Sociology of housing law

We argue that housing law has been adopted and adapted by entrepreneurs of the law machine - academics and practitioners - to make the law appear relevant and its study contextual, carving out a new arena for study and wealth creation. In fact, housing law has no conceptual core, and is an empty vessel into which we pour our hopes, fears, and anxieties about legal education and legal values. We trace the development of housing law through its various incarnations, and its utility as a response to critique, but argue that, at best, only second order change to legal education occurred. We conclude that housing law is a "vehicular idea", which embraces critique, gets moved on, and means all things to all people; but, while we can argue the toss about all this, the sentiments about injustice and advice deserts which animated the founders of the subject animate us.