Foreword

• Library: Group Homes: Strategies for Effective and Defensible Planning and Regulation (ABA) (2014 Ed.)

I am pleased to offer a brief foreword to this fine book, coauthored by Brian Connolly, a planner and rising star in the land use bar, and Dwight Merriam, someone I have known for more than 35 years and whom I trust so much that I selected him to be the lead coauthor of the land use law casebook Planning and Control of Land Development: Cases and Materials (8th ed. 2011), first published in 1979.

Group Homes fills a critical gap in the literature by analyzing and applying federal antidiscrimination law to the practical problems of planning for and regulating group homes for people with disabilities. As society has become more knowledgeable and sensitive to the wide range of capabilities of people—with and without disabilities—and the need to provide each and every person with the full range of housing opportunities without discrimination, we have come to realize how important good planning and defensible regulation are for such housing.

Call this book the GPS for group homes if you wish, because it guides us over an exceptionally broad area—from the practical background of the population of people with disabilities, through the law relating to housing for people with disabilities...