Richard O. Lempert

Richard O. Lempert, professor of Law and chair of the department of sociology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, will complete a study of Honolulu's public housing eviction process between 1958 and 1987. The policies governing the Hawaii Housing Authority's eviction board have undergone numerous changes, and a once minimal eviction rate has grown to nearly 100% in non-payment of rent cases. Lempert explores how such factors as organizational transformation, legal challenges, and attempts to improve efficiency altered the process of informal justice as exercised by the board, and investigates whether cultural discrimination, particularly against Samoans, played a role in evictions.