By Amir Sadr, UCLA Law JD 2014; and Steve Serna, UCLA Law JD 2014
The UCLA Real Estate Law Clinic: Affordable Housing is a year-long clinical course offering UCLA Law students practical, hands-on training and experience working on live real estate transactions involving the development of affordable housing. The clinic, founded in 2012 with support from the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate, is taught by UCLA Law Adjunct Professor Lance Bocarsly, founding partner at Bocarsly Emden Cowan Esmail & Arndt LLP. Students in the clinic represent non-profit organizations at various stages in the process of developing affordable housing for low-income residents of Los Angeles. Through classroom instruction drawing upon practice-oriented readings, case studies and simulated exercises, as well as clinical work representing non-profit clients, students learn to apply the concepts of Advanced Real Estate Transactions in a real world context and acquire skills required by a modern transactional real estate practice.
In the 2013/2014 calendar year, the course focused on representing non-profit housing developer Step Up on Second, Inc. with their development of an affordable housing complex in Santa Monica, California. Step Up provides permanent supportive housing and on-site support services to chronically homeless individuals with a mental illness in communities like Santa Monica and Hollywood. Clinic work involved assisting Step Up with the purchase of a parcel of land for the development, contraction financing, permanent financing, and title due diligence, among other processes. The students in the clinic were recently invited to see the fruits of their labor at a groundbreaking ceremony on-site for Step Up’s Santa Monica development.
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