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Founder & Executive Director: Maria Foscarinis
Program Staff
Policy Director: Jeremy Rosen
Housing
Attorney: Tristia Bauman
Domestic Violence and Education Attorney: Lisa
Coleman
Civil Rights Program Director:
Heather Maria Johnson
Director of Human Rights and Children's
Rights Programs: Eric Tars
Volunteer: Marion
Manheimer
Administration Staff
Director of Operations: Louise Weissman
Development & Communications Associate: Mary Beth Morrissey
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Maria Foscarinis
Executive Director
Maria Foscarinis is founder and executive
director of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. Maria has
advocated for solutions to homelessness at the national level since 1985. She
was a primary architect of the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act, the
first major federal legislation addressing homelessness, and she has litigated
to secure the legal rights of homeless persons. Maria writes and speaks widely
on legal and policy issues affecting homeless persons and is frequently quoted
in the media.
Maria is a 1977 graduate of Barnard College and
a 1981 graduate of Columbia Law School, where she was an editor of the Law
Review. She also holds a M.A. in philosophy. After clerking for the Hon. Amalya
L. Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, she was a
litigation associate at Sullivan & Cromwell where she volunteered to take a
pro bono case representing homeless families. In 1985, she left the firm to establish
and direct a Washington office for the National Coalition for the Homeless
before she founded the Law Center in 1989.
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PROGRAM STAFF
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Jeremy Rosen
Policy Director
Jeremy Rosen is the policy director for the Law
Center. Jeremy previously served as executive director of the National Policy
and Advocacy Council on Homelessness, as director for homelessness and mental
health in the National Office of Volunteers of America, and as a staff attorney
at Legal Services of Greater Miami. He received his B.A. from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison in 1994, and his J.D. from George Washington University Law
School in 1998.
Jeremy is an expert on federal, state, and local
affordable housing policy, with a focus on homelessness, veterans housing, and
housing for children, youth, and families. Jeremy's work also focuses on access
to government benefits for low-income people, prisoner reentry, and the
intersection of affordable housing policy and the education and child welfare
systems. He is a frequent speaker on these topics, and has published numerous
journal articles and papers.
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Tristia Bauman
Housing Attorney
Tristia Bauman is the Housing Attorney at the
Law Center where she combines litigation, legal education, and legislative
advocacy strategies to prevent and end homelessness. Her work focuses on
monitoring and litigating compliance with federal statutes such as Title V of the
McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act and the Protecting Tenants at
Foreclosure Act. Tristia also conducts legal trainings around the country,
writes reports and other publications related to housing, and serves as a legal
resource for homeless advocates.
Tristia began her law career at Legal Services
of Greater Miami, Inc. as a housing attorney working with low-income tenants in
federally subsidized housing. She later served for several years as an
Assistant Public Defender in Miami-Dade County where she advocated in the
courts on behalf of indigent criminal defendants, including hundreds of
homeless clients. Her professional experience, combined with her ample
volunteer work with homeless youth in Anchorage, Alaska, Seattle, Washington,
and Miami, Florida, has made Tristia into an expert on poverty law issues.
Tristia hails from Auckland, New Zealand but was
raised in Washington State where she attended the University of Washington as
an undergraduate and law student. She received her B.A. in Anthropology in 2000
and her J.D. in 2006.
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Lisa Coleman
Domestic Violence and Education Attorney
Lisa M. Coleman serves as the domestic violence
and education attorney at the Law Center. Lisa coordinates domestic
violence programming at the Law Center, including the development of outreach
materials, trainings and presentations to ensure the effective implementation
of, and compliance with national, state and local laws providing housing rights
for survivors of domestic violence and sexual violence. Lisa also works
closely with the Director of Children's Rights Programs to shape and implement
programming to protect and enhance the education rights of homeless and
unaccompanied children and youth. In both capacities, Lisa provides
technical assistance to legal services providers, advocates, government
officials and individuals across the country, and engages in impact litigation
related to housing for survivors of domestic violence and the education of
homeless youth.
Prior to joining the Law Center, Lisa served as
a law fellow in the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers Committee
for Civil Rights Under Law. She received her J.D. from the American University
Washington College of Law, where she was a Note & Comment Editor of the
American University Journal on Gender, Social Policy & Law. Lisa received
her B.A. in Political Science from the University of Missouri-Columbia and
taught high school U.S. History and Civics & Economics in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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Heather Maria Johnson
Civil Rights Program Director
Heather Maria Johnson coordinates the Civil
Rights Project at the Law Center. She works with advocates to challenge city
practices that criminalize homelessness. Heather serves as co-counsel in
litigation, files amicus briefs, and serves as a resource for attorneys
pursuing litigation. She also writes reports, articles, and other publications
to provide legal guidance and information about the civil rights issues of
homeless people.
In addition, Heather monitors civil rights
issues throughout the country and provides technical assistance to advocates
who are combating criminalization measures or working on voting issues. As part
of the Civil Rights Program's public education initiative, she provides
trainings related to strategies for challenging the criminalization of
homelessness and promoting the voting rights of homeless persons.
Heather received her B.A. from the University of
Virginia and her J.D. from Duke University School of Law, where she was a
member of the Duke Law Journal. She also holds a M.A. in cultural anthropology.
After clerking for the Hon. James P. Jones of the U.S. District Court for the
Western District of Virginia, she was an associate at Latham & Watkins
where she served as pro bono counsel in one of the Law Center's litigation
matters challenging ordinances that criminalize homelessness.
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Eric Tars
Director of Human Rights and Children's
Rights Programs
Eric Tars currently serves as the Law Center's
human rights and children's rights program director. In his human rights
capacity, he works with homelessness and housing advocacy organizations to
train and strategically utilize human rights as a component of their work. In
his youth rights capacity, he works to protect homeless students' rights to
education and advocates for homeless youth and families through trainings,
litigation, and policy advocacy at the national and local levels.
Before coming to the Law Center, Eric was a
Fellow with Global Rights' U.S. Racial Discrimination Program and consulted
with Columbia University Law School's Human Rights Institute and the US Human
Rights Network. Eric's work has spanned the country and the globe. He
coordinated the involvement of hundreds of organizations in the hearings of the
U.S. before the UN Committee Against Torture and Human Rights in 2006. Eric has
conducted numerous trainings on integrating human rights strategies into
domestic advocacy, and he currently serves as the chair of the US Human Rights
Network's training committee and on the Steering Committee of the Human Rights
at Home Campaign.
Eric received his J.D. as a Global Law Scholar
at the Georgetown University Law Center, and during that time served as a
research assistant to Prof. Mari Matsuda, as a legal assistant at the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and as law clerk at Harmon, Curran,
Spielberg & Eisenberg, a law firm specializing in non-profit law. He received
his B.A. in political science from Haverford College and studied international
human rights in Vienna at the Institute for European Studies and at the
University of Vienna.
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Marion Manheimer
Volunteer
Marion Manheimer, a
retired social worker, has volunteered at the Law Center for over ten years.
She supports legal staff in executing the Law Centers housing, children and
youth, and domestic violence programs. Marion developed an interest in serving
the homeless community during her career as a social worker for the Workers
Compensation division of the New York State Department of Labor, where some of
her clients were homeless individuals.
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ADMINISTRATION STAFF
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Louise Weissman
Director of Operations
As Director of
Operations at the Law Center, Louise oversees finance, human resources, and
administration. She has over 30 years experience in operations and event
planning for membership-based, policy and advocacy organizations. Over a
23-year period, Louise consulted with a host of organizations, including AARP Foundation, the Optical Society of
America, Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), and USAction. Prior to joining
the Law Center, Louise served as SEIU International President, Andy Sterns
scheduler and as Administrative Director of the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival.
Louise
sits on the Board of Directors at Common Good City Farm, an urban farm and
education center in Washington, DC. She holds a B.A. in
Education from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
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Mary Beth Morrissey
Development and Communications Associate
Mary
Beth Morrissey is a former intern at the Law Center who now serves as part-time development
and communications associate. Mary Beth received a
B.A. cum laude in sociology from Barnard College in 2011.
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