Talk:List of housing statutes

Ideas to make this article more useful

1. Introductory summary (the current statement merely restates the title).
2. Rename as List of housing statute articles (more specific and accurate).
3. Remove these articles from Index of real estate articles and add a link to that list to direct people to here for this subgroup.
4. Create as a table sortable by: jurisdiction (nation, state or municipality), title and key word.
5. Summary for each statute.

With these changes, it would likely be more strongly supported at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of housing statutes. Do others agree? Any other ideas for this article? Jack N. Stock (talk) 01:10, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Response to proposals:

1. Yes. I propose nationally significant statutes only--nothing local, unless of substantial historical significance.

2. Maybe. There may be no wikipedia article. However, if the standard is that to be listed, there must at least be a wikipedia article, that might alleviate the concerns raised at WP:AfD.

3. No. For two reasons:

(1) If the statute is very significant to real estate, then it should be listed in the index.

(2) Real estate is not the same as housing.

4. Maybe. I do not see the purpose of this is to have a long list of statutes, but only to list the important ones. The list, in my opinion should be so small that a table would provide no real utility. We should not include any municipal ordinances, state laws, etc., unless they greatly deviate from national laws or provide a major precedence. I think some already included that are not so significant should be purged. However, if this is going to be a complete list of all housing statute articles, then that would be acceptable.

5. Yes.

I will try to better organize my thoughts on how this article could be function based on the two directions of complete list of all wikipedia articles related to housing statues vs. only significant statutes.

--David Tornheim (talk) 22:13, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

No opinion on the other proposals, but I definitely support 4. I tried to organise this article better by grouping it into columns and adding definition tags, but it just looks messy now. A table would be very good for sorting. Laurdecl ^talk 00:31, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

@Laurdecl:, @Jacknstock: I put all the U.S. statutes into a table. I hope that meets your needs. --David Tornheim (talk) 22:29, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

@Laurdecl: Thanks for doing some more work on this. I'm confused why you changed the format of the tables, making so that now the data can't be sorted. In your last comment above you said that would be useful. I agree: It is useful for sorting by date, name or title. (Also, any thoughts on what I wrote below about "insignificant" statutes.) --David Tornheim (talk) 04:50, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

@David Tornheim: Sorry, I thought the tables looked clearer like this. You can change them back if you want, but the Acts should be sorted by date anyway. You can remove whatever you want from the article, if you think it's insignificant; I'm hardly a subject expert. Laurdecl ^talk 05:07, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

@Laurdecl: Thanks. I will on the U.S. ones. I do think it looks better the way you have it, but when there are so many statutes, people might want to sort by topic, such as Affordable housing. I am taking a real estate class, so that's why I don't mind putting so much effort into this article that almost got deleted! --David Tornheim (talk) 05:22, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

One more question: I was thinking about merging the mortgage statutes in, since they can be placed by topic "mortgage" and easily siphoned out that way. Is that okay with you? --David Tornheim (talk) 05:23, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, no problem. Laurdecl ^talk 05:28, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Enabling sorting by a number of different features can be useful for readers. The year of the Act doesn't necessarily make any difference — a law from a hundred years ago might be just as notable and influential as a recent law. It depends what the reader is looking for. If they want them sorted by year, that's easy enough if the table is sortable.
Assuming the table can be sorted by scope ("key word" as I called it) or title, I doubt it will cause any problem to include mortgage statutes. I guess someone could say mortgages aren't housing, but mortgage laws certainly are related to housing for many people! Jack N. Stock (talk) 05:41, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Proposal to delete some insignificant statutes

I did not add the most recent statutes to the U.S. table since I think some may ultimately not have that much significance. Those are in a separate section: List_of_housing_statutes#Statutes_after_1996.

I proposed we delete:

• Cash for appliances program (2009) which I think was a short term thing.
• Housing_and_Community_Development_Act_of_1987 -- seems to be be just reaffirm old statute with more money or slight expansion
• Housing_and_Urban_Development_Act_of_1970 -- ditto.

Possibly also delete:

• Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965, except that this seems to be the first of the HUD statutes.

We should include whatever the enable statute that created H.U.D.

Do you guys agree with some or all of these proposed deletions? I will wait to delete until I hear back. --David Tornheim (talk) 22:42, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I think any housing statute that has a wikipedia article could be included. For WP purposes, anything that has an article can be presumed to be notable. The reader can decide for themselves what is important to them, it's not for editors to make that judgement, and it's difficult to justify excluding acts with titles that start with the word "housing"! The exception I would make would be Cash for Appliances, as few people will expect to see that in a list of housing statutes. Jack N. Stock (talk) 05:41, 6 March 2017 (UTC)