This is an ethnographic research project on substandard housing conditions in New York City. The project examines the persistence of substandard housing in New York through a study of the sociopolitical forces that underpin it. To do so, we look at the forces that shape the behavior of a variety of actors by conducting an ethnography of housing court coupled with interviews of tenants, city officials, housing activists, and housing lawyers. The project, more broadly, aims to understand how laws are experienced and embedded within specific political contexts.