well as for students of planning, environmental law, geography, or public policy.