Palma Joy Strand, JD, LLM, professor, Negotiation and Conflict Resolution in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, testified as an invited witness Aug. 28 before the Nebraska Legislature’s Urban Affairs Committee. As a result of Legislative Resolution 398, the committee is conducting an interim study examining the effects of Sanitary and Improvement Districts (SIDs) on racial and socioeconomic segregation and the availability of affordable housing in Nebraska cities. Her 2017 Creighton Law Review article about the effects of SIDs and annexation on fair housing in the Omaha metropolitan area, “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall…Reflections on Fairness and Housing in the Omaha-Council Bluffs Region,” provided the impetus for the study and the hearings and was the subject of her testimony.
