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The Post-Foreclosure Eviction Defense Housing Clinic represents tenants who are facing evictions by banks or other lenders. Lenders routinely insist on evicting all tenants after foreclosure and in the process misrepresent the rights tenants have under these circumstances. The Clinic counsels and represents individual tenants in this situation, takes on impact litigation, lobbies on the local, state, and federal levels for greater tenant protections, provides trainings to pro se tenants, housing subsidy providers, social workers and legal services attorneys on tenants’ rights after foreclosure, and works with community partners and the press to bring public attention to the social problems caused by mass displacement of tenants living in foreclosed buildings. The bulk of the Clinic’s work consists of litigation in the Boston Housing Court, defending evictions and prosecuting affirmative cases to improve housing conditions and to prevent utilities from being shut-off.
The Clinic also represents individual tenants and tenant groups on a variety of other issues affecting low-income tenants and the low-income housing market in the city of Boston. These issues include (1) thwarting gentrification by preventing displacement of low-income families from the Boston neighborhoods served by the office; (2) ameliorating indoor environmental hazards – including lead paint, mold, and insect and rodent infestation – and otherwise improving the physical condition of housing in Boston’s low-income communities; (3) combating discrimination in the rental market and ensuring housing access and accessibility; and (4) improving the functioning of the various institutions - courts, agencies, etc.- that affect the lives of low-income tenants.
Students working in the Post-Foreclosure Eviction/Housing Clinic will have numerous opportunities throughout the semester to engage in client interviewing and counseling, fact investigation, pre-trial discovery (including taking and defending depositions), negotiation, and motion practice, as well as to try cases. Students will also have the opportunity, working with organizers, to engage in community lawyering and mobilization efforts and to work on legislative and other law reform initiatives.
Students wishing to enroll in this clinic must enroll in the Post-Foreclosure Eviction and Housing Law Clinical Workshop A (fall) or B (spring).
We also encourage interested students to concurrently enroll in: Legal Profession: Delivery of Legal Services (A or B), which satisfies the Law School's Professional Responsibility Requirement, or Housing Law and Policy (spring).
For more information on the Post-Foreclosure Eviction Defense Housing Clinic, contact Maureen McDonagh, mcdonagh@law.harvard.edu, (617) 390-2542, Clinical Instructor and Lecturer on Law.
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